Blog Quest: The Emotional Contagion of Warcraft

            Salutations, internet-type people. The past week I’ve been celebrating my 20^th rotation around this planet and it has caused me to do some thinking. Now yes, that included the mopey thoughts involved while leaving the teenage years. Such as I can now say “I’m in my 20s…” and pretend anything following that line is supposed to give some sort of fresh youthful perspective on a topic I’ve only recently learned about. I’ve been told that this next decade is the one I spend working, leaving a solid foundation to build upon for the rest of my life. I can say with absolute certainty that these words are so common for someone my age it’s borderline plagiarism.

            I don’t feel any different, though. I feel the physically the same as I did back when I was 17, and what I love in a video game hasn’t changed sense I was 13.  I remember way back when I started playing World of Warcraft at the fresh age of 12, winter 2005, on a computer that had the technical specs of my phone.  The graphics were fresh and the combat gave me the RPG feel my nerdy little mind drooled for. Little did I know this game would be enthralling me into my 20s.

            I know what you’re thinking. “Oh FFS, this guy is going to tell another tale of how WoW has changed them as a person, and how it gave him friends, a love of game’s and their design, and a sense of purpose. He’s going to rant about how it changed, and probably for his opinion of ‘- to shit’.”

            I was thinking about it. I’m just going to allude to it as how it’s affected me over my teenage years. Now I did play it for a collective of 300+ days (7,200+ hours) worth of time, 124 of that on a single character. In case you’re unaware of the /played command in the game; I’m referring to in game time spent logged in, playing. So it isn’t that I think I don’t qualify to judge the game changes amongst the millions of other users. It’s just that I don’t want to. It’s been done and I’ve already performed a few blogging cliché’s today.

I know what you’re probably thinking. “That’s a lot of time” and some more cruel thoughts that I may or may not deserve. Hopefully though, you’re thinking “Why”

It’s the lore. The pantheon, and the stories derived and explaining them make me nerd all over the floor and walls. I could - back in my Azerothian scholar days - recite to you the entirety of the creation of Azeroth off the top of my head. I could explain the history of the titans and the sealing of old gods, the dragon flights, their purposes and leaders. I read every quest pre-Cataclysm to see if I could learn more about the land and what I was doing.  The lore captivated me and kept me in a literary head lock.

The hero to anti-hero transition of Arthas Menethil will forever impact me as a designer.  If you’re unaware of this story arc, I insist that everyone either read the book “Arthas: Rise of the Lich King”, play “Warcraft 3”, or play through to the Icecrown zone in “World of Warcraft”. I just can’t do it justice.

            As I further progress into my 20^th rotation around the sun, I’ll continue to think about my Warcraft years and remember the simplicities when all I was concerned about was saving Azeroth from the burning legion.

            And killing those bunnies with fire blasts.

-Jordon