YoIn 2004, Holly Longdale was a game designer at EverQuest, then an advocate for a new genre of video games that allowed for large-scale multiplayer role-playing games. In these online fantasy worlds, players could take on quests together rather than alone, adding a fascinating new social (and competitive) dimension to the static, offline role-playing game that Holly’s generation had grown up with. But whenever he could, Longdale would sneak in a few hours playing with EverQuest’s main competitor. That game was World of Warcraft (WoW).
“There were so many moments in WoW that I was envious,” he says, “and I completely missed it. I remember running around Ashenvale as a night elf hunter and the music and the atmosphere – there was a mood that couldn’t be denied. Then I saw another player running in the opposite direction, a druid who gave me a buff on his way. “That’s when I knew I was going to be in this for a long time.” Twenty years later, Longdale is now vice president and executive producer of WoW at its developer, Blizzard, as well as one of the millions of people who have adopted the game as part of their lives.
For two decades, World of Warcraft has been emblematic of nerd culture, referenced everywhere from South Park to The Big Bang Theory to Family Guy. WoW became a useful abbreviation not just for a certain type of gamer, but for any and all geek, nerd, and goofy subcultures. In the 2000s, it was advertised by the likes of Ozzy Osborne, Chuck Norris and Mr T, with his infamous Night Elf Mohawk. It counts Henry Cavill, Mila Kunis and Vin Diesel among its fans, while a film adaptation in 2016 grossed $439 million, without being particularly good. In 2021, Blizzard revealed that players had collectively accumulated a total playtime of nearly 9 million years.
There were certainly other role-playing games before WoW’s release in 2004. But 3D graphics were still in their infancy. Games like Star Wars Galaxies and Everquest had large, mostly barren worlds that relied on a lot of in-game text for exposition and clunky rules lifted from board games. Then came Blizzard, a developer that had made a name and a small fortune with gorgeous competitive online strategy games like StarCraft and Warcraft III. Unlike its competitors, WoW’s world of Azeroth felt inhabited, with gorgeous panoramic views and plenty of animals and monsters roaming its landscapes. Iconic bright yellow exclamation points floated above the heads of non-player characters, letting you know that a quest awaited you. And of course, you’d see other players everywhere, taming beasts, defeating monsters for quests, drinking at inns, mining for minerals, or just running around in high-level gear that made you jealous as you struggled to take on a group of lowly murlocs. .
It was the social side of the game that came to define the beginnings of WoW. Carefully curated areas of the world encouraged players to run into other people while exploring Azeroth. And when you created your character, you had to choose between two factions, Alliance and Horde, which gave players an immediate sense of loyalty. Whether grouping up to tackle dungeons, gathering in 40-person bands to defeat colossal raid bosses, or even attacking the enemy capital as a low-level cannon fodder army, seemingly every player has a story about their time in Azeroth.
I still idealize my role of sneaking up on Stormwind, the Alliance capital, alongside a group of low-level undead rogues. What we had imagined as a daring raid ended with us fleeing for our lives. Another time, I asked a better-equipped passerby for help in defeating a particularly tough monster in the Night Elf area of Darkshore, only to end up chatting with him for hours. I messaged that same player for months.
WoW was simply a phenomenon. Blizzard had to double its staff in a year, employing legions of people to answer players’ questions, resolve their technical problems, and keep the servers running. WoW amassed a staggering number of subscribers, further boosted by the release of two expansion packs: The Burning Crusade in 2007 and Wrath of the Lich King in 2008.
In 2010, more than 12 million players had active monthly subscriptions. Some called themselves WoWaholics. Other players found an escape from the limitations of real life in WoW, as demonstrated by the moving story of Mats Steen, recently told in the Netflix documentary The Remarkable Life of Ibelin. Mats had muscular dystrophy before his untimely death at age 25, but he lived a vibrant life within WoW, a life his parents were completely unaware of until their online friends sent them long messages from across Europe telling them how their son had influenced them. in their lives. . Five members of Mats’ WoW guild went to Norway for his funeral.
after newsletter promotion
But no game can stay in the spotlight forever. While WoW went from strength to strength in its first six years, as the game aged, so did its players. As then lead game designer, now game director, Ion Hazzikostas put it in 2014: “The person who started playing in 2004, who was a student with a lot of free time, is now a professional person with a family.” Blizzard had to attract a new generation while retaining existing fans. For the 2010 Cataclysm expansion, the decision was made to revolutionize the game through a massive revamp of its world, with a new design philosophy tailored to the faster gameplay that modern players were thought to demand. The changes remain controversial.
