www-theverge-com-jgr9sy.txt (14104B)
1 [placeholde] 2 [logomark] 3 Loading ... 4 [2004_WOW_L] 5 [1]2004 package link 6 [2]The Verge homepage link 7 8 Oh, WoW! 9 10 [credits] 11 [credits] 12 13 World of Warcraft, or WoW, is like the Red Hot Chili Peppers of the massively 14 multiplayer online roleplaying genre: not only [3]is it still going strong but 15 it’s also somehow even bigger than you thought. World of Warcraft’s current 16 numbers aren’t public, but [4]one recent educated guess came in at 7 million 17 paying subscribers, which, at $15 / month, would make the game a billion-dollar 18 earner by itself. Its developer, Blizzard, merged with Activision in 2008, and 19 Microsoft gobbled up both companies in 2022, but World of Warcraft remains a 20 load-bearing spine of the newly formed corporate turducken. The game that 21 redefined gold mining for the 21st century is still a 19th-century gold mine 22 for its landlords. 23 24 It’s also thriving in a subscription ecosystem that it helped to legitimize. 25 World of Warcraft debuted in 2004, during an era when you still had to buy 26 games in boxes from stores. The runaway success of Blizzard’s always-on portal 27 to Azeroth proved that, for the right product, studios could charge a recurring 28 fee beyond the initial cost of the core game’s (at the time) formidable five 29 installation CDs. Here, in the enshittified 2020s, we’ve all grown used to 30 renting our culture by the month, but it was genuinely pathbreaking for World 31 of Warcraft to have 12 million subscribers at its peak in 2010. It didn’t 32 invent the monthly model, which had already gained traction in games like 33 Ultima Online and EverQuest during the dawn of the massively multiplayer online 34 roleplaying game (MMORPG) genre. But World of Warcraft’s success took that 35 recurring charge mainstream and helped popularize the unassailable business 36 logic that having your customers pay you once was worse than having them pay 37 you until they decided or remembered to stop. 38 39 As World of Warcraft turns 20, its enduring financial success arguably pales in 40 comparison to its cultural significance. I asked Angela Washko, a new-media 41 artist who staged several notable performance pieces inside the game world, 42 what she considered World of Warcraft’s biggest contribution, for better or 43 worse. “World of Warcraft expanded the notion of what public space was,” she 44 told me. “I saw the bonds created amongst members of my guilds moving beyond 45 the game space, as players flew across the country to meet each other.” 46 Everyone I talked to about World of Warcraft’s legacy seemed to mention someone 47 or other getting married, either in the game itself or here in reality after 48 meeting in the game. “I think the degree of immersion and dissolving of the 49 boundary between ‘real life’ and ‘fantasy’ within World of Warcraft was really 50 a turning point in computing culture,” Washko said, adding that World of 51 Warcraft “changed the conversation around video games from being something that 52 was ‘an escape from everyday life’ to something that was an extension of one’s 53 social life and happened to take place in a virtual environment.” 54 55 Through her own work, Washko also explored the less savory side of a fantasy 56 game populated by real people; her [5]Council on Gender Sensitivity and 57 Behavioral Awareness in World of Warcraft involved traveling from town to town 58 to educate passersby about feminism and discuss how the game’s dominant culture 59 often created a hostile environment for its marginalized players. I recalled my 60 own playing days, when you could be flying into a town on your hippogryph, 61 minding your own business, only to be deluged by a wave of sewer-grade hate 62 speech on a public text channel. We now take it for granted that online spaces 63 reflect the social dynamics of the people who occupy them, including and 64 especially the problematic ones, but in many ways, World of Warcraft was the 65 kobold in this particular coal mine. 66 67 I first encountered the Warcraft universe like many ’90s computer kids: as a 68 series of top-down, real-time strategy games about economic management and 69 cartoon fantasy violence. The world (lowercase) of Warcraft pitted the 70 seemingly noble Alliance (humans, elves, dwarves, your Tolkienesque usual 71 suspects) against the villainized Horde (orcs, trolls, and other stock 72 monster-humanoids from the trope factory) in a 73 vicious-with-a-touch-of-slapstick conflict spanning three main titles and 74 numerous expansions between 1994 and 2003. If no one was using the phone, you 75 could play against your friends over a modem. The series had a rich and goofy 76 aesthetic of exaggerated proportions, saturated colors, and sarcastic jokes. 