A year that saw several fixes, balance fixes, bug fixes and some new content (1.9 still added stuff). Secondly, a year for the amount of content we'll be getting is pretty sweet. 6 new instances, 2 new zones, 2 new fort, revamp of several systems. WoW's first expansion took 2 years, and the content in between was rather present at first but eventually lacked(it was content that was supposed to be released at first, but they pulled it out and released it as content patch.).

The first 12 months are always the longest ones, because that's when you have to fix and iron out the major flaws THEN you can start working on new content. Not only that, but our version requires additional work (retesting to see if our systems are stable, translating, etc..).

If you don't do that, you end up with a Warhammer online, where they force released untested content and before fixing major issues that they had been having since release day. It took a change in dev team(to Bioware) to start fixing the game good, and subscription are rising right now thanks to the quality of the game improving.