Let's just say I don't know how many months of my life have been lost in this game. I literally cannot even fathom it. This was the game that pulled me out of my obsession with Asheron's Call. It's also the game that allowed me to meet my hubby. So, there's definitely a lot of history for me with this game. I've played on and off for the large part of 15 years, and only really decided to fully quit the game in the last 2-3 years. (My Blizzard boycott was after the fact on the decision, but definitely added some nails into that coffin.) I have spent hundreds on my obsession with pet collecting in this game, and when I realized that the pets were literally the only thing really holding me to the game.. I decided then and there that I was done. My son still plays, and I miss spending time with him in the game, but it's just not worth paying for a game just for playing once or twice a month when my son actually has time for a play session. So, there will be no more "Rakkii" in World of Warcraft (my usual name in the game), and I will definitely not being going back to this game in the future, even if my boycott does get lifted.
This game released in 2004, and was a huge hit almost immediately. There have been eight major expansions since then: The Burning Crusade (2007), Wrath of the Lich King (2008), Cataclysm (2010), Mists of Pandaria (2012), Warlords of Draenor (2014), Legion (2016), Battle for Azeroth (2018), and Shadowlands (2020). They have also brought out a "spin off" in a full release of both Classic Wow, and Burning Crusade Classic - basically, these are the game as it was 15 years ago - with some changes and upgrades. The game is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), and still holds the distinction as the most popular MMORPG of all time (despite the decline in the last few years, and the mess with Blizzard's leadership and treatment of it's employees.)
The game was a major commercial success, and reached a peak player base of 12 million subscribers in 2010 (which coincides with the Cataclysm release - my favorite of the expansions). I don't think I need to go into detail on the reviews this game received with the overall success of this game.
If you know nothing about the game, it's basically a story of a fantasy world (continued from Blizzard's Warcraft series, which was also a love of mine, but will not be included in my lists) with two warring factions - the Horde and the Alliance. Players choose which side they're on, and how they want to play the game (whether they want to constantly be fighting the other faction in Player V Player, or live a live of relative peace) when they pick a server. There are even Roleplaying servers, which have folk who learn more towards the roleplay side of things than the fighting side.
When I started playing, I was quickly hooked in. I was part of a major raiding guild back in Vanilla (40 player groups against major bosses), and it was through this guild that I ended up meeting my hubby. By the time the first expansion came around, the relationships within the guild had soured and it, ultimately, broke apart with a lot of pain on all sides of the coin. Due to that, it was a couple years of playing another MMO before I eventually was brought back into the game, and the release of Cataclysm was the big draw then. It still ranks as my favorite expansion, and was when hubby and I switched from Alliance to Horde. We raided with some friends of his during Cataclysm, but .. nothing lasts forever, and by the next expansion, that guild had died, as well. We went back to LOTRO, then.. eventually, got pulled back to wow during Warlords of Draenor. By this time, we had given up on the raid scene, and played mostly solo or small groups. We continued this pattern for years.. until sometime during Battle for Azeroth when we both just lost interest in the game over time. We both bought Shadowlands, but neither of us have even logged on since it's release.
With all that being said, I think it's obvious that this game has been a huge part of my history with gaming, and, as such, it needed a page to itself. I have no intention of re-subscribing for a month just to play a game I'm not really interested in anymore a couple times on stream.... so this has to be listed as an un-played honorable mention.
