At the same time, we are running out of recognizeable animals, and every pack gets a bot less engagement than the last one. Of course I'd love 2 years, but I don't daee getting my hopes up beyond this year.
That's where I'm at. I think that with the merchandise store opening (what game does that if it's close to wrapping up support!), and from what we can tell strong sales for this past year, we're very likely to get 4 packs in 2023. Either with or without adding in flying/exhibit avians. But if it's "just" mammals, reptiles, grounded birds and exhibit animals, after another year I agree that Frontier may find it harder to find animals that create the buzz they've managed for the last 3 years. Sloth, Walrus, Porcupine, Tasmanian Devil. That's the big, obvious choices for drawing people in, after all, IMO. After that...we all have our wants but who knows...then again never would have thought a beaver, an armadillo or sun bear would have been the "headliners".
At any rate, if they do full support for avians, I think that could get us 2 more years potentially. Aquatics even more than that, but I'm really less confident those will be coming.
All in all, I'm hopeful for 2023 and not ready to give up on 2024 as yet...let's see how the next few packs play out and what they're including/not including. A lot of unique and unexpected choices that pad out the roster but at the same time leave out some of the more obvious names gives me hope for into 2024. After that...I'm not optimistic for into 2025, but that could change especially if we do get aquatics.
Themes could be anything at this point, especially after this year. The grasslands being in December really through many people for a loop, myself included. Tropics/rainforest could be in the summer. Heck, Taiga/Tundra something could be in the summer, and that's just sticking to biomes. They could go back to regions. They could do islands, hemispheres, Old World/New World, just anything really. I don't think they'll do packs that are for one family of animals, but I'm also not thinking that's completely off the table. Birds are still my guess for Spring, but other than that, there's just not real pattern to follow.
Editing to add about the engagement of the packs...I was thinking about this earlier today. Excepting the Conservation pack, every pack has been a very mixed bag of animals. Granted, there's been highly requested animals in each pack, but the surprise and filler picks have in general gotten less positive reception than the ones from last year. I mention this because in all of my reviews on Steam, I've recommended them, but much less wholeheartedly than the 2020 and 2021 packs. I think they're great still and I'm glad we got them, and I'm glad I bought them all, but so many of the animals are just not ones I'm personally interested in. I'm sure that's the same for many people, even if the animals differ.
I feel like after the high points of 2021 with 3 of the 4 packs getting generally very positive reception, the Wetlands, Twilight and the Grasslands packs have felt a little less..fulfilling? For instance, take out your top 2 animals of each pack and how do you feel about the remainder? For me anyways, if I did that with the Africa, North America and European packs...they're still strong picks. I honestly can't say the same if I removed the Capybara, Asian Small Clawed Otter, Wombat, Raccoon, Maned Wolf and Emu from their respective packs....it's a lot of filler to me. Something to think about for another year's worth of of packs.
