IIn 2004, Holly Longdale was a game designer at EverQuest and a champion of a new genre of video games that enabled massively multiplayer role-playing. These online fantasy worlds allow players to pursue quests together rather than alone, adding an engaging new social – and competitive – dimension to the static offline role-playing that Holly’s generation was accustomed to. I did. But whenever possible, Longdale would instead sneak in a few hours of play as EverQuest’s main competitor. That game was World of Warcraft (WoW).

“There were so many moments in WoW that I was jealous of,” she says. Then I saw another player running in the opposite direction. This is the druid who buffed me along the way. That’s when I knew I was going to be in this business for the long term. ” Twenty years later, Longdale is now vice president of WoW and executive producer at developer Blizzard, and one of the millions of people who have accepted the game as a part of their lives.

For two decades, World of Warcraft has been an icon of geek culture, referenced everywhere from South Park to The Big Bang Theory to Family Guy. WoW has become a convenient abbreviation for not only a certain type of gamer, but all sorts of nerds, nerds, and silly subcultures. In the ’00s, Ozzy Osbourne, Chuck Norris, Mr. T and more promoted it along with the infamous Night Elf Mohawk. Henry Cavill, Mila Kunis and Vin Diesel are among the fans, but the 2016 film did not do particularly well, grossing $439 million. In 2021, Blizzard revealed that players have combined for nearly 9 million years of play time.

There were certainly other role-playing games before WoW was released in 2004. However, 3D graphics was still in its infancy. Games like Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest have vast, largely barren worlds that rely on copious amounts of in-game text and clunky rules removed from tabletop games for explanation. did. Then along came Blizzard, the developer company that made a name for itself and a small fortune with great online competitive strategy games like StarCraft and Warcraft III. Unlike its competitors, WoW’s world of Azeroth felt alive, with gorgeous scenery and a huge number of animals and monsters roaming the landscape. An iconic bright yellow exclamation point will float above your non-player character’s head, letting them know that a quest awaits them. And of course, there are other players everywhere, taming beasts, slaying monsters for quests, drinking at inns, mining ore, or just passing by in high-level gear. He would see you doing things like that, and he would get jealous as you struggled to tackle the pack. A despicable Murloc.

What came to define early WoW was the social aspect of the game. The world’s tightly controlled zones encouraged players to encounter other people as they explored Azeroth. Additionally, when creating a character, players had to choose between two factions: the Alliance and the Horde, giving players an instant sense of loyalty. Whether grouping up to take on a dungeon, rallying in a band of 40 to take down a giant raid boss, or storming into an enemy capital as an army of low-level cannon fodder, every player has the power to It seems to have a story about the era of. Azeroth.

I still romanticize my role sneaking into the Alliance capital of Stormwind with a group of low-level undead rogues. I imagined it to be a daring attack, but in the end I had to run for my life. Another time, I asked a better-equipped passerby for help in defeating a particularly formidable monster in the Night Elf Zone of Darkshore, but ended up chatting with the person for hours. . Over the next few months, I messaged that same player.

WOW was a completely simple phenomenon. Blizzard had to more than double its workforce within a year to answer player questions, resolve technical issues, and keep servers running. WoW achieved impressive subscriber numbers, which were further increased by the release of two expansion packs: The Burning Crusade in 2007 and Wrath of the Lich King in 2008.

By 2010, over 12 million players had active monthly subscriptions. Some called themselves WoWaholics. Other players find WoW to be an escape from the constraints of real life, as evidenced by Mads Steen’s moving story recently told in the Netflix documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin. Although Mads suffered from muscular dystropy until his untimely death at the age of 25, he lived a vibrant life in WoW. His parents were completely unaware of his son’s life until online friends sent them long messages from all over Europe telling them how much their son had affected their lives. Five members of Mads’ WoW guild traveled to Norway for his funeral.

