20 years of World of Warcraft – It’s more than just a game

MeinMMO-Demon looks back on 20 years of World of Warcraft and explains what makes the game so good – and that is often the people you play it with.

I still remember my beginnings in World of Warcraft. Back after school, I was given a “guest pass” to dive into this new Blizzard game. I’d like to say it was love at first sight – but it wasn’t.

My very first character was an undead warlock and I didn’t understand anything about the game at the time. My mana was constantly empty, something was attacking me from all sides and it was all somehow too big and unstructured for me. I didn’t understand a lot of things, I killed some scarlet mobs for a few hours and my playing partner ran away from me without me being able to read anything in peace.

When I turned off the game, I was frustrated at the time because the experience just wasn’t good. I was overwhelmed.

But something sparked, some deeper fascination that told me: Deal with it more.

So I borrowed the World of Warcraft manual (games still had that kind of thing back then!) and leafed through it at my leisure instead of studying for Latin class.
Amo, amas, amat – crowd control, mobs, loot.
Kind of like that.

World of Warcraft has produced many heartbreaking stories with real people:

It was only my second character, a human magician on a role-playing realm, that completely captivated me. I immediately liked the vibe of an RP realm and even though my first steps in RP were absolutely terrible (like, let’s be honest, all RP beginners are), I quickly found a guild that taught me the whole thing.

I also made my fair share of noob mistakes:

I changed my main character once and have been playing a shadow priestess for almost 15 years now and that is my great love in WoW, and hardly anything will dissuade me from it – even if Blizzard sometimes seems to try energetically.

20 years that have shaped people

World of Warcraft is now celebrating its 20th birthday – and I’m celebrating with it.

When you play a game for almost two decades, it’s clear that it has a greater impact on your life. A large part of my circle of friends, with whom I now play pen & paper or we meet regularly, I met through World of Warcraft – some of them are still in a shared guild today.

It seems difficult to imagine today, but 20 years ago you could hear everywhere that the people in the game weren’t “real” friends. You should live “in the real world” and every minute in the game would be a missed opportunity to make “true friendships”.

As a person who doesn’t like attending celebrations and stays away from any activity that sooner or later ends in “getting uncontrollably drunk,” World of Warcraft was my refuge.

Every now and then I played other MMORPGs, some shorter and others longer. I particularly remember Star Wars: The Old Republic and my beloved WildStar. But after a few years, I had run out of steam with Star Wars and we don’t even want to talk about the end of WildStar.

Things are different for me with World of Warcraft. When I come back after a break of a few weeks or months, it’s still the familiar game with the catchy gameplay. Every now and then there are innovations and even though I like to get annoyed that my Shadow Priestess’ playing style is somehow becoming more and more strange, the feeling of “Ah, I just feel comfortable here” remains.

And I know I’m not alone in this. World of Warcraft has shaped many other lives – some for the better, some for the worse. Every now and then I see bitter people who mourn the state of the game from 10 or 15 years ago and have to make it known everywhere and at every opportunity.

People often say that “the community has changed” – because it is so toxic and selfish. Except you, of course. Reading this is tiring, exhausting and a bit frustrating. Far too often it seems to be the expectation that you have the right to have everyone else take you into consideration. The fact that this expectation is far too often the source of toxicity is skillfully ignored.

Luckily, the group in my personal circle is larger and is quite happy with World of Warcraft – even after 20 years. A (more or less) harmonious guild, a solid raid group and a lot of people who have grown close to my heart, who have become real friends, who I visited at their wedding and who I know: World of Warcraft has you too Life is enriched, even if “just” through the social bonds that have been created here.

Because of all this time, many of my contacts in World of Warcraft now feel like family to me. Probably even more than that. I spent more time with many of my teammates than with any distant relatives – and with some probably more than with close relatives. People I trust, with whom you can argue and discuss from time to time, but where you always get together. And where sometimes someone plays with click-to-move.

Could this have happened in any other MMORPG? Allegedly. But that’s not it. World of Warcraft was exactly the game many of us needed at the right time, creating social bonds that will last a lifetime.

A game that isn’t perfect

Despite all the love I have for World of Warcraft – and I have a lot of it – it really isn’t perfect.

I still find it absurd that a game that I like to associate with “home” still doesn’t have a housing system in which our characters have their own home, even after 20 years. A wish of the community that has been coming up for 20 years and has been put off again and again.

While each patch brings a lot of new content, it almost always introduces new bugs – sometimes even really bad ones that cause people to lose everything in their guild.

Even with some expansions, World of Warcraft doesn’t hit the right nerve. Shadowlands, even if individual aspects were good, was not a good expansion as a whole and may symbolize the low point of World of Warcraft. This caused even the most persistent fans to take a break from the game.

But that’s not a bad thing, at least not in the long term. WoW is currently on a pretty good path again and the World Souls saga, at least so far, gives the impression that it can meet the expectations of the fans. And even if that’s not the case, “Midnight” and “The Last Titan” will at least have enough for me to at least satisfy my story hunger.

World of Warcraft is not perfect. But it is a piece of home. A piece of stability. Something that has always been with me in my life and hopefully will be for many years to come. Here’s to 20 more years. At least.