MeinMMO-Dämon looks back on 20 years of World of Warcraft and explains what makes the game so great – and often that’s the people you play with.
I still remember my beginnings in World of Warcraft. Back then, after school, I was given a “guest pass” to dive into this new Blizzard game. I would love to say it was love at first sight – but it wasn’t.
My very first character was an undead warlock and I understood nothing about the game back then. My mana was always empty, I was being attacked from all sides, and everything felt too big and unstructured. I didn’t understand a lot, killed scarlet mobs for a few hours, and my gaming partner kept running off without letting me read anything in peace.
When I turned off the game, I was frustrated because the experience just hadn’t been good. I was overwhelmed.
But somehow a spark ignited, some deeper fascination that told me: Engage with it more.
So, I borrowed the manual for World of Warcraft (back then, games still had those!) and quietly flipped through it instead of studying for Latin class.
Amo, amas, amat – crowd control, mobs, loot.
Something like that.
World of Warcraft has produced many heartbreaking stories with real people:
Only my second character, a human mage on a role-playing realm, completely captivated me. I instantly liked the vibe of an RP realm, and even though my first attempts at RP were absolutely terrible (let’s be honest, as with all RP beginners), I quickly found a guild that taught me the ropes.
In the process, I also made a lot of noob mistakes:
- I didn’t allocate any talent points until level 35. Why? Because I like big rewards. My thought was: If I level up to 60 and only then allocate talent points, I would be much, much stronger all at once than if I get a little better with each level. When the mobs kept killing me in Arathi Highlands, I had to reluctantly abandon that plan.
- I didn’t buy the Polymorph spell (i.e., “sheeping”) from the teacher for a long time. I thought that was ridiculous. I can turn someone into a sheep – and they heal while doing it? How stupid is that? I want my enemies to die, not to be healed. I certainly won’t buy such rubbish.
- I also didn’t really understand dispelling until level 50+. Only when a warrior – with a lot, lot of patience – taught me how to pull the summoners around the corner in the second room of Scholomance with a dispel did I learn what the ability actually does.
At one point, I switched my main character and have been playing a shadow priest for almost 15 years now, and that is my great love in WoW, from which very little will sway me – even if Blizzard sometimes seems to try vigorously.
20 Years Shaped by People
Now, World of Warcraft is celebrating its 20th birthday – and I’m celebrating with it.
If you play a game for nearly 2 decades, it’s clear that it has greater impacts on your life. A large part of my circle of friends, with whom I also play pen & paper today or meet regularly, I met back then through World of Warcraft – some are still in the same guild today.
Today, this may seem hard to imagine, but 20 years ago, you still heard everywhere that people from the game were not “real” friends. One should live “in the real world”, and every minute spent in the game was a missed opportunity to make “real friendships”.
As a person who doesn’t like to be present at celebrations and stayed away from any gatherings that sooner or later ended with “We’re getting drunk without restraint,” World of Warcraft was my refuge.
Every now and then I played other MMORPGs, some shorter and some longer. Particularly Star Wars: The Old Republic or my beloved WildStar remain in my memory. But after a few years, I lost interest in Star Wars and we won’t even talk about the end of WildStar.
It’s different for me with World of Warcraft. When I come back after a few weeks or months off, it’s still the familiar game with the catchy gameplay. There are always new features, and even if I often complain that the playstyle of my shadow priest is somehow getting stranger, the feeling of “Ah, I just feel comfortable here” remains.
And I know I’m not alone in that. World of Warcraft has shaped many other lives – some for the better, some for the worse. Every now and then, I see bitter people lamenting over a state of the game from 10 or 15 years ago and feel the need to announce it everywhere and at every opportunity.
It’s often said that “the community has changed” – because it is so toxic and selfish. Just not oneself, of course. Reading that is exhausting, tiring, and a bit frustrating. Too often, it seems to be the expectation that one has a right to insist that everyone else shows consideration. The fact that this expectation is far too often the very origin of the toxicity is deftly ignored.
Fortunately, the group in my personal environment is larger, and they are quite happy with World of Warcraft – even after 20 years. A (more or less) harmonious guild, a solid raid group, and many individuals who have become dear to me, who have turned into real friends, whom I attended their weddings, and from whom I know: World of Warcraft has enriched their lives too, even if it is “only” through the social bonds that have been forged here.
Through all this time, many contacts in World of Warcraft have now become something of a family for me. Probably even more than that. I have spent more time with many of my fellow players than with any distant relatives – and with some even more than with close relatives. People I trust, with whom you can argue and discuss, but who also patch things up together again. And where sometimes someone plays with click-to-move.
Could this have happened in any other MMORPG? Probably. But it didn’t. World of Warcraft was exactly the game many of us needed at the right time back then and created social bonds that will last a lifetime.
A Game That Is Not Perfect
Despite all my love for it – and I have a lot – World of Warcraft is really not perfect.
That a game I like to associate with “home” doesn’t have a housing system even after 20 years, where our characters can have a home, still seems absurd to me. A community wish that has been around for 20 years and for which we have always been put off.
Every patch brings many new contents, but new bugs are almost always introduced as well – sometimes quite severely, causing people to lose their entire guild possessions.
World of Warcraft also doesn’t hit the right note with some expansions. Shadowlands was, even if some aspects were good, not a good expansion overall and likely symbolizes the low point of World of Warcraft. Even the most enduring fans take breaks from the game.
But that’s not a bad thing, at least not in the long term. Currently, WoW is on a pretty good path again, and the World Soul saga at least so far seems to be able to meet fans’ expectations. And even if that’s not the case, “Midnight” and “The Last Titan” will at least offer enough for me to quell my hunger for story.
World of Warcraft is not perfect. But it is a piece of home. A piece of stability. Something that has always been a part of my life and hopefully will be for many more years to come. Here’s to 20 more years. At least.
