What has become clear to me over the years, is that fans love for World of Warcraft is not solely based upon the game itself. Often those who enjoy the game qualify their feelings within a wider context. What made WoW so great for them was the time, the place and the people. Where people where at in their lives. The group dynamic is a major aspect of this as Raids are a key part of WoW and not an optional extra. Often fans cut their teeth with WoW at a time when it was “the” MMO and there wasn’t as much competition. Gaming was also a far more niche pastime in the early 2000s and as such fostered a somewhat unique sense of camaraderie. Hence WoW is more than just a multiplayer game but a pop culture archetype. I suspect that this is what Blizzard wants to tap into with WoW Forever. Older players may well rediscover the old magic. However, I don’t know if a comparable experience is available to new players.
I have no relationship with WoW. No history, no nostalgia, no anecdotes. So for me I have simply been presented with a re-tooling of a classic MMO. As such it has aspects that are very modern and others that are patently old school. Having played WoW Forever for several days across three alts, there are several aspects of this game that have struck me. The first are the quests and storyline. Obviously in the various starter zones, quest can be somewhat arbitrary as they’re often just means for players to learn skills and game mechanics. However, once you progress further into the virtual world there is a noticeable disparity between what are obviously legacy quests and those which are newly written. Some players have always favoured the grounded, low-fantasy world-building and the way the lore is delivered. As someone who favours strong narratives, the text only quest bestowal seems somewhat dated and fragmented.
WoW Forever has not made any bones about its intention to return to a more group centric approach to the gameplay. Hence, this iteration of the game revives “friction-based” design to reinforce social dependency between players. Enemies hit hard, mana and health regenerate slowly, pulling multiple mobs at once can prove fatal for solo players and elite quests cannot be beaten by brute-forced alone. However, when a player is part of a group comprising of the correct composition, as intended by the developers, each classes respective skills rotations interlock. One player controls crowds, another manages threat while another heals. If you play predominantly solo, there will be skills and mechanics tied to other classes that you do not have access to, making combat a harder undertaking. It is not impossible but it is by intention suboptimal. There are also long stretches of downtime where you’ll be eating or drinking between fights.
For me, with regard to my personal preferences and play style, I am not enthused by the combat in WoW Forever. Unlike MMORPGs that rely on reactive chains, active dodging, or tactical animation queueing, Forever runs on a strict 1.5-second Global Cooldown (GCD) and deterministic mathematics. Because the underlying architecture is two decades old it has been heavily analysed or theorycrafted by players. The result is a form of combat that is exceedingly procedural. IE maintain a damage-over-time debuff, use your skills with the longest cooldowns tactically and lean into the prevailing meta rotation for your class. You can do the opposite and improvise using your own style but the game doesn’t accommodate such an approach gracefully. WoW Forever was allegedly designed to make classes more flexible with less reliance on orthodox strategy but compared to other MMOs, I find it still quite rigid.
When I play an MMO, I prefer to improvise and to use skills in a manner that feels right, rather than just follow a pre-determined pattern. Although I like to know what each skill does, its cooldown and induction costs, I’m not especially interested in any more than that. I have never found theorycrafting or min-maxing especially fun. For me I look at stats of an item I have equipped and expect higher numbers on any replacement item. Gaming has always been about the fun of playing and the story, rather than the enjoyment of mastering the numbers that underpin it all. I don’t especially like spreadsheets and I feel that combat in WoW is just too much of a line dance. However, I recognise players can experience exactly the same systems in opposite ways. One can find the predictability of combat in WoW Forever either reassuring, boring, or even insufficiently complex. Gamers often hold a variety of opinions and find different things to love or loathe in their game of choice.
So where does that leave me with regard to WoW Forever or indeed with WoW per se. I shall try a few more classes and will continue to potter about in-game for the next week or so. One thing that it is nice to see is a server filled with players. I don’t go in for the social aspect of the genre so much these days but I always like to see a major town in a game heaving with other players. However, taking stock of the bigger picture, I suspect that WoW in any iteration is just not for me. The game, associated culture and its glory days are simply something that has passed me by and trying to get into this particular “scene” so late in the day doesn’t feel credible to me. It as if I’m being encouraged by popular culture to reconnect with something that I was never connected to previously. I certainly see why people like the game and many of the aspect that don’t resonate with me are exactly the elements that make it so enjoyable to others. Furthermore, it’s fine to feel this way because you cannot like everything.