77 The units that ran your economy were literal simpering peons, which gave 78 everything a barrel-shaped, vaguely comedic flavor that played well against the 79 high-gloss cinematic interludes that would become Blizzard’s calling card. 80 81 Flush with revenues from its flagship series, Blizzard began exploring how it 82 might expand Warcraft’s popular lore into other types of games. First, a 83 point-and-click game called Warcraft Adventures — a late-1990s attempt at 84 LucasArts-style vintage puzzle-solving in a cel-shaded take on the mythos — was 85 infamously canceled for not meeting Blizzard’s internal release standards. (It 86 also leaked, fully playable, not too long ago. Based on what I’ve seen, 87 Blizzard was right.) Then, starting in 2001, an experimental team of a few 88 dozen people got busy building a whole new engine that would bring Azeroth into 89 3D for the first time and let players meet, socialize, and slaughter skeletons 90 together. It was a primordial example of the modern phenomenon where a 91 corporation exploits its intellectual property by jumping genres and colonizing 92 a new medium. It was also how they’d get me. 93 94 There are plenty of humbling ways to use Gmail’s internal search function, 95 especially if you’ve had your account for roughly as long as World of Warcraft 96 has existed. For one example, consider my collected personal correspondence 97 surrounding World of Warcraft, from the peak years of its involvement in my 98 life. When I queried “Warcraft before:2007/1/1,” it yielded about two dozen 99 results, and together, they trace a blunt biography of that moment: landing a 100 big new job; getting hella dumped; and “spending two months as an antisocial 101 hermit,” as I told a friend in a Gchat in early 2006. (And how about World of 102 Warcraft outliving Gchat?) 103 104 Reviewing the private record, it’s clear World of Warcraft tore through my life 105 like an experienced raiding party of max-level grinders through the Deadmines. 106 Admittedly, it was the kind of nymph-stage young adult life that was 107 conceptually made of crepe paper and easily shredded by a video game. But 108 something about the predictable rhythm of ordering junk food delivery after an 109 exhausting workday, logging onto World of Warcraft, and hopping through some 110 lush environment searching for herbs to make into sellable virtual potions just 111 drew me in, one night after another. 112 113 This aspect of World of Warcraft — its knack for blurring the line between work 114 and fun until the casual observer might not quite recognize it as either — 115 often came up when I spoke to others about their experiences. “One thing WoW 116 proved on a large scale is that people will turn a game into a job at the 117 slightest provocation,” said Cory O’Brien, now a narrative and level designer 118 for games like Redfall and HoloVista. “I remember spending hours and hours and 119 hours grinding for dust so that I could enchant magic items. I remember 120 smelting tin and copper to make bronze.” The elaborate crafting system in World 121 of Warcraft, which often required materials gained through repetitive in-game 122 labor, represented an explosion in the popularity of the now-ubiquitous 123 mechanic where you, as a player, find some stuff and turn it into something 124 else. “I still play all these more recent games like Minecraft, Project 125 Zomboid, and Valheim that are literally just that crafting part,” O’Brien told 126 me. “I spend so much time doing monotonous, repetitive tasks, for free, because 127 somehow we have discovered that that’s fun.” Here, in 2024, it’s hard not to 128 feel a vaguely sinister undertone to all of this as the rising tides of 129 capitalistic overreach gamify the gig economy and hijack the natural human 130 affinity for rewards for their own extractive purposes. But to Washko’s point 131 about an expanded social life, one reason this all worked is that you were 132 often helping out real people, with “legitimate needs” in the scope of the 133 game. You were rarely just doing these things for yourself. 