Forum:CT Archive/Expansion Packs: Gotta keep 'em separated.

OK, I'd like to establish right away here that I'm talking about expansion packs for videogames, such as Defenders of the Empire, Clone Campaigns, and Forces of Corruption. At the moment, we don't seem to have a consistent policy on whether or not these products should have their own article. Most expansion packs seem to have been merged with the articles on the products that they are "expanding" but, for instance, we have a separate article on Forces of Corruption. Personally, I think having the separate article is clearly the way to go, for a number of reasons.


 * 1) With a separate article, we can clearly and easily distinguish what elements of canon are featured in that expansion's storyline. Most, if not all of these expansion packs have their own self-contained storylines, but the three expansions to Star Wars Galaxies, might be slightly different. In any case, those particular games don't have a linear plot, but we would concern ourselves then with elements featured exclusively in that expansion.
 * 2) We can make our sourcing more specific, and therefore, far more accurate. At the moment, for instance, we would source information from either of the two expansion packs for Star Wars: TIE Fighter to that article, which is actually inaccurate and potentially wildly misleading. We can always link to a specific subsection, but I feel that this can become messy and generally inconsistent with the way we conduct the rest of our sourcing for any other type of product.
 * 3) We are given more room to develop information on these expansion packs. Since these packs are pretty much always developed independently from the main game...and usually after the main game, they have totally unique development histories. At the moment, they basically get a subsection. Now, none of our game articles at the moment are particularly good, really, at least not as far as I know, but I feel this would end up being better in the organizational department.

Essentially, we would treat each individual expansion pack as a separate entity. Now, if something from the original game appears in the expansion pack as well as the original game, of course, we would list both, but if it's only in the expansion pack, we would have the luxury of a whole new article to work with. Also, in cases like the Star Wars: TIE Fighter Collector's CD-ROM, which introduced yet another expansion to that game while collecting the original and the first expansion, I feel it would be suitable to source information from all three sources to that one product. On the other hand though, to make things clearer for the reader, we could still make the clear distinction on the TIE Fighter page (and the same applies for X-wing, I believe) of which parts of the game are from the original, which are from the first expansion, and the parts from the collectors edition. All in all, I think this boils down to the fact that Wookieepedia is not paper. And while that's no excuse to go completely barmy and silly with what we do, I don't think we need to restrict ourselves when covering these products. I mean, we list individual comic issues, don't we? Thefourdotelipsis 10:08, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

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 * 1) Thefourdotelipsis 10:08, 1 July 2008 (UTC)