But no game can stay in the spotlight forever. WOW went from strength to strength over its first six years, but as the game got older, so did the players. Ion Hazzikostas, then lead game designer, now game director put it down 2014: “If you started this game in 2004, you were a student with a lot of free time, and now you’re a career woman with a family.” Blizzard maintains existing fans while attracting new generations. It was necessary to attract. The 2010 Cataclysm expansion decided to revolutionize the game by overhauling the world with a new design philosophy suited to the faster gameplay that modern gamers were thought to demand. . This change remains controversial.

Today, exploring Azeroth is an almost unrecognizable experience compared to its early days. WoW has had several different eras. The classic WoW era lasted until Wrath of the Lich King (2004-2008). The world overhaul that characterized Cataclysm (2010) to Warlords of Draenor (2014). From Legion (2016) to Shadowlands (2020), the pivot to a long endgame grind that allows players to become infinitely more powerful. and the modern era of WoW, starting with Dragonflight (2022) and continuing through the recently launched expansion The War Within (2024). These “eras” are so distinct that it feels like the game is being reinvented every six years.

Social aspects have also changed over time. As Taliesin – one half of a couple YouTube Duo Taliesin & Evitel – says: 2004 was the era of bulletin boards, forums, and a more “underground” Internet. Today’s internet is much shorter and crisper. It’s TikTok, a social media focused on one or two megasites. What we do socially on the internet has changed, and so has WoW. ”

I often hear complaints that WoW has changed so much that it has lost its original spirit. Players were often confused about design decisions that they felt conflicted with the traditional experience. Unfortunately for Blizzard, these peaked after the launch of Shadowlands in 2020, just as the perfect storm was brewing for the company. Not only has the coronavirus upended game development, but in 2021 Blizzard was hit with a lawsuit brought by the California Department of Fair Employment, accusing it of a “frat boy” workplace culture, including sexual harassment and poor treatment of women. He was accused of encouraging.

The lawsuit had far-reaching implications for the company and the gaming industry as a whole. Several senior executives, including Blizzard President J. Allen Black, fell downand the company agreed to pay millions of dollars to address concerns of sex discrimination and pay inequality. The lawsuit ultimately helped form the first labor union at a major U.S. gaming company.

Especially within WOW, this suit brought about rapid changes in the game. Characters named after accused abusers have been renamed, and many in-game assets deemed inappropriate in light of the accusations have been replaced or tweaked, including sexual depictions of women. Many of the changes were ridiculed by the player base, prompting Blizzard to combat toxicity. Instead of “turning women into fruit bowls””.

Longdale had just joined Blizzard in 2020 when the lawsuit began. “It was heartbreaking,” she says. “I’d only been here a few months, and it was really heartbreaking to see the team so devastated thinking about what the future holds.” The fallout from this already exists about the state of the game. Combined with the discomfort it caused, it could easily have been the beginning of the end for WoW. However, the game was able to hold up due to the commitment of both the WoW team and new Blizzard leadership to come back better. “What I’m really proud of is the huge increase in diversity on our team,” Longdale says. The content we create now has more “voices” and people are creating highly personal content based on their own experiences. ”

Every time WOW has been in danger of losing relevance over the years, it has reinvented itself and managed to come back. And although its cultural influence has diminished over time, the influence it has had is undeniable. Countless fantasy role-playing worlds and characters draw inspiration from WoW’s pantheon of heroes. This game is in the DNA of subsequent generations of video games that have been developed since 2004.

Today’s WoW may not evoke the same sense of wonder that early players felt in 2004 when they roamed the green hills of Stranglethorn or boarded their first ships from Kalimdor to the Eastern Kingdoms. But the fact that it’s still going on and changing is a testament to the great foundation we laid 20 years ago. And what about the future of WoW? “My goal, and the team’s goal, is that WoW is more than just a game,” Longdale says. “It’s essentially part of your lifestyle. It could be for your friends, or it could be for parents playing with their children. It’s a fascinating fantasy world that connects you with people. ”