By: Will Bedwell
The television commercials for World of Warcraft (WoW) began airing in late 2007, featuring such celebrities as Mr. T, William Shatner, and Ozzy Osbourne, bringing the question to the non-gamers’ minds: What is World of Warcraft? I, in search for the truth behind this addictive phenomena, have spent three months in the late night vast expanses of the cult of WoW. Thankfully, my two guides generously provided me with wisdom and direction. Preferring to remain anonymous they use these aliases: Heath and Hunter Sullivan.
To answer, World of Warcraft is a ‘massive multiplayer online role-playing game,’ or MMORG, by Blizzard Entertainment. With more than 11.5 million monthly subscriptions, WoW is currently the world’s most-subscribed MMORPG and holds the Guinness World Record for the most popular MMORPG. By 2008, WoW held 63 percent of the massively multiplayer online game subscriptions.
In World of Warcraft, players create and control a character, who fights monsters, completes quests, and interacts in the vast landscape. Initially, players must choose between the opposing factions of Alliance or Horde, a choice which determines everything from their virtual friends to their best men in their virtual weddings.
The virtual world mirrors real life in peculiar ways. As characters evolve, they acquire talents, skills, and define their abilities, such as tailoring, blacksmithing, mining, cooking and first-aid. Players can form or join guilds which facilitate communication, control guild banks, and collect member dues.
Guilds form the basis of all Friday night WoW parties, one of which I attended was the longest night of my life. That Friday at dusk, members began to gather in person with custom laptop bags: the hippy member with a burgundy and tan laptop bag swinging below this WoW t-shirt, next to his indie skinny jeans, another in a toga with a monitor, processer, and keyboard all held in a large cardboard box adorned with character drawings. The two leaders arrived with matching jet-black bags, sat down, and pronounced, “It’s time.”
After 11 hours of gameplay, four and a half cases of Mountain Dew Gamefuel (the preferred drink of Warcrafters), and 13 bags of chips, we adjourned for breakfast at local Waffle House.
Has the near fanatical habits of these gamers resulted in the destruction of many fruitful youths and countless marriages? Whether or not this is true, the truth to be noticed is the game does mirror real life. One example is known as the ‘Corrupted Blood Plague,’ a virtual epidemic of unbelievable proportions. During quests, multiple players were affected by a spell called Corrupted Blood that periodically sapped players’ lives. The disease affects anyone in close proximity to an infected character. Within hours of the first signs of the disease, entire cities in the World of Warcraft universe were decimated. Luckily, programmers were able to subdue the virus and fix the game. This plague so closely resembles the outbreaks of real world epidemics that public health researchers are studying MMORPGs to model human behavior during such outbreaks.
In addition, WoW provides life skills such as negotiation techniques, teamwork, and medieval black magic fighting styles. Whether WoW is worth long sleepless weekends, horrible diets, and social isolation is up to the individual’s discretion.
Some tips for entering this cult are purchasing a level 80 character off ebay, stocking up on gamer t-shirts, and dumping your current girlfriend.
(The author wishes the reader note that he does not personally play WoW and is in fact an extremely cool, normal, single guy.)