Thursday 29th October was a milestone for Project Questa. I completed the core build for the utility after copious testing. Over the last week several issues have come to light over such things as the size of the quest bestowal window, OCR mistaking punctuation for text and voice latency during narration. All of which have now been resolved to a degree that is acceptable. During the course of solving these problems a lot of ideas and considerations have emerged and as a result, I think it best to set out an overall scope of work for Questa. This is to avoid mission creep and to set out clearly what Questa will and will not offer. Furthermore this list is now effectively closed, so I have a clear path set before me. It is also worth noting that as this is a “one man band” project, I reserve the right to pack it all in, if circumstances dictate. I don’t plan to do so at present but life can play wild cards from time to time.
For the last six years, Echoes of Angmar, the “unofficial” server for the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, has quietly gone about its business. Its existence has been a known quantity during this time but it has never really become a major talking point. Providing an iteration of LOTRO from November 2007, those who wished to play the “classic” version of the game did so and everyone else stuck with the official version. Middle-earth Enterprises issued a cease-and desist letter in August 2022 but I get the impression it was a formality rather than a serious endeavour to close this unofficial version of the game down. Since then, the two versions of the game have co-existed without any fuss. I briefly tried Echoes of Angmar when they were conducting stress tests and found it a pleasant nostalgia trip for a few days. Ultimately it was not something I wanted to play habitually but it was good to be reminded of how LOTRO was when I started playing in 2008.
World of Warcraft: Forever becomes available today at 23:00 GMT in the UK. Having participated in multiple MMORPG launches over the years, I expect server queues, lag and difficulty securing character names, if you haven’t done so already. I’m sure once people finally log into the game it will be very atmospheric and affable. Due to the volume of players in the starter areas, I suspect not much will get done but I find that game launches are more about the experience and creating memories, rather than progression. Although I am excited about the launch, I think what happens over the next thirty days, has the potential to be far more interesting and significant. I expect there will be record numbers of new players trying WoW Forever tonight and in the days to come. No doubt many will find everything to their satisfaction. However, I am curious about those who try the game and decide that it is not for them. I’m interested in those who potentially quit.
2026 is proving to be a good year for the MMORPG, Star Trek Online. After wrestling control of their game back and reassembling “the band”, IE as much of the original development team as possible, Developers Cryptic are slowly but steadily addressing the games multiple flaws. This is a much needed undertaking as STO has stagnated for a long time. However, over the last twelve months Cryptic have revised multiple elements of the game such as a general overhaul of Deep Space Encounters and the Endeavour system. These improvements have been well received by players but the jewel in the crown of this ongoing project has been the reinstating of several classic Episodes back into the game, all be it in a revised format. STO needs more story content because sadly what has been released in recent years has been of a lesser standard compared to the halcyon days of the Agents of Yesterday and Victory is Life expansions.
Upon starting up the Battle.net launcher this evening, I was confronted by a message stating that I needed to uninstall the Beta version of World of Warcraft: Forever, now that the testing had finished. So I clicked on the icon and off it went. I didn’t spend as much time in the Beta test as I would’ve liked but certainly enjoyed what I did. I familiarised myself with the UI and controls and endeavoured to get a feel for the way the game handles. I tried three classes during this Beta. Hunter, Warlock and Warrior. However, I haven’t spent enough time with each class to make any sort of decision as to which one will become my main. Having no history with WoW is in some respects a bonus, because I have no inherent prejudices and I am completely oblivious as to the prevailing game meta. I made sure that my research did not overwhelm me with information as this game is very much a dream for spreadsheet aficionados.
I began work on Project Questa on the 27th of September, because I couldn’t get Khazad Voice TTS to work on my PC. Since then I’ve spent several days a week working on my AI narrator utility and have made steady progress. Last time I wrote about the project the production pipeline ran as follows. DXCam, OpenCV, Windows OCR and Microsoft Speech API (SAPI). Over time, I determined that Tesseract was a better OCR and that Kokoro TTS produced superior narration. However, in the last week I found that constant fine tuning across different aspects of the production process was not really producing any significant improvements. The main problems were capturing text from dialogue windows that required scrolling, as well as overall latency in producing narration. A delay over 5 seconds is too long in my assessment. Hence I decided to fundamentally change the overall approach to dialogue capture.
