Just how many years will people be playing "World of Warcraft?"

Irvine-based Blizzard Entertainment is working on an expansion called "Cataclysm" to the long-lived game that looks to breathe new life into it by giving veteran players new reasons to play and new players an easier time getting into the game.

"World of Warcraft" is a worldwide phenomenon that could still have many years of life left in it. That is,WOW GOLD if it still has an interested player base and it still makes sense for Blizzard Entertainment to support it.

The game is an MMO, or a massively multiplayer online game, that's still played by approximately 11.5 million subscribers. Those are still peak numbers for Blizzard Entertainment, but the company is already at work on an entirely new massively multiplayer game for which they've offered very few details. The company is hiring a lot of new employees this year too as it develops multiple games simultaneously.

There could be expansions to "World of Warcraft" five or even 10 years from now, said Tom Chilton, director of the game.

But it has to make sense.

"If we release a new MMO and that new MMO is more successful it might make more sense for us to spend time adding to that game," said Chilton. "It could happen eventually, but not in the near future."

World of Warcraft: Cataclysm

"World of Warcraft: Cataclysm" is around 75 percent done and Chilton said he hopes it'll release this year. WOW GOLD A beta release of the game may be available in the next few months, he said.

Blizzard Entertainment has been careful in not announcing release dates for games for fear of missing the date. After years of anticipation, its latest game, "StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty," is due out on July 27. The release date for that game was announced just a few months before the game actually hits shelves.

While "StarCraft II" is a kind of real-time game of Risk, "World of Warcraft" is Blizzard's immersive game that's still being played by millions after more than five years. People subscribe to play WOW and it's a game that lets you name, shape and control characters that live in a huge world filled with the kinds of fantastical creatures seen in stories like "The Lord of the Rings"; thousands of others play the game simultaneously.

The newest expansion, "Cataclysm," is named for a cataclysmic event that reshapes the entire world. Here's how Chilton describes the installment to someone entirely new to the game:

"More than anything else ["Cataclysm"] means WOW GOLD  is going to be easier to get into than ever before because basically we're making a huge push to revamp a lot of the game's original content -- to make it flow better, to make the level of experience a little more understandable, to simplify parts of the game that were too complex."

And to a fan of the game:

"It's the addition of a lot of new content, new things for players to do. That includes increasing the level cap by five. ... It means adding lots of new zones and quests, thousands of new quests in fact. It means the introduction of a couple new player races ... that's the Goblins and the Worgens. And it also, for a lot of existing fans, means revamping a lot of the old-world content that we did six years ago so that they get a fresh new experience as they create new characters."

Blizzard Entertainment won't be attending the major Los Angeles gaming conference E3 this year but will follow up with its own BlizzCon in October at the Anaheim Convention Center, an event that's already sold out.

No doubt there will be more information about the future of "World of Warcraft" then. For now, Chilton said it's "very unlikely" this will be the last expansion for the game.