The World Before and After 'World of Warcraft'

The everyday routine of contemporary life presents a paradox of its own. In the last century, we have been given many useful things that were supposed to improve our quality of life and make our lives easier. However, the technological, scientific, industrial, and even economic progress did not bring us what we thought it would - happiness. It took humanity many centuries to get a clue that happiness was simply a philosophical matter, not a thing attainable by social status or an active sex life. (But then, who needs happiness when you have an active sex life? And we are talking about sex with another person, not just self gratification. So that rules out about 85% of our readership.)

I am sometimes made painfully aware of the fact I could not bear to live without electric current and hot water. Then again, a day away from my computer means agony for me: my entire mind is focused on plunging into the security of my virtual life, and when I finally manage to assume my virtual identity again, I become whole. I am also aware of the fact the majority of the people out there do not have electricity and hot water, let alone a computer, but that doesn't make me any less selfish or dependant upon my toys.

One hundred years ago we did not have cell phones, computers or mass transit systems. There was also no television, and the sources of possible entertainment were very few. Considering we are now surrounded by several sources of entertainment at the same time, which makes us highly dependant upon the devices and gadgets we cannot even name, let alone explain, it comes as a bit of surprise our lives are so incredibly dull. Boredom is inevitable at one stage of your life - you have seen, tasted, felt and experienced everything there was to experience and are now faced with the choice of doing it all over again or simply dying of boredom. Even if you're busy and have a lot of interests that you pursue like my precious self, the general vague feeling of boredom and utter saturation with everything that surrounds you sometimes becomes almost unbearable.

This is where the virtual world once again comes to the rescue. It first allowed us to share information and communicate much faster with each other, and then it promised us a new, virtual identity that could come in handy when we are exhausted by the repetitiveness and sometimes tiresome functionality and practicality of the modern world. We realized we could bear to be alone only if we could have somebody to keep us company in the process. This is only one of the reasons for the 'sudden' expansion and popularity of online games, but I guess, in my opinion, it is the most important.

It was several years ago that a new genre emerged from the primordial chaos of online gaming, and what is now known as MMORPG - the massively multiplayer online role-playing game - soon proved to be very appealing to online gamers of all ages and both sexes. This phenomenon marked the end of the popular myth that said only heterosexual Caucasian teenage males played video games. SOE's EverQuest, a project launched in 1999, was indeed responsible for the mini-revolution on this field. It did not only attract a huge number of players, but it also created a hype for this type of game, which resulted in the rise of sales and popularity of all similar titles, which had a deep impact on the gaming market. It seems that today, when we're already taken a step into the future, we are eager more than ever to plunge ourselves into the fantasy world, living an adventurous life under a new, virtual identity, meeting with many wondrous races, going on quests that could make our living seem worthwhile in a world free from our limited existence and imagination.

The need to indulge in a virtual life that takes place in a fantasy universe created by a highly renowned team or taken from a specific book is by no means new or revolutionary. The technological advancement allowed us to neglect the practice of fantasy role-play and concentrate on visually enticing single player RPGs, which were in their turn replaced by immersive multiplayer RPGs that rekindled the players' main obsession about role-playing games: playing in parties. Enjoying your new virtual life with your own virtual identity was far more fun if you shared it with your online friends and not playing solely on your own. Of course, this kind of gaming had its upsides and downsides, so while you could now share this unique experience with friends, organizing in groups and fulfilling quests together, the entire experience was often marred with technical problems (Not to mention the horde of 14 year old punks who like to grief people for fun -Ed). This made MMORPG titles both loved and hated by the hardcore fans who have developed a rather nasty addiction to them.

The old school example of a popular MMORPG was definitely EverQuest, which managed to survive through various incarnations and expansion packs for six years, surviving long enough to get a sequel last year. However, EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot and the likes have been eclipsed recently by one massive and massively successful project. While several titles may yet compete for the title, it seems that the smart bets should be put on Blizzard's World of Warcraft, which finally confirmed that games, which properly implement various social and economical aspects of real life into a compelling and familiar fantasy universe, indeed represent the future of gaming.

WoW does not owe its success solely to its nice package (unlike myself -Ed) and the fact it's been chosen for one of the best games for the past year by many renowned gaming publications. Despite some technical issues and great ambitiousness with which the whole project was conceived, it still managed to stay in the saddle, never losing any of its charm. A live team was designed to take care of eventual problems, making sure the title gets fresh content on monthly basis (which is not yet panning out as they had promised -Ed), and the game also featured a language change option into French, German, Japanese and Korean, which was a nice and clever addition as the Korean gaming community showed great interest for this extremely popular MMORPG. Just as a side note, the game was recently launched in Taiwan as well.

This title, released at the end of November 2004, sold in over 240,000 copies during the first 24 hours of its release, and it managed to sell more than 600,000 units during the holiday season in North America, Australia, and New Zealand. Only two weeks after its European release, it scored more than 400,000 registered players, and during the holidays in the US and Canada the number of concurrent players reached 200,000, which forced Blizzard to announce that it was increasing the number of servers as they were experiencing serious technical problems. The great interest of the players shown during the last holiday season was one of the main causes for serious stability issues that this game experienced. The fact that 20 of the 88 servers were down initially disappointed, and ultimately angered the fans who did not care to listen to Blizzard's explanations about their upgrading the server system. The whole thing culminated when Blizzard's efforts to stabilize the situation only resulted in bigger problems. Players were sometimes kicked off servers and kept waiting for hours in order to login and play the game, so Blizzard had no other option but to shut all the servers down in order to see what could be done.

This is 2Lions' character. He's an addict.

Michael Jackson is out? Damn!