Makes no sense to me either.
If they are trying to get forgiveness from fans of Gothic by releasing Gothic 3 Expansion, they probably won't get any with an expansion. Fans still want their original G3 game fixed more than it was. Gothic 3 (Original) still is a mess that is still being patched by the G3-Community and Spellbound, as we speak -- the load times still are not good, the in-game performance is still all over the place (but better than it was before), and there's probably still a good deal of more bugs to iron out.
And JoWood is now wanting fans to pay for an expansion to what is an already broken game?
I can't believe they're bothering with a 4th.
I can understand making a 4th game, since they are getting someone new to make it. And since there are still fans of the series.
I hope Spellbound does a good job w/ it, myself -- and doesn't have too huge of a scope like Pluto 13 did w/ Gothic 3. I think G3 is too big for its own good, since it was released obviously way to early out the gate.
The series had a strong start, but after 2 I was very much done with this series. 3 didn't interest me in the least.
Gothic 1 was great, no doubt about it -- had an interesting story, premise, and everything.
Gothic 2 was good, but lacked the intrigue of the original. Plus, a lot of the flaws of the original were even way more obvious, this time around; since they were fixed.
Gothic 3 is just still mess that still needs to fixed w/ some more patches...There's a good RPG to be had, under that mess...but, they need to fix that mess, first.