I started playing MMOs in late 2008 by which time the genre was clearly established and dominated by one particular title, World of Warcraft. I chose to play The Lord of the Rings Online, mainly because of my love for the intellectual property the game is based upon. I still play LOTRO today. However, I was very aware of popularity and significance of WoW at the time. It pretty much set the rules for how you design a MMO and it did much to move on from the previous gameplay parameters set by such titles as Ultima Online and EverQuest. It was also the MMO that every other developer was trying to beat. Another compelling factor regarding WoW is that everyone I knew at the time was either actively playing it or had done so at some point. It was for many gamers, the go-to title for socialising. Finally around early 2010, I tried a free trail of WoW to “see what all the fuss was about”. Simply put, I felt that it wasn’t for me.
Over the course of the last 16 years, the MMORPG Star Trek Online has changed greatly. What started as a disjointed, rushed game with unfinished systems and a lack of overall cohesion has now evolved into streamlined MMO with clearly defined systems and very strong narrative arcs. Let it suffice to say that STO makes very good use of its license and the intellectual property it is built upon. Although new content has been continuously added to STO over time and refinements are regularly rolled out, the developer’s have also removed content from the game in the past, that they feel is substandard or too dated in it presentation. Hence in October 2018 Cryptic took out the following eight missions from the game, with the proviso that they would be updated and replaced at a latter date. Until fairly recently, STO players had given up hope on this ever happening and the episodes being reinstated. Eight years is a long time.
One of the things that I enjoy when playing a new video game is character customisation or character creation. I will spend hours trawling through settings, changing the most minute and consequential aspects of my avatars appearance. I am certain that there is a psychological aspect to this particular game mechanic and that it says something about you as a person. Are your creations shaped just by a need to look good in-game or is there more to it? Are they external manifestations of your sexual preferences or thoughts on body image. Do you treat them as characters from a book that exists in your mind. Do you aspire to recreate the likeness of people you know or admire? Do you strive to make your avatar look like you? Whatever the reasons, it would seem that character creation is something that a lot of gamers enjoy. Hence I am not alone in my borderline obsession. What you look like in-game is equally as important as your character’s name.
I recently tried to use DLSS 5 Manager with the MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out. Today I undertook a similar experiment with AMD Neural Rendering, which is a broadly comparable product. Both utilities use 3D-Guided Neural Rendering, an AI technology that alters how lighting, reflections, and textures look in a game. Instead of just upscaling the image like older versions, DLSS 5 uses an AI network to instantly "re-render" lighting and material responses over the game's layout, achieving photorealistic details that would normally negatively impact a graphics card's performance. Or to put it in less fancy terms, the game graphics are enhanced and modified, although it is highly subjective as to whether the end results are an improvement. However, as a game such as LOTRO is unlikely to ever receive a major graphical overhaul, tools such as these are the nearest players will get to revised graphics.
The core game code and engine for the MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online, is about 24 years old. LOTRO began originally as Middle-earth Online, developed by Sierra On-Line in 1998. Turbine took over full development of the project in 2003/2004 when their parent company, Vivendi Universal Games, acquired Sierra. The content that had already been developed by Sierra was abandoned and Turbine created a new game using structural elements such as the UI and game engine from their previous release Asheron’s Call 2 from 2002. The Lord of the Rings Online: Shadows of Angmar was officially released in April 2007. Hence, the active public release code is 19 years old. Despite continuous expansion and updates, along with a recent migration to 64-bit architecture, the foundations of LOTRO retains a nearly twenty year old legacy framework. This frequently contributes to modern technical hurdles and engine constraints.
A few years ago, there was a fan created project to provide voice narration of NPC dialogue in the MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online. This mainly involved capturing the text in the quest dialogue windows and then sending it to OCR software, before using a text-to-speech program to read it. LOTROVoice as it was known, broadly worked but the creator stopped developing it as it proved troublesome to maintain. However, I recently discovered Khazad Voice TTS which is a separate project that does pretty much the same. I went so far as to install this “immersive AI narrator for LOTRO” after seeing a YouTube video of it being used successfully. Sadly I ran into issues configuring Khazad Voice TTS, because I have two monitors and LOTRO runs on the secondary (by my choice) and not the primary. I couldn’t “lasso” the dialogue windows in LOTRO during the calibration set up, which effectively prevented me from completing the process.
