Let's Talk About WoW

Last week, the new expansion for World of Warcraft was released, titled Warlords of Draenor, which not only added new dungeons, a new area, and raised the level cap to 100, but also gave the game a graphical upgrade, specifically for the original races, giving them upgraded character models.

I have been playing WoW for years now off and on, and, as you well know, it is my second favorite game of all time behind the original Legend of Zelda. So why is World of Warcraft so good and how can it stay relevant 10 years after its initial launch? That seems like a good discussion topic, so let's talk about WoW shall we?

To be clear: this is not a review of Warlords of Draenor or anything like that. This is just me, on my blog, talking about how I got involved in this game and what it means to me. Also why it is still the gold standard for MMORPGs.

World of Warcraft launched on November 23rd, 2004 here in North America and Australia (yeah, as in we are coming up on the 10th anniversary). I did not have a capable PC at the time, plus everyone I knew who was playing it was getting addicted to it and, much like actual drugs, I just said "No". I managed to avoid the game until January 15th, 2007. I was working at a GameStop at that point and we were having a midnight launch for the first expansion, The Burning Crusade. We had customers coming up dressed in their best cosplay attire and choosing their sides, Horde or Alliance, and we had pins depicting the various classes out for sale. I, up to that point, had not seen a community get behind a game like that.

I was intrigued (I easily succumb to mob mentality), so I asked my store manager about the game, since he played. He was gushing about it, saying how easy it was to pick up and play and how I'd get hooked and love it. So I walked out of my store with a Horde pin, a Warrior pin, and a copy of vanilla World of Warcraft, determined to give it a fair shot and to see what the hype was all about.

After the lengthy installation, (it was 4 discs back then) and the constant patches and updates, I was ready to play. To reiterate, I didn't have a capable PC, so I installed the game to my old laptop since I used that the most. My first character in WoW was an Orc Warrior (don't ask me his name cause I have long since forgotten), and my initial experience was real shitty. Not because of the game, but because of said shitty laptop. It was still playable if I turned down all the settings, but the frame rate was crappy and the game looked like crap to me, again because of the laptop, not the game.

So my first zone I got to interact with was the starting area for the Orcs, Durotar, a wasteland with the same color scheme as the surface of Mars. I was tasked with killing boars, humans, harpys and so on. Then I got to the capital city of Orgrimmar, and was absolutely floored. The city was a metropolis, the music kicked in and added to this epic fantasy setting and I was sold. I now understood why people got so excited about this.

Also worth noting, I had not played an RPG of this scale before, especially on a PC. I was used to controllers and a smaller amount of buttons to hit, now I have a mouse and full keyboard literally at my fingertips. When I was looking at the controls, I had that same look in my eyes that a grandparent gets when they get their first iPhone and are told to "go nuts". I was able to figure things out pretty quickly, however. I just kept it simple: WASD for movement, B for backpack, M for map, and the number keys for my different spells/abilities. I figured Warrior would be a good place to start since I didn't have to worry about mana, and focus more on hitting things in the goddamn face! To this day, it is my preferred class, though I have dabbled with the Mage class and am now really enjoying the Paladin class.

After a while I stopped playing and cancelled my account. Back then, I was making minimum wage and the thought of shilling $15 a month on top of my regular spending and bills was just too much for me. I figured that was it, I thought the game would just sort of die out and we would all move on.

A few months later I got the itch again, the addict looking for his next hit. I signed up again, and this began a really bad habit for me.

Since I had been away from the game for so long, I forgot who my character was and what I was doing. I was in my mid-to-high teens as far as levels went, so I just deleted my character, started anew ("re-rolled" as it were. See? You learned a new term, kids) and went again. This is my bad habit, to this day. I get way into the game, play it for hours a day for over a month, then stop playing for a bit, come back, forget what I was doing, restart, lather, rinse, repeat.

Then the next expansion came: Wrath of the Lich King, I was now on the other side of the midnight launch, having a different job and being an avid WoW player. Level cap was raised, a new land (Northrend) opens up, and I could play as a new class, the awesome sounding Death Knight.

So I kept at it, determined to see a character hit any level cap (I never did get to one, life happens sometimes, you know?). The expansion did bring me back into WoW harder and I knew this game was something special.

Arthas (the aforementioned Lich King) is a really interesting character and that led me to purchase my first World of Warcraft novel: Arthas: Rise of the Lich King, detailing how a young and powerful Paladin could be corrupted and become this all-powerful evil entity. I had officially become a WoW nerd. Side Note: My next WoW novel purchase will be the book about Thrall, the former Horde warchief, since he is also a very interesting character in the lore, and because I am For The Horde.

I was still playing the game off and on at this point but I would never cancel my account, knowing I would always come back. There was just so much to do and so many reasons to explore the world of Azeroth that I knew I had to have it on standby.

Then we got the big expansion, a literal world-shattering expansion: Cataclysm. The world as we knew it was going to change, zones were getting changed/destroyed, and we were introduces to new races: The Goblins and the Worgen. By this point, I am fully invested. I am rolling characters, having my main, my alts, I'm running dungeons, I am reading patch notes and watching preview videos to see what is changing, I am all in.

The new world is just as fun to explore and it was amazing seeing all the little touches and changes each zone went though. Seeing The Barrens split into North and South was a sight to behold and it was like a whole new game.

Also by this point, I was buying the collector's edition of the expansions, which would get me the art books, the soundtracks (I consider WoW to have some of the best music in gaming), behind the scenes DVDs and in game content like mounts and pets.

Next up was Mists of Pandaria and included pet battles, a new land (Pandaria), a new class (Monk), another level cap raise, and a new race (Pandaren) that can actually choose to go either Alliance or Horde. While many people considered the pet battles to be basically adding Pokèmon to WoW, I thought it was a nice touch and now gives me something to do with all these pets I have accumulated over the years.

Now with the new expansion out, Warlords of Draenor, adding all that it added, subscribers are back over 10 million and the game is just as hot now as it has ever been.

But how? How can a game survive 10 years when many other MMOs have either shut down or gone exclusively Free-To-Play?

Because WoW set the bar in 2004 and when other games have come out with new innovations, they have taken what works for them, and implemented it in a better way in WoW. Also, World of Warcraft is easy enough for the newcomer to get into and have a good time while also having enough depth and content to keep the hardcore players coming back.

I have played WAY more MMOs then I care to mention in my life. Whether it's Warhammer Online, Lord of the Rings Online, Wildstar, EVE, Conan, City of Heroes/Villains, DC Universe, Defiance, Matrix Online (ugh), Star Wars: Galaxies, Star Wars: The Old Republic, I could go on, they all are compared to the measuring stick that is World of Warcraft.

Blizzard Entertainment makes fantastic products with amazing production value. If they see something that can be tweaked to make the gaming experience better, they do it. This is their baby and they do the impossible: they keep gamers interested and entertained. If I wrote about all the innovations World of Warcraft has/did, I would be here the rest of my life.

The sky is the limit for the future of WoW, now that characters are getting a graphics update, WoW may have just got a second wind, and that's a big thing for a game this massive. Also, a bit of a milestone for me, I got my Pandarin (Horde) Warrior over level 60 and am doing quests in the Outlands, the land that was introduced in The Burning Crusade, so I am making progress.

Happy 10th Anniversary World of Warcraft and thank you for so many memories, an amazing game, and hopefully to many more years of right clicking.

Also...

Lok'Tar Ogar!
Victory or Death!