New Pioneer Trail World Map: Are four more expansions on the way?

That's the logical guess, at least. Zynga recently updated The Pioneer Trail with a brand new World Map that hints at four unreleased areas. Instead of showing the four areas on the Pioneer Trail, the "Travel" button now shows a condensed icon representing the recently-released expansion in a larger map. What's more important, however, is what surrounds it.

Considering this is all we have right now, prepare for some wild speculation. The Pioneer Trail icon is surrounded by four grayed out icons. Moving from most left to right, what first appears is either a castle or a fort, with no trail marks leading to it. Perhaps this is a new area for players to tend to much like the Homestead (maybe players claim Fort Courage for themselves.) To the bottom left is a canyon, which is most likely the long-teased Rattlesnake Canyon.

Directly below The Pioneer Trail icon is what appears to be a Gold Mine, likely alluding to the Gold Rush expansion that has been hinted at since almost day one. (You know, way back when this game was still known as FrontierVille?) Finally, a haunted graveyard of sorts is featured. We seriously doubt Zynga would create an entire expansion's worth of content with a Halloween theme, so maybe this will be the home of future season-specific events.

At this point, who knows what the developer is up to. What we do know, however, is that Zynga has big plans for Pioneer Trail well into 2012. And considering the game has lost the majority of its daily players since it was re-branded in August, we're not surprised Zynga would be working hard to keep the major content releases flowing.

What do you make of this brand new World Map in Pioneer Trail? Do you think Zynga can recover its lost fans with a flurry of major expansions in 2012?