Throughout yesterday and early today, there was an issue logging in to the MMORPG, The Lord of the Rings Online. Upon starting the game launcher, it would attempt to connect to the patch server to download the latest game update. This process would start but then subsequently stall at 33%. The launcher would then attempt to reconnect to the patch server every 60 seconds but could not make any further progress. Some players found that if they left it long enough, it would eventually complete the download and the launcher then progress to the next screen where they could input their username and password. However, for the majority of LOTRO players the problem would simply persists and the launcher would be stuck in a loop. Some players attempted to reinstall the game or use the repair data facility in the launcher but neither of these proved to be successful workarounds. The patch sever needed to be bypassed to resolve the issue.
Two years ago I wrote a post about fine tuning your graphics in the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online. Apart from installing ReShade and using AMD Adrenalin, the options were somewhat limited, due to the game’s age and multiplayer status. Since then, I’ve been playing LOTRO with the game settings maxed out, a custom ReShade profile to make the colour palette more vivid and Radeon Image Sharpening enabled within the AMD software. The game looks clear, crisp and the draw distance is pretty good for an ageing game but I still wish the graphics could be tweaked further. Hence, I’ve been trawling the internet in a vain attempt to see if I can find any third party utilities that could be used to enhance LOTRO further. During the course of my search I stumbled across DLSS 5 Manager. This is an open-source, intelligent utility and one-click mod installer designed to inject and manage Nvidia's DLSS 5 neural rendering features, ReShade, and OptiScaler into PC games.
Are video games becoming easier? It’s a perennial subject that is frequently discussed by those who play them. Often the question of whether they have actually become easier is not the focus of the debate, as it seems to be broadly recognised that it is the case. Instead, discussion of this matter tend to drift into the rectitude of this change. Debate’s of this nature are usually awash with subjective opinions and personal preferences which are then put forward as objective facts. It’s not just a question of video games becoming easier, it’s the fact that making them easier is “wrong” and those who want them as such are “not proper gamers” etc. The hours that have been lost to this pointless, tedious debate are uncountable. However, I digress. Let us return to the matter of video games becoming easier, because although fans discuss this a lot and have plenty to say, you don’t often hear from the developers on this subject.
I recently completed the main story in Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon. In total I spent about sixty hours playing the game. I began at the start of the year, then took a break for a while but returned to it recently because I wanted to see if I could unlock a specific ending. I did manage to do this. Like so many other RPGs, Tainted Grail: the Fall of Avalon has a central storyline, along with a wealth of side quests, based around factions in specific zones. I think I possibly completed about a two thirds of these. However, once I finished the main story, my interest in the game began to wane. I finally left my character in the last major quest hub in case I wish to return at a future date. I then logged out of the game and uninstalled it from my PC to free up space for whatever I was to play next. In this case its The Sinking City 2. None of this is a negative reflection on Tainted Grail: the Fall of Avalon. I enjoyed the time I spent playing this quirky RPG. I simply had my fill and left to play something else.
The next expansion for the MMORG, The Lord of the Rings Online, was announced on the 1st August, via the gaming website MMORPG.The Wolves of Mordor, which will launch later in the year, appears ambitious in scope as it will include two new game systems as well as the obligatory story update. This expansion takes place in Draugardh located in the North East of Mordor, beyond the Plateau of Gorgoroth. It includes the new zones of Heledhris, Parth Rhavas and Nan Ogol. These vary environmentally ranging from the arid, volcanic and semi-tropical. Players will encounter the Daugrim in these regions, Werewolves but not in the modern sense. This is not the lycanthropy of Eastern European legends but in the established Tolkien idiom of fell spirits inhabiting the bodies of Wolves. The region also sees the return of the Woses and players can expect to encounter Elves and scouts from Gondor. As ever with LOTRO expansions, there will be new instances as well as a raid.
I don’t keep up with gaming news as much as I use to but several noteworthy announcement have come to my attention of late. Firstly, there’s an expansion, Songs of the Past, coming for the Witcher III: Wild Hunt in 2027. No doubt this is to pave the way for the Witcher IV. Next, I also found out about Hand of Fate: Horde. I liked this franchise and was saddened to learn that the original studio, Defiant Development, closed. Hence is was a pleasant surprise to see this new game being developed by members of the original studio. The third announcement was regarding Guild Wars 3. A new MMORPG in active development by a major studio is no small feat and is certainly good news for fans of this franchise and the genre per se. However, once you look beyond this news this announcement raises several questions and has certainly given me pause for thought. Let us take a few moments to consider them.
