Quote Originally Posted by Fenral View Post
EverQuest expansions were individual installs that you could mix-and-match for a very long time, before they gave in and adopted the WoW distribution model. Final Fantasy XI expansions are also (technically) independent, with occasional caveats like Abyssea requiring Rise of the Zilart and Wings of the Goddess, but not the other two in between. Star Wars: The Old Republic lets you skip to the current expansion and has never required the previous expansions. And so on.

The usual marketing assumption is that you'll want all of them, so they make it as easy as possible with discounts and combo packs and such, but seeing as the FFXIV launcher is set up for individual expansion installs and version updates, I'm guessijng they'll be independent for at least a little while longer. At the very least, it wouldn't surprise me.
Fair enough, though in this case it wouldn't make much sense to allow them to be installed independently. With Heavensward covering all of the 50-60 content and 4.0 presumably covering 60+ someone buying 4.0 without Heavensward wouldn't really be able to do much with the new content. The only way that might work is if 4.0 adds new 50-60 regions as well but the majority of the playerbase would see that as a waste of resources developing content that would be dead on arrival.

Independent expansion installs for EQ1 and FFXI worked largely because the expansions introduced new regions for all level ranges. I just don't see 4.0 following that pattern.