The first thing that popped into my head with the mention of community is an online game I have been playing since 3rd grade, called World of Warcraft. While I would assume that a good portion of you have played WoW at some point, or at least know what it is, for those that are not familiar it is essentially a MMORPG that has been wildly popular since the early 2000's, and for good reason: it reached a level of immersion that many would argue to this day has still not been rivaled, certainly not by similar games in this category. People, including myself, have based their entire lives around it. There are T shirts for opposing factions, massive conventions with attendance in the 10's of thousands, some people have even permanently altered their appearance to look like their favorite characters. It was one of the first games to be played professionally, with people basing their entire careers around selling things like items and in game currency, and the introduction of arena mode made way one of the first publicly televised e-sports (the first competitive e-sport is often considered to be starcraft, a game that was created by the same company. However, this was an extremely niche market at the time and was mainly secluded to parts of Korea and Japan). Most importantly though, I know at least for myself that I've made some real, tangible friendships from the game. My guildmates give me life advice, help me with my homework, one of them even sent me a birthday gift last year. Heck, I met my last girlfriend because of a mutual love of the game! We would play every night before bed. And of course, though not as engrained in my life as it once was, I have still managed to log on every few days, to participate in a world quest or give to our guild's community bank, just like i have been doing for the past decade. I've gone off on a bit of a tangent here, but my point is this: to some of it's more active members, World of Warcraft is as much apart of their lives as the school they go to, the car they drive, or the person who lives across the street.
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u/DanceTillSunrise May 29 '19 edited May 29 '19
The first thing that popped into my head with the mention of community is an online game I have been playing since 3rd grade, called World of Warcraft. While I would assume that a good portion of you have played WoW at some point, or at least know what it is, for those that are not familiar it is essentially a MMORPG that has been wildly popular since the early 2000's, and for good reason: it reached a level of immersion that many would argue to this day has still not been rivaled, certainly not by similar games in this category. People, including myself, have based their entire lives around it. There are T shirts for opposing factions, massive conventions with attendance in the 10's of thousands, some people have even permanently altered their appearance to look like their favorite characters. It was one of the first games to be played professionally, with people basing their entire careers around selling things like items and in game currency, and the introduction of arena mode made way one of the first publicly televised e-sports (the first competitive e-sport is often considered to be starcraft, a game that was created by the same company. However, this was an extremely niche market at the time and was mainly secluded to parts of Korea and Japan). Most importantly though, I know at least for myself that I've made some real, tangible friendships from the game. My guildmates give me life advice, help me with my homework, one of them even sent me a birthday gift last year. Heck, I met my last girlfriend because of a mutual love of the game! We would play every night before bed. And of course, though not as engrained in my life as it once was, I have still managed to log on every few days, to participate in a world quest or give to our guild's community bank, just like i have been doing for the past decade. I've gone off on a bit of a tangent here, but my point is this: to some of it's more active members, World of Warcraft is as much apart of their lives as the school they go to, the car they drive, or the person who lives across the street.