Star Trek Online has many in-game systems that are common to the MMORPG genre. The reputation system is one such example. In STO there are 13 reputation factions. Once a player has reached level 50 they may start progressing through the 6 reputation tiers of each one. Players gain progression through daily projects (20 hours in duration). Hourly projects are also available though they yield less reputation advancement and are limited to three times a day. Hence 20 hour projects are consider by default the most efficient way to gain rep. Projects require 30 Faction Specific Marks (earned via various activities in-game), 15,000 Energy Credits (standard in-game currency) and 2000 Expertise points. The most efficient way to tackle the reputation grind is to build up the necessary resources in advance and then at a designated time each day, start all 13 respective projects. Upon completion projects yield a player bound lockbox containing a random space or ground weapon, a console or Elite Marks which can be used to acquire faction gear.
I was recently perusing my archive of old blog posts, when it struck me how much I’ve written about the MMORPG genre over the years. Naturally, there was far more material from between 2008 and 2012 as that was period when I immersed myself in the genre and was very enthusiastic about it. I was at a point in my life when I had the time to dedicate to such games and I was happy to participate in the social aspect of they offered. I would regularly play through group content and spend time socialising online with fellow guild members. My experience remains a textbook example of how online games can be more than the sum of their parts and that where you are at in your life has a major impact upon your overall enjoyment. As I read though various old posts it became clear that my experiences where specific to this particular part of my life and that they cannot be repeated. My relationship with the genre is very different now and that’s fine.
Creating alts is an integral aspect of the MMORPG genre. Many players will create a character of a specific class or faction, play it for a while, lose interest in it or they may decide that it is just not for them. Fortunately it is no effort at all to simply re-roll a new alt and set off once again. Furthermore, lots of players never reach level cap of the MMORPG that there playing. When the going get’s tough, so to speak, you can either soldier on for another 50 levels or simply create a new alt and return to the comfort of tried and tested content. Alts also give you the chance to secure an accolade or achievement that you previously missed. They are also of great benefit to the genres social aspects. Creating a new alt so you can play along with a friend who is just starting is great fun. Developer’s love them too as it means you’re still playing the game.
I recently took a break from Crimson Desert choosing instead to to play something familiar and easy going. As I’ve been logging into Star Trek Online daily to participate in the anniversary event, I decided to look through my various alts and see how far they had progressed through the game and what resources they had. At present I have twelve alts. My primary Captain was created in 2015 during the original Delta Recruit Event. I had previously played STO intermittently since its release in January 2010 but I never kept any of those characters. Hence this decade old Tactical Federation Captain has been my main focus when playing. The other eleven alts are the result of other recruitment events or whenever I wanted to try something different, such as playing a specific class or faction. I obviously played a lot of STO during the lockdown as several alts date from that period. Several had maximum reputation across all factions.
13 days after its release, market analysts estimate that Crimson Desert has already earned $200 million across the four main platforms (PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X and S). The game is certainly proving popular among gamers with the internet awash with live streams and “let’s play” videos. However, reviews are mixed both among gaming journalists and YouTube influencers. Common complaints about the game include that it is slow to start, the controls are poorly laid out on all platforms and that developer’s Pearl Abyss have done a poor job of explaining most aspects of the game to new players. Although such criticisms are true to a degree, I think these complaints highlight how many gamers are conditioned to expect new titles to follow a specific pattern with regard to pacing, narrative exposition and learning in-game systems. A pattern that Pearl Abyss has chosen to ignore, instead favouring an old school approach.
Last night, I spent the first 45 minutes after the launch of Crimson Desert, watching the 92GB pre-downloaded game files slowly decompressing and installing. I finally launched the game at about 10:50 PM GMT. I then waited a further 5 minutes while shaders were downloaded. It took me about 15 minutes or so to read through the various game settings and choose those that are optimal for my PC. I suspect even if you have a beast of a computer, you’re still going to have to spend some time tweaking settings. As for those players like myself with a gaming rig that is somewhere in the middle of the game’s specifications, be prepared to do a lot of fine tuning both within Crimson Desert itself and your Windows settings.
