We can all learn from this WoW character: Chen Stormstout!

The evolution of WoW gaming has taken some strange turns. Of course, you will say, because the game will soon be 20 years old! The way you played WoW in 2004 and 2005 respectively… you probably don’t play the online role-playing game like that anymore today. It’s not just because we’ve gotten older as WoW players and our lives have changed over time. This also has to do with the fact that Blizzard’s developers themselves have continued to advance the game.

WoW was once considered the most beginner-friendly online role-playing game on the market. Compared to the standards of the time, think of Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot or Ultima, that’s also true. But a lot has happened in the past two decades. While WoW was considered beginner-friendly back then, today it’s more of a bulky game. And while player motivation back then was more driven by the desire to discover and curiosity, many gamers today are fueled by a different motivator: the pursuit of success and the competition many people engage in, willingly or not.

A character from the Warcraft universe makes it clear to the visitors of Pandaria that the endless hunt for the best item in Azeroth, or simply for the status “the best”, is perhaps not the golden thing of the WoW egg – in his usual unexcited way and Way.

Back then there was more adventure!

Of course, with the release of WoW, the collective sense of play was more geared towards explorer glory. Finally enabled World of Warcraft (buy now ) allows Warcraft fans to explore the well-known universe from the strategy games for themselves and to go anywhere they wanted. You weren’t tied to missions, you were free to go and snout. The only thing standing between you and your curiosity was any high-level enemies that kicked your pixel butt. But even that didn’t stop some heroes from walking to the ends of the earth.

WoW awakened the so-called “Sense of Wonderment”, an intoxicating feeling, a pleasant mixture of surprise, nostalgia and recognition value. So this is what the wasteland looks like! These are the ruins of Lordaeron! I’m in Warcraft, woah! In addition, World of Warcraft was the first MMO for many gamers in 2005 and the years that followed. Broadband Internet access was finally affordable back then, the content on offer was “endless”, but many “secrets” could not yet be easily looked up on the Internet unless you browsed Allakazam or Thottbot…

Back then, you set off with a rough plan and simply let yourself be surprised along the way. It’s not very effective, but it’s really exciting. A lot of things came together back then that made WoW the success it was until about 2010. Back then, very few players were concerned with efficiency, but simply with experience!

Today is more competition!

Even today, many players are probably still more concerned with experience and less with efficiency. Much more is being done these days, however, for the efficiency WoW heroes who are constantly in never-ending competition with everyone else (and themselves). World First Races. esports competitions. ratings that determine victory and defeat; about how we have to experience WoW – and don’t want to, because tight rules are imposed on us. data mining. streamlining As with the initial, resounding success of the online role-playing game, many factors come together that should primarily serve those among the gamers who see efficient use of their free time as their top priority.

Because with the Internet, many new fields of employment have appeared that we want to deal with in our professional and free time or have to deal with. Many things are fighting for our attention at the same time and, pleasure-seeking as we are: many things have to be “done” as quickly as possible so that we can squeeze as many of them as possible into a daily routine. Greetings from FOMO, the fear of missing out. And so bespoke gaming becomes another job at some point; the exertion of patience only becomes tiresome.

Stop the madness

We should all ask ourselves regularly: is this still a pleasure or is it just a habit that is becoming more and more of a burden? So it goes with all things in life and at the end of the day, so does the way we play WoW. In hectic and uncertain times like these, what is probably the MMO’s wisest character questions our motivation and advises us to take it easy.

Chen’s words to his niece Li Li are no coincidence. Even in the days of WoW: Mists of Pandaria, a certain optimization mania began to take hold among WoW heroes. Game content was being consumed faster and faster (because it was so awesome or because there was so little, that’s an open question). The developers of World of Warcraft have been chasing after the pleasure-seeking gamers for many, many years and still fail to satisfy the content hunger of the fastest. This is a race that devs can’t win and shouldn’t even try.

Rather, they have to accept that WoW is no longer the gamer’s sole “main job”, and that’s good news for all the other game developers out there. Whether WoW is your only gaming love, or if there are many more, we have a valuable, slightly adapted quote for you: “Be patient. If we explore WoW too quickly, we’ll quickly run out of WoW to explore .” If you like, replace WoW with one of your other favorite games or another nice hobby!