WoW Really Is Everywhere

Posted by Stropp on February 7, 2008

I see World of Warcraft everywhere. Today at work, I was making a coffee and on the other side of the partition I heard a couple of guys talking about the battlegrounds. The office space I work in isn’t really partitioned. There’s lot of low walls that I can look over as I walk through the office. Every so often I see a coworker taking a break and there’s a web browser open with the WoW forums, or a talent calculator, or the armory.

And not all of these coworkers are programmers or engineers, no those you can understand right? They’re marketing, costing, business development types. Sure, they work for an engineering company, but they’re not necessarily engineers.

I hear a lot more sport talk at work than I hear World of Warcraft talk. I hear people talking about participating in windsurfing, beach, and weekend team sports. I hear a lot of talk about the Cricket during summer, and the Footy during winter.

Strangely, even though WoW is less of a conversation piece than sport, it’s the same people I hear talking about WoW, or browsing through a WoW related web page. Who knows. Maybe some of them even read this blog.

It really is amazing what a cultural phenomenon that World of Warcraft has become. It’s been in television shows, and TV advertisements. If you mention the name to almost anyone, they know what you are talking about.

Unfortunately to most people who aren’t players, or gamers, World of Warcraft is still somewhat socially unacceptable. "You play a Night Elf what?"

But it wasn’t all that long ago that comic books were social stigmas. Now some of the most successful movies of the past decade have been based on comic books. X-Men, Spiderman, Batman, Superman, the Fantastic Four to name a few. I imagine, though I don’t have the numbers, that after each of these movies was released the subscription numbers to the related graphic magazines jumped up.

Will we see the same with MMOs?

Maybe, but I think it will take a little while longer for mainstream acceptance. A lot of people still see games as being for kids, even though the statistics show the average gamer is now around 29 years old.

World of Warcraft has opened the door to the world of MMOs for a lot of people. Time will tell if those players go on to other games. But one thing is for sure, in a few years – maybe after WoW has reached 100 million subscribers – there will be a lot more of the population who won’t look down on the average gamer.

In the meantime I’ll keep looking over partitions and note those around me who take a little WoW on their breaks. And I’ll smile.

Perhaps we need a secret handshake.

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