A few days ago, I was curious and visited World of Warcraft’s website. I had told myself as I clicked through the forums and felt a wave of nostalgia wash over me, “this is wrong… I shouldn’t be doing this.” Viewing patch notes, looking at updates, and then suddenly clicking on the “Account” link; I was suddenly editing my credit card information to re-activate my World of Warcraft subscription. How the heck did that happen? One minute I’m scoffing at the idea of going back to a game that I’ve played since I was 15 and then I’m re-activating my account and anticipating blasting fireballs at Murlocs and soaring through Azeroth on my 50+ different flying mounts. Why in Azeroth do I keep going back to a game that sucked up most of my teenage childhood and then made me nerd rage in my adult years?
Everyone knows how addicting World of Warcraft can be.
When I first started playing World of Warcraft, I was 15 years old and I had just received a new PC and the game for Christmas in 2004. My dad grudgingly bought the game for me along with a 60 day game card even though he knew of my addiction to video games. The game was fairly small back then and the player base was certainly not as big as it is now. I created my first character on the Alliance (biggest mistake of my life…) on the PvE server Malygos. I was completely smitten with my gorgeous Night Elf Warrior named “Ryonia” with lavendar braids. I started my journey in Teldrassil and was in awe with the beautiful graphics and how easy it was to navigate and play my class. I spent hours and hours playing my Warrior. I pushed aside my homework, my teenage social life, family gatherings, and sleep so I could level Ryonia as quickly as possible. With the introduction of battlegrounds, Alliance and Horde on my server were pitted against each other in different scenarios with different objectives. I became obsessed with slaughtering my Horde enemies and winning battlegrounds. However, I later on discovered that the Alliance on my server were just not good at working as a team. It was then that I came to the realization that I wanted to change factions. I created numerous classes and races on the Horde side including an undead Priest, a troll Shaman, and a tauren Druid. I played my Shaman for a good amount of time because enhancement Shamans were absolutely godly in PvP back then. I stopped leveling and kept my Shaman in the 30s PvP bracket and realized that was my calling. When the first expansion, The Burning Crusade, was released in 2007; I decided I wanted to create a new character. The Burning Crusade introduced new races on both the Alliance and Horde side. I took advantage of the new content and made my new Blood Elf Mage. At this point, I had long since changed to several servers and completed most end-game content with guilds. With the creation of my Mage, I fell in love with the game play and ever since then, my main character has been that same Mage. With the release of the newest expansion, Mists of Pandaria, I race-changed to a Pandaren because, well, they’re adorable! Their racial perks are pretty sweet too.
Saiyuna, the Pandaren (formerly Blood Elf) Fire Mage established in 2007.
There were a lot of negatives that came along with my initial introduction to the addicting video game but I was a teenager who loved video games and fell in love with this new groud-breaking MMO. Besides the negatives, I did gain plenty of positives. I met life-long friends, learned how to manage my time, and the game got me closer to what I wanted to do for a living. Every time I re-activate my World of Warcraft account, I remember my positive experiences and now that I’m an adult; I’ve gotten a lot better at negating most of the negative things that come with being an avid MMO player.
I guess there are numerous reasons I keep going back to the ever popular massive multi-player role-playing video game. It doesn’t change much. Now don’t get me wrong, World of Warcraft has undergone plenty of game changing aspects since it’s initial release in 2004. World of Warcraft has had four expansions that has added new areas, quests, armor, mounts, and even new races and classes. Developers have changed class abilities, talents, and other aspects of game play with many more changes to be implemented in the future. The game has changed dramatically over the years but World of Warcraft continues to be the most popular MMORPG in the world even when some players cancel their subscriptions. Even when the game changes, there are still some things that do not change for long time WoW players. Maybe it’s the graphics that have been outdated for years, or maybe it’s the player friendly user-interface, or collecting pets and mounts. Whatever the reason is, people (including me) just keep coming back.
Why do YOU keep coming back to World of Warcraft? Share your story and your experiences with me.