I used to be addicted to World of Warcraft molten shamanstone. Well, at least I used to think that this was the case before I quit playing. True story: it was a part of my life for six years, from 2005 until 2011 before I finally got up the courage to leave. During those six years, I sunk around 10 thousand hours into WoW and had as many as 20 hours per day playing (for more on my WoW experience have a read of my first blog post “From Wow-to-Riot: Why Did it Take So Long?”).
1. The Game and its Longevity
This was back in the days when WoW had a subscription price of $15 and was not free to download. A subscription paid for you to play the game whenever you wanted to. I spent roughly one hundred dollars a year on this game, but remember, this was before WoW’s sub price had been reduced to $9.99 per month plus tax for all of the regions around the world. If you played in Europe or North America, then you knew all about monthly sub prices. In Western Europe, it was €7.99 and in the US it was $9.99 at this time. I think that is about $10 per month for us Brits so that is about £5 ish but anyway, I’m getting sidetracked here…
WoW passed away in 2011 but did not go down without fighting long and hard to the last breath. It will be remembered as one of the video game industry’s greatest success stories. So many people played this game…It was estimated to have roughly 12 million subscribers in 2011 when it finally closed its doors and retired to the place where every video game goes after its life has ended…
2. The Game: A Viral Phenomenon
If you watched any television in the last five years, chances are that you have come across World of Warcraft on at least one programme. Remember the Golden Girls episode when Dorothy and Blanche play WoW together? Go back and watch it now, because I can guarantee you will get a little misty-eyed about its greatness. WoW had its own TV series before it stopped being a game.
3. The Characters: The Cast
I knew each of these characters from Zarhym to Lightning Bolt Girl…You might not think that this list is going to be long but actually it’s quite extensive. I had a whole list of characters I would dream about. It was like I had my own private fantasy-world with different ‘faction wars’ being waged between the Horde and the Alliance before we finally united against the evil of the Burning Legion to save Azeroth from its demons.
4. Playing with Friends
I know that this is not a big selling point for people nowadays but back in 2005, playing WoW with other people was different. You weren’t just playing a game, you were part of something community that was much bigger than any other reality you could experience.
5. Player vs Player vs Player vs Player etc…
I played WoW for six years and I think that it was only the last year of playing that I actually made two lifelong friends in game. Before then, I mostly had guild friends and a selected few people on my friends list that were not part of guild. After all, you didn’t want to clutter your friends list with the riff raff, right?
6. The Quests: The Replay Value
The more quests that you completed, the more rep (or reputation) points you got for your faction as well as spell books for your character/s. Every quest line gave you new spells and abilities to use in combat. Quests were the bread and butter of World of Warcraft, they made the game what it was and are a big part of its longevity. When you knew what to do, a quest could be completed in 5 minutes but if you didn’t know where to go or how to complete it then it could last an hour or longer.
7. It was on Every Console
When I first started playing WoW, it was only available through personal computers and now we can play on mobile phones! WoW was also available on console systems like Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and even Nintendo DS! Many games have been created as games for specific consoles before being ported over onto PC systems with varying degrees of success.
Summary:
World of Warcraft was a phenomenon in the video gaming world and it will go down as one of the greats. It is a game that I am proud to have been part of and proud of all my friends who played a part in helping me become who I was today. I suggest everyone give the game a try or even download the client, if you have never played it before. If you try WoW and then quit, ok, whatever but at least give it a try.
That’s all folks…
