So a 3 hour expansion

is 1 year away... I don't think 3-5 hours takes a year to code. And it isn't going to drive much hype compared to a full game. I don't get why they are doing this. Possible it's because they have a very, very small team assigned to it.

...

I think a campaign expansion is a great idea. Personally I don't get that excited about map packs :\

why

yea, i think on their podcast they said the team working on it is a lot smaller than what was working on the original game. I don't know what the fraction is, but yea... plus on top of coding there's the whole process of getting things finalized and approved for production, marketing, and all that jazz. I'm not sure about how long all that takes, but it feels like next fall is about right.

You sure about recon armor?

I surely hope that's the case. I'm tired of this elitist bull***** about recon armor. I don't play Halo 3 anymore. (I have all the achievements except the oddball one, and the two flag ones and light switch.) But I'll play it when the mythic map pack comes out, and maybe stay a little longer if I get recon. Oh, and I won't be buying the campaign expansion. Halo 3's campaign sucked so bad, they should have paid us to play it.

Yep, it's confirmed

Get all the Vidmaster achievements (annual, 7 on 7, lightswitch, and brainpan) and Recon is yours. However, you will not be able to get Recon unless you buy the expansion. Bungie has also confirmed that only 3 of the 6 Mythic maps will be released in Jan or Feb, the other 3 will come with Recon. You need to get the skulls on all six for the achievement You can read all of this yourself here: http://nikon.bungie.org/misc/reconclarification.html

Would like to add

In case you don't want to read that, there are actually 3 more achievements required for Recon armor, and these are also only available with the expansion

It takes them two years to come out with an expansion pack?

This sure sounds like a waste. Why didnt they just come up with Halo 4 or some sort of prequel? This makes me wonder if they are keeping the next Halo game as a launch title for their next system to guarantee they sell a bunch of consoles. It only took two years to come out with GOW2 so two years for an expansion pack seems kind of weak.