134 135 It wasn’t always exactly a waste, either. Andrew Simone, now a project manager 136 in tech, attributes a large swath of his professional tool kit to skills he 137 gained as a guild leader in World of Warcraft. “I actually stopped playing WoW 138 largely because I felt like I was managing my guild more than my actual 139 professional jobs,” he told me, proceeding to outline a frightening slate of 140 workplace-flavored tasks that included interviewing prospective guild 141 candidates, analyzing performance metrics from the game’s multiuser boss 142 fights, dealing with in-guild sexual harassment, managing schedules across the 143 world to hold meetings about all these things, writing guides for new members, 144 and even “cultivating a kind of guild culture so people enjoyed being there,” 145 which is an incredible thing to say about something that is already ostensibly 146 a game. I know there are countless former guild leaders reading this and 147 nodding along because their current workday docket has nothing on mediating a 148 10-way raiding party dispute over who should get the legendary enchanted 149 pauldrons that just dropped. 150 151 On the other hand: plenty of it was a giant waste. I can’t tell you, back in 152 the day, how many hours I was technically playing World of Warcraft but 153 ignoring the game itself while I sifted through, rearranged, and tested various 154 custom add-ons for its labyrinthine, fintech-ass user interface. World of 155 Warcraft is a persistent software ecosystem with clients and servers and all 156 kinds of data flying between them at all times — it’s just not necessarily 157 exposed to every player in full. An entire cottage industry of user-created UI 158 mods sprung up to assign repeatable actions to shortcut keys, or process 159 advanced analytics from game logs like Simone would do for his guild, or 160 implement an “[6]automatic goblin therapist” who answers any incoming whispers 161 to your character with an in-game implementation of the classic ELIZA protocol. 162 Letting players scratch their own itches for how the game felt to play was also 163 a clever way to limit complaints about the parts of it that weren’t as 164 polished. I never got much into the game’s advanced content myself, but for 165 those who did, pretty much the only way to follow the expected meta of guild 166 raids was to use externally designed UI add-ons. World of Warcraft had the 167 audacity to make players create their own custom cockpits for the game and 168 ended up creating a kind of recursive procrastination where you could even 169 distract yourself from your intended leisure activity. Anyone who’s ever 170 rearranged the app icons on their phone knows just how ubiquitous this kind of 171 time-consuming “metawork” has become. 172 173 Recently, I engaged in a more contemporary form of networked social 174 entertainment — sitting around a big TV with friends, watching four strangers 175 play a game together on Twitch. Just as things were picking up, the stream cut 176 out, and an algorithmically inserted video ad began to play: it was for World 177 of Warcraft. This was a group of mostly game designers, and before I had a 178 chance to say anything, someone else piped in to mention World of Warcraft was 179 20 years old now — and formally impactful enough that working game makers still 180 know its birthday. 181 182 Seeing that ad, writing this piece, none of it was enough to get me to 183 reinstall World of Warcraft. (It’s a good thing the game never stooped to 184 making you feed your in-game pets.) I didn’t really feel I had to replay the 185 game to measure its influence because its influence is everywhere. Every 186 monthly subscription, in-game economy, or digital “third place” where lives 187 bleed into online connections owes it some spiritual recognition as prior art; 188 those things have all become inescapable. Twenty years later, we are all living 189 in the World of Warcraft. 190 191 • [7]Terms of Use 192 • [8]Privacy Notice 193 • [9]Cookie Policy 194 • [10]Do Not Sell My Personal Info 195 • [11]Licensing FAQ 196 • [12]Accessibility 197 • [13]Platform Status 198 • [14]How We Rate and Review Products 199 200 • [15]Contact 201 • [16]Tip Us 202 • [17]Community Guidelines 203 • [18]About 204 • [19]Ethics Statement 205 206 The Verge is a Vox Media network 207 208 • [20]Advertise with us 209 • [21]Jobs @ Vox Media 210 211 ©2024 [22]Vox Media, LLC. 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