Today, traversing Azeroth is a barely recognizable experience compared to those early years. WoW has had several different eras: there’s the classic era of WoW that precedes Wrath of the Lich King (2004-8); the world revamp that defined Cataclysm (2010) to Warlords of Draenor (2014); the pivot to a long endgame, where players could become infinitely more powerful from Legion (2016) to Shadowlands (2020); and the modern era of WoW, beginning with Dragonflight (2022) and continuing with the recently released expansion The War Within (2024). These “era’s” are so different that it seems as if the game reinvents itself every six years or so.
The social aspect has also changed with the times. As Taliesin – half of husband and wife WoW youtube duo Taliesin & Evitel – puts it: “The way we are social on the Internet has changed – and WoW is a reflection of that; 2004 was a time of forums and message boards and a more underground Internet. The Internet today is much shorter and sharper. It’s TikTok, it’s all your social networks focused on one or two megasites. What we do socially on the Internet has changed, and so has WoW.”
It is common to hear complaints that WoW has changed so much that its original spirit has been lost. Players are often confused about design decisions that they consider inconsistent with the traditional experience. Unfortunately for Blizzard, these peaked after the release of Shadowlands in 2020, precisely when a perfect storm was brewing for the company. Not only did Covid disrupt game development, but in 2021 Blizzard was hit by a lawsuit filed by California’s department of fair employment, accusing it of fostering a “frat boy” work culture, with sexual harassment and poor treatment of employees. the women.
The lawsuit had far-reaching implications for the company and the gaming industry as a whole. Several top executives, including Blizzard president J. Allen Brack, retiredand the company agreed to pay millions to address issues of gender discrimination and pay inequality. Ultimately, the lawsuit contributed to the formation of the first union at a major U.S. gaming company.
Specifically within WoW, the suit caused rapid changes to the game. Characters bearing the names of accused abusers were renamed, and many in-game assets deemed inappropriate in light of the allegations, such as sexualized depictions of women, were replaced or modified. Many of the changes were ridiculed by the player base, who urged Blizzard to combat the toxicity. instead of “turning women into fruit bowls””.
Longdale had just joined Blizzard in 2020 when the lawsuit began. “It was heartbreaking,” he says. “It had only been a few months. “Seeing the team devastated, wondering what the future will be, was really heartbreaking.” The fallout, combined with the already present unease over the state of the game, could have easily been the beginning of the end for WoW. But the commitment of both the WoW team and Blizzard’s new leadership to build back better meant the game stuck. “What I’m really proud of,” says Longdale, “is that the diversity of our team has grown significantly. “There is a lot more ‘voice’ in the content we create now, and people are creating content that is very personal, based on their own experiences.”
Every time WoW seemed at risk of losing relevance over the years, it managed to reinvent itself and bounce back. And while its cultural reach has diminished over time, the impact it has had is undeniable. Countless fantasy role-playing game worlds and characters have been inspired by WoW’s pantheon of heroes. The game is in the DNA of every subsequent generation of video games that have been developed since 2004.
While today’s WoW may not elicit the same wonder that early players felt wandering the green hills of Stranglethorn or taking that first ship from Kalimdor to the Eastern Kingdoms in 2004, the fact that it still continues and continues to change is a testament to the incredible foundation he laid 20 years ago. And as for the future of WoW? “My goal, and I think the team’s goal, is for WoW to be more than a game,” Longdale says. “It’s essentially part of your lifestyle. It can be for your friends, it can be for parents who play with their children. It’s a lovely fantasy world that connects you with people.”