You may have a few reasons why you play video games. They could be simple, like wanting to kill 20 minutes before dinner, or something complex, like wanting the feeling of accomplishment to fill the void where your father’s love should have been. For many players of World of Warcraft, the incredibly-successful Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) that's celebrating its 10-year anniversary this week, the game's members often become their real-life friends—and sometimes more than that.
When Blizzard introduced World of Warcraft in 2004, they had a loyal fanbase from three franchises (Starcraft, Diablo, and Warcraft), but MMORPGs were still far from the mainstream. The most famous MMO before WoW was EverQuest—arguably—but I bet you don’t know many people who've heard of it, much less played it. So, how has World of Warcraft turned into the phenomenon that it's become? Blizzard's pre-existing fanbase may have helped, or maybe there was an audience that itched for an accessible MMO. Or, simply, it’s just a damn good game. For me, the thing that kept me coming back to WoW after a decade and counting is its community of gamers.
For its 10th anniversary, the World of Warcraft team put together a documentary, Looking For Group, that focused on the rise of the game and the effects it has had on players. In the hour-long documentary, we meet parents coping with the loss of a child and teenagers who've become more social through the help of their guilds (groups of people that play together). Even celebrities like Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dave Chappelle, and Brandon Routh, have joined raids, arenas, dungeons, and every other aspect of World of Warcraft.
The people you meet in the game can turn into IRL friends. Stories of falling in love on WoW are not uncommon or all that surprising, especially when you consider the rise of online dating. After all, what better way to fall in love with someone than spending months on end working together defeating challenges? Is this any worse than looking for love just based on someone's picture? For proof of the appeal of WoW, one needs to look no further than BlizzCon, a gamer’s paradise in Anaheim, California, that brings together all of Blizzard for a convention. It’s a party and a support group, a yearly catharsis that puts players' faces to their online usernames. Every year, thousands of fans flock westward to meet like-minded people.
WoW has provided an escape and sense of belonging during some of the darker points in my life. In fact, it seems like every expansion of the game has been perfectly timed with a particularly miserable period in my life: the original WoW (called Vanilla by players) came during my parents’ divorce; The Burning Crusade coincided with a bad breakup; 2008's Wrath of the Lich King—generally considered the pinnacle of WoW—distracted me from my unhappiness with school; and 2010's Cataclysm got me through a lonely and snowy winter. This year, Mists of Pandaria (which originally came out in 2012 during one of my breaks from the game) provided a needed activity during a period of unemployment.
Throughout all of this turmoil, I could always log on and fuck around with my guildees, lose myself in killing a raid boss, and play into the wee hours of the morning, sleep be damned. The community is known for being inclusive, partly due to the nature of the game (you need a big group of members to clear the most difficult content, like this fight) and partly because everyone had their own reasons for escaping into the game for hours on end.
In a way, WoW’s social sphere is a gaming community that isn’t afraid to let someone new in, the opposite of #GamerGate. In my experience, the levels of toxicity found in other communities isn’t nearly as high in Azeroth; especially when it comes to welcoming a female player into the game (WoW’s U.S. subscription base is 37-percent female, according to Realm Pop). Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime went so far as urging the game’s community to keep the positive vibes from the convention going when they returned home, to combat the aggression found online during #GamerGate.
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What comes next as WoW enters its fifth expansion (Warlords of Draenor) and into its second decade? With the addition of matchmaking (which allows you to automatically join others for content that you previously needed to find a group manually for, including the hardest raids), there is a sense that some of the magic that comes from gathering a trusted team to take down difficult bosses is gone. But, really, it’s just become harder, not impossible. It’s like moving to a new city after being in a secluded college campus: there are friends to be made if you look hard enough and put in the effort. Once you find your niche, however, that sense of belonging will come rushing back.
As Warlords of Draenor was getting closer to its release, I sought out guilds to join for the expansion. While I may not need WoW in the same way I did before (I'm generally in a happy place in my life), that feeling of connecting with a group of people over a shared love hadn't dissipated—and I sought it again. Once I found a guild, I went through all the stages of friendship. First, there was the awkward phase where everyone is wondering who the new guy is. Then, we started chatting one on one and getting to know each other as acquaintances. And now, I’m in the friendship phase, where I log on and am welcomed into the family, one that I spend plenty of time with, battling demons, real and virtual.
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This has all happened in about a month—everything moves faster online. As we move into the meat of the expansion, I’ve found a group, similar to many others within the corners of World of Warcraft, but unique to my own little world, which reminds me why we play this game: It doesn't matter what favorite characters we kill, what kings we dispose of, what apocalypses we thwart, or what rogue leaders we bring to justice. It doesn't even matter if we go back in time to stop an invasion from the past. What has always mattered and what will matter as World of Warcraft enters its next phase are the players you do these things with.
Luis Paez-Pumar is a news writer at Complex. He tweets here.
