It’s not unusual for a game to utterly dominate the conversation in gaming circles for a while — see this year’s Helldivers 2 or Balatro for example. But it’s another thing entirely for one to grow so large that it becomes a household name known even to people who’ve never played a game in their lives. On November 23, 2004, one game accomplished that feat more than perhaps any other ever has, and it did so in what was at the time an incredibly niche genre to boot.
World of Warcraft didn’t invent the massively multiplayer online RPG, but it refined it, introducing the concept to newcomers and totally changing the concept of the genre for those who’d already written it off. When World of Warcraft launched, the dominant massively multiplayer online role-playing game was still Everquest, an often punishing, inscrutable experience that demanded players entertain themselves. World of Warcraft took the social core of Everquest and turned it into something more rewarding, easier to get into, and altogether more fun.
