World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game created by the American company Blizzard Entertainment? and released on November 14, 2004.¹³ In the game, thousands or even millions of players may participate online together in gaming worlds that persist indefinitely, with characters that are stored and reactivated whenever a player rejoins.¹³ It forms part of the Warcraft franchise, which also includes the real-time strategy titles Warcraft: Orcs & Humans, Warcraft 2: Tides of Darkness, and Warcraft 3: Reign of Chaos.¹³

The game is set in the fictional world of Azeroth, where players create avatar-style characters and explore a sprawling universe while interacting with nonplayer characters and other real players.¹³ Quests, battles, and missions are completed alone or in guilds, and rewards for success include gold, weapons, and valuable items used to improve one’s character.¹³ Characters advance by killing creatures to earn experience; once enough experience is acquired, the character gains a level, increasing its powers.¹³ WoW offers a rich class system, allowing players to take on fantasy-related classes such as druids, priests, rogues, and paladins.¹³

The game is organized around two opposing factions, the Alliance and the Horde, each composed of various races with their own cultures and histories.¹³ Its attention to humor, team play, and a shallow learning curve attracted millions of casual gamers who had never before tried an MMORPG.¹³ Guilds often achieve notoriety for their ability to finish certain quests or defeat specific monsters quickly, establishing a hierarchy among players.¹³ Players have contributed to the WoW community by creating artwork inspired by the game, writing fan fiction, and spending countless hours inhabiting its virtual world, an investment some observers view as an addiction.¹³ As of a January 2014 Blizzard tally, more than 500 million characters had lived on the game’s accounts, with a faction breakdown of 52 percent Alliance, 47 percent Horde, and 1 percent neutral.¹²

Lineage

WoW drew on a lineage of tabletop and online fantasy games. According to players and designers, Dungeons & Dragons, Ultima Online, and EverQuest all influenced the game, with J. R. R. Tolkien providing the foundation for its fantasy.²⁴ The Warcraft universe itself has long been noted for such borrowings; the Old Gods of Azeroth, for instance, take inspiration from the Titans of Greek mythology.²² Ultima Online, launched in 1997 and set in the world of the Ultima open-world fantasy series that began in 1981, was one of the earliest and most popular MMORPGs and a direct antecedent of the genre WoW would come to dominate.¹

World of Warcraft Cinematic TrailerWorld of Warcraft

Launch and growth

World of Warcraft broke day-one sales records in North America, becoming the region’s most successful PC game launch and fastest-growing MMORPG.⁶ During its first 24 hours of availability it sold through over 240,000 copies in North America, and by early February 2005 had sold more than 600,000 copies in the region, shattering previous concurrency records with over 200,000 simultaneous players during the 2004 holiday season.⁶ It was released commercially in Korea on January 18, 2005, reaching a peak concurrency of more than 100,000 players within a day.⁶ The European launch followed on February 11, 2005, at a suggested retail price of 44.99 euros, or 29.99 pounds in the United Kingdom, and included a free one-month subscription.⁶

The European debut set records of its own, with beta registrations topping 400,000 subscribers and retail pre-orders exceeding 110,000 units before launch.⁶ WoW was described as the first non-licensed MMORPG in Europe to have a dedicated local team offering 24-hour support seven days a week, with French-, German-, and English-speaking game masters.⁶ Blizzard’s development studio was located in Irvine, California, working hand-in-hand with an on-the-spot technical team maintaining the pan-European servers based in Paris and Frankfurt.⁶ A limited collector’s edition shipped alongside the standard release, bundling the game on CD-ROM and DVD, a behind-the-scenes DVD, a cloth map of the game world, a soundtrack CD, an art book, and a game manual signed by the development team.⁶ Mike Morhaime, president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, welcomed European players into “the World of Warcraft” at the launch.⁶

The subscriber base continued to climb after launch. In October 2010, around the release of the Cataclysm era, the game reached 12 million subscribers.⁷ By the end of September 2013, Blizzard counted 7.6 million active subscribers, and in January 2014 it announced that players had created more than 100 million lifetime accounts across 244 countries since the game’s debut.¹² That figure, which includes trial accounts, was accompanied by measures of daily activity in Azeroth: 3.6 million pet battles, 900,000 player-versus-environment instances, 600,000 player-versus-player battles, and 2.8 million trades in the game’s Auction House every day.¹²

Expansions

World of Warcraft has been extended by a long series of retail expansion packs, each adding new content and features.¹⁷ The first, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, was released January 16, 2007.¹⁷ It was followed by Wrath of the Lich King on November 13, 2008, Cataclysm on December 7, 2010, Mists of Pandaria on September 25, 2012, and Warlords of Draenor on November 13, 2014.¹⁷ Later expansions include Legion, Battle for Azeroth, Shadowlands, and Dragonflight, the last of which brought players to the Dragon Isles.¹⁵ Blizzard initially announced plans to release expansions once per year, but subsequent expansions instead arrived roughly every two years.¹⁷

The most recent expansion, World of Warcraft: Midnight, opened the second chapter of the Worldsoul Saga, returning players to the elven kingdom of Quel’Thalas as the character Xal’atath’s invasion of Azeroth begins.¹⁹ It introduced player housing, giving every player a customizable home with no lottery, cost, or upkeep, alongside new and reimagined zones including a redesigned Silvermoon City, Eversong Woods, Zul’Aman, Harandar, and the Void-shaped world of Voidstorm.¹⁹ Marketed as “A Grand New Adventure 20 Years in the Making,” Midnight added eight dungeons, nine bosses across three new raids, and eleven Delves, along with a Devourer specialization for the Demon Hunter class that draws on Void energy in place of fel.¹⁹

Legacy and classic versions

WoW’s success reshaped online gaming and popular culture, influencing subsequent MMORPGs and inspiring extensive fan artwork and fan fiction.¹³ Its popularity led to a cinematic adaptation, Warcraft (2016), which expanded upon the mythology of Azeroth.¹³ The game also gave rise to a new employment category in China known as the “gold farmer,” in which players accumulate in-game resources to sell online.¹³ Contemporary retrospectives continue to rank WoW among the most influential MMORPGs of all time, placing it alongside earlier standard-bearers such as Ultima Online and EverQuest.¹

In 2019, Blizzard launched WoW Classic, a re-release of the game in its original form, which went live worldwide on August 27 across the continents of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms.³ Character creation opened on August 13, and players with an active subscription could create up to three characters per account.³ Blizzard preceded the launch with a small-scale closed beta beginning May 15, 2019, followed by a series of stress tests running from May through July to push its servers and technology to their limits.³ The Classic line has since grown to include rereleases of later expansions such as The Burning Crusade Classic, Wrath of the Lich King Classic, and Mists of Pandaria Classic, along with hardcore realms where a character’s death is permanent.¹⁴¹⁶