Gaming Culture: "World of Warcraft"

I have been playing "World of Warcraft" since beta and just like a lot of things have changed within the game, the culture and the people who play the game have also changed. I remember reading about "World of Warcraft" years before its actual release, when I was still a kid. When I finally got to check it out, I knew I was going to love it.

One unique aspect to "World of Warcraft" is that each server seems to take on a life and personality of its own. I have played on quite a few servers over the years that I have been in the game; Eonar, Proudmoore, Chromaggus, Blade's Edge, Quel dorei, and many more. Now I have a home for my mains on Laughing Skull.

Our guild, Protest the Hero, began as a group of real life friends and has expanded to 30+ accounts and a ton of alts. I've been in larger guilds before but I like the homey feel to this small, close-knit group. I am part of the core raiding group on Tuesday and Thursday nights and while we are currently 6/12 on bosses, we are very casual.

It's a PvP server but the PvP is not as hardcore as on some servers. Players may fight for a farm area or a questing zone, or kill you if they come across you while questing but they rarely just farm you for the sake of being annoying. This could also be due to the release of Cataclysm expansion where everyone just wants to level up and be done with it. They don't want to mess around with farming kills.

Sometimes a fight will break out between factions at a raid entrance such as atop the spire at Bastions of Twilight. This can actually be a lot of fun for the two guilds/groups to battle it out with the losing side usually trying to quickly zone back into the instance and avoid death.

The interesting thing about "World of Warcraft" is the enormous player base that is has. There are nearly 13 million subscribers globally and that breaks down into a variety of different races, ethnicity's, ages and sexes. While you will still hear the occasional "girls don't play games" joke, overall everyone is well aware that females of all ages play "World of Warcraft." The culture does not discriminate by race or real-life cultures the way that some gaming cultures do.

In fact, it is the diversity of WoW that is part of what makes it such a fun place to play. There are so many people on a server that it's easy to ignore the ones you don't like or don't get along with. Since there are inter-server battlegrounds and group capabilities, you get into groups faster and you have a larger pool of people with which to play with.

I also play a lot of first-person-shooters and while females play those as well, the FPS scene is much less friendly to female players. As a whole, the culture of WoW is friendly and there is something for nearly everyone in the game so there is a certain level of acceptance for others. Players have to work together to achieve like goals, even if they may not always like the people they are playing with. There is a level of tolerance there when people just want to get the job done.

You might like to raid, to PvP or arena, quest, make money, play the AH or just log on to chat with friends. All of these things can be done in one game, and more. The beauty of the culture of "World of Warcraft" is that it is so diverse, just like the game itself. I look forward to six more fun years!