Interesting post from WoW general forum.

[liffuie]

Also, I'd expect that at some point, content updates in WOW will be mostly data and little code. New instances, monsters, spells, etc may require code sometimes, but probably not as often.
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not realy, in EQ, over the course of its timeline, they've overhauled the graphic engine 3 seperate times. they've redone the way items are stored and logged twice. Changed mob ai that i know of twice (mostly just how they pathe, and reacte to differnt ability in relation to agro generation) also changed how how spells interact with npcs.

if your saying any of these are just little code changes, is a vast over simplification. add to the fact despite EQ's success by the 5th year mark, every programer from the orginal team to kunark xpac had left the company. Trying to do changes while not break old legacy code that may be a core function and that no one in the current team 100% understands is not exactly an exact science.