Video games as a genre are extremely poor at explaining themselves. When you buy a new game you’ll often find little or no information regarding the basic systems and mechanics. The industry assumes that their customers are by default familiar with the fundamentals of playing a modern video game. Hence if a game has a tutorial, it is often based around videos rather than detailed verbal instructions. You are are briefly shown a clip of a specific move being successfully undertaken but it is seldom shown in a wider context. The industry also expects the fan community to take on the role of curating and disseminating information about its games. The move away from forums and bespoke websites to Discord highlights this. Discord is a primarily a real time communication tool and not good at maintaining a historical data archive. If you want an answer to a specific gaming question, you’ll more than likely find it on YouTube in a video made by a fellow gamer.
According to the recent “letter to the players”, Standing Stone Games will be adding a new zone to the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online in the second quarter of this year. Possibly around May or June. Having spent the last three expansions in the South of Middle-earth exploring the tropical Umbar and the deserts of Harad, I would certainly welcome a change of location. I have gradually warmed to these zones over the last eighteen months but I do find them so incongruous. They are so radically different to the European style content that has been the mainstay of the game for so long. Tolkien’s source text has plenty of detail regarding Eriador and Rhovanion. Information regarding Harad is scarce, hence it has afforded the developers a great deal of artistic freedom. Although exceedingly well realised these tropical zones have taken a while for me to get used to.
I’m not sure exactly when it started but I’ve recently noticed a graphical bug within the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online. This problem often occurs within caves or in areas where there are a lot of rocky surfaces. Hence it has become very apparent in the latest two expansions, set in Umbar and Harad. This graphical glitch causes some surface textures to appear to flash from light to dark intermittently. The resulting strobe effect is hard to ignore and very distracting. Fortunately, a quick online search showed that this is not a problem unique to my installation of LOTRO and is a known problem. Furthermore, there is a very simple workaround, which is to go into the Advanced Graphics setting and uncheck “Per Pixel Lighting”, which immediately remedies the problem. I have no idea why this has recently started to happen but at least it can be resolved.
This year is the 60th anniversary of Star Trek. The original TV show was first broadcast in the US on September 8th 1966. If you search online you’ll find details of lots of related events. There are documentaries, conventions, new TV shows and even some video games in development. However, what you won’t find are any details regarding what will be happening with the MMORPG Star Trek Online. So far no road map for 2026 has been posted online by the developers but it is still quite early in the New Year. That being the case, I am not especially optimistic about there being any major plans waiting to be revealed. It is not as if DECA Games have demonstrated or stated any major ambitions for STO beyond keeping the endless events treadmill going and regularly adding content to the in-game store, during their development tenure. The ongoing story arc drags on inexorably and is as dull as ditchwater.
The latest expansion for the MMORPG The Lord of the Rings Online, Kingdoms of Harad, launched on December 3rd. With this release the level cap was raised from 150 to 160. It should also be noted that the cap for virtue traits was also raised from 96 to 100. Naturally these changes meant that there is a requirement to replace all armour and jewellery once the new cap is reached. Similarly Legendary Items have to be reforged and any traceries upgraded or replaced. If you follow the Epic Story it will lead you from quest hub to quest hub. The main quest rewards, along with those from side quests will provide adequate gear as you slowly progress towards the new level cap. The new raids, instances and missions/delvings then provide a means to acquire higher quality level 160 gear. LOTRO and indeed, many other MMOs are consistent in this methodology.
What has become clear to me over the years, is that fans love for World of Warcraft is not solely based upon the game itself. Often those who enjoy the game qualify their feelings within a wider context. What made WoW so great for them was the time, the place and the people. Where people where at in their lives. The group dynamic is a major aspect of this as Raids are a key part of WoW and not an optional extra. Often fans cut their teeth with WoW at a time when it was “the” MMO and there wasn’t as much competition. Gaming was also a far more niche pastime in the early 2000s and as such fostered a somewhat unique sense of camaraderie. Hence WoW is more than just a multiplayer game but a pop culture archetype. I suspect that this is what Blizzard wants to tap into with WoW Forever. Older players may well rediscover the old magic. However, I don’t know if a comparable experience is available to new players.