59| World of Warcraft

Released: November 23rd, 2004

Available on: PC (Windows & Mac)

World of Warcraft was a phenomenon during the 2000s. Not only was it everywhere on the internet, but it even broke into the mainstream as it was the basis of episodes of popular TV shows like South Park. The game's success resulted in a lot of the casual gaming audience getting into these more complex games than one would expect. I even saw a fair amount of couples that played the game. Rather than the stereotype being that a male gamer's girlfriend was yelling at them for playing the game too long to spend time with them, it was instead male gamers getting yelled at for playing the game too long as they were eating up their girlfriend's playtime. There was something very immersive and blatantly addicting about World of Warcraft.

I managed to get in the game at the tail end of its hyperpopularity. It was a dark age period from me as I no longer had a gaming PC, but had a MacBook Pro instead. The game selection was smaller, but I decided to try World of Warcraft to see what the hype was all about. My experience with the game could be described in one particular moment. There is one point of the game that involved entering a labyrinth to fight a leader of bandits of some sort. I partnered with a dozen other players or so. We went in and gave it our all. We fought through his henchmen until we got to the big boss at the end of the level. The team fought tirelessly until he was defeated. After doing a celebratory victory pose I walked up with the rest of the group toward the exit to complete the mission. Suddenly, my character fell off the edge of a pathway. I was then warped back to the beginning of the level. I was angry at first, but realized that it would take a bit longer before the enemies would respawn. I began continue going through labyrinth when to my horror I discovered that a few of the enemies had already respawned back to life. Being a low level character I couldn't possibly fight through all the enemies in the area by myself. I called for help on the party chat but no one responded, I did so again and one person actually answered. I told him my situation and he stated that due to me not walking out of the exit I technically didn't complete the objective. However, he will be going back to the entrance to help me out. Being coupled with a very high leveled character gave me just the boost I needed to be able to fight my way, or rather run my way, through the area. We eventually passed the boss area, where he luckily had not respawned yet, and toward the area where I fell. I was being extra cautious this time so I managed not to fall, but my partner did. I asked if he was okay and he stated "I'll be fine, just go on without me!". I ran to the exit and to my relief out the other side, my objective was complete. This was, to me at least, the true pull of World of Warcraft. You were playing a game that was interconnected with over ten million people. These people can help you, betray you, aid you, rob you, or just socialite with you. The "world" in its title wasn't put there for nothing.

The game starts off with the player choosing between the Horde or the Alliance. Once players make their choice they begin their quest in a tutorial like area. The missions start out in either being fetch quests or "kill X amount of enemies". As the game goes on the quests become a bit more varied as they involve the player hunting down assassins, ancient creatures, and exploring dungeons and lairs. This is pretty much what the game revolves around. Explore an area finding people with question marks over their heads, complete their quests to level up, and finding people with exclamation marks over their heads to complete their mandatory quests. Once all of those are complete players move onto the next area. This sounds very simplistic and honestly not too different from your typical WRPG. What makes the game are the people you will encounter during and inbetween these quests. The above was just one of the many examples I had throughout the game of my interactions with other players. There is a certain feeling one gets from actually playing and working with another human being rather than an A.I.

Today the game looks extremely dated technical wise. It is more a less an HD remaster of a Xbox game. What saves the game from being an eyesore is the enchanting art-style. A mix of colorful high fantasy with a dash of cartooniness results in a game that looks timeless. Sure it isn't say Okami but it still looks pleasing to the eyes twelve years later. The character designs are also unique and appealing. It definitely sets itself apart from its Tolkien aspired roots as the game has its own style and atmosphere.

There was a time when to many gamers Blizzard could do no wrong. Their games were seen as perfect as Nintendo's top tier offerings. Over the years people have taken off their glasses and have observed some of the flaws. World of Warcraft isn't an exception to this. My biggest problem with the game, and why I no longer play it, is that the game suffers from something I like to call "Grand Theft Auto syndrome". This involves having a game that is a sandbox (or sandbox-like) experience and relies in entertaining the player by giving them what seems like an endless amount of choices of what they could do at any given time during the game. This seems amazing at first, but soon the player discovers that out of all the things the game has to offer, there are only a handful of them that the player actually enjoys doing. After some time the player eventually gets bored with the game. This is exactly what happened to World of Warcraft with me. The first two months I was addicted to the game playing it hours on end. However, after the second month I became very bored with the game. The quests seemed all very similar and just finding ways to shoot to shit with players just became boring. These sandboxy type games tend to be the jack of all trades, masters of none, type of ordeals. And that is perfectly fine. However, what's the point of playing a game for hours on end if there isn't much to master? Sure I kept hearing from diehard players who kept trying to keep me in the game that it really opens up when raiding is involved. But from my brief experience of it, it just didn't entertain me that much. Looking at the game's subscription base, it seems that I am not alone as it now has less than half the amount of subscribers as it did when I initially dropped out.

Despite that, the game was extremely fun and entertaining during my time with it. Two months is about the length of a meaty RPG anyway, which kind of starts the philosophical question of "is there that much of a difference between having an extremely good time by completing an 80 hour game and having an extremely good time by clocking in 80 hours of a game that is hundreds of hours long?" If the answer "no" is in anyway partially true than World of Warcraft definitely deserves to make this list. It is one of the most memorable game experiences I have had. It is true that today the game is no longer at its high mark of 12 million players and is no longer the game publishers flock to emulate, as that title currently belongs to League of Legends. However, it is still a major game pulling in millions of subscribers and even has a blockbuster film behind it. Blizzard even expanded the series further by creating Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft, a widely successful online collectible card game. World of Warcraft catapulted the "Warcraft" brand to be a multi-media phenomenon that is possibly only rivaled by Poke'mon. It is one of gamings most infamous brands and will likely be around for another 22 years.

I have an addictive personality so I purposefully stayed well clear of this even though I bought a boxed version of it.  It's better to feel as though I missed out on one of the biggest cultural phenomena of my time, but to have kept my job and life intact (for the most part).