World of Warcraft
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| Developer(s) | Blizzard Entertainment |
| Publisher(s) | Blizzard Entertainment |
| Designer(s) |
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| Composer(s) | Jason Hayes |
| Series | Warcraft |
| Platform(s) | Microsoft Windows, macOS |
| Release |
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| Genre(s) | Massively multiplayer online role-playing game |
| Mode(s) | Multiplayer |
Wikipedia Summary
World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the Warcraft fantasy universe. World of Warcraft takes place within the Warcraft world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard's previous Warcraft release, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. The game was announced in 2001, and was released for the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise on November 23, 2004. Since launch, World of Warcraft has had seven major expansion packs released for it: The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria, Warlords of Draenor, Legion, and Battle for Azeroth.
World of Warcraft was the world's most popular MMORPG by player count of nearly 10 million in 2009. The game had a total of over a hundred million registered accounts by 2014. By 2017, the game had grossed over $9.23 billion in revenue, making it one of the highest-grossing video game franchises of all time. At BlizzCon 2017, a "classic" version of the game was announced, which is planned to provide a way to experience the base game before any of its expansions launched. Blizzard announced at BlizzCon 2018 that WoW Classic will be released in the summer of 2019, and will be included with the standard subscription.
Role in The WIDEVERSE
WoW, as well as Runescape, exists as the very basis of The WIDEVERSE. It was the first "anchor game" that the group drew from as means of entertainment and recruitment. This remains true across many different eras of the group, especially the early COMMIE eras and Friend Zone Era, which itself was based entirely upon the concept of a WoW guild.
History
Vanilla
The history of WoW in the context of The WIDEVERSE begins towards the very end of WoW Vanilla. Shelarahn and friends began playing WoW in November of 2006, 2 months before the expansion released. Many of the precursor members and founders of COMMUNISM were also heavily active in the raiding scene and the forums drama scene during vanilla, some since launch.
Burning Crusade
The formation of COMMUNISM in April of 2007 was the first major event of The WIDEVERSE in WoW, and set the stage for the next 2 years of events. Raiding in Burning Crusade wasnt as hardcore or daunting to attempt as Vanilla was, but it still wasn't easy. Many guilds were having trouble clearing content, and lesser casual guilds could only manage the 10 man raid of Karazhan. That naturally then was the starting point for COMMUNISM raiding in the expansion. First groups into the raid began in June of 2007, with Spaceballs leading. Attempts were midly successful with only one or two complete clears by August and September, until two groups were established and constant clearing was achieved. However, the 1st COMMUNISM CIVIL WAR ended this streak of successes and the WIDEVERSE in Burning Crusade ceased to exist.
Wrath of the Lich King
Many of the WIDEVERSE members remained through the last parts of Burning Crusade and even raided in high level guilds, such as Shelarahn in Damage Done. However, the WIDEVERSE didnt come back until a few months into the new expansion. Spaceballs would reform COMMUNISM and immediately recruited old and new members to raid Naxxramas. Spaceballs, being the terrible leader he is, quickly led the group to tragedy in Naxxramas however. Despite several more weeks of Ventrilo bants and massive dramas, the guild lost steam and raiders left to join more progressive guilds like Lmperium and Umbral Sect.
Later in the year, Spaceballs re-emerged and offered to sell COMMUNISM to Shelarahn, who bought 10k gold from a Chinese botter and purchased the guild. A very brief resurgence was attempted, and even with a few successful boss kills, the guild went nowhere. Shelarahn handed the guild off to an officer and quit WoW to focus on real life pursuits.
Cataclysm
In May 2012, near the end of the expansion, Jorgan reunited most of the old group into a new guild on Darkspear US in their newly formed guild Friend Zone. The guild was a quick success and soon had several active raid teams.
Mists of Pandaria
With the new expansion, Friend Zone sought to expand. A guild from Gorgonnash that had happened to transfer to Darkspear was absorbed, along with many haters of COMMUNISM. These new recruits and Shelarahn clashed until he was run out of the guild
When Prude returned from Texas, him and Shelarahn revived COMMUNISM on a server suggested by one of the Friend Zone refugees, Lightninghoof US. The venture was shortly successful, bringing in new personalities like Donnie, but fizzled out by the time Wildstar blew up. Later on, after the downfall of Wildstar, Dianic formulated a plan for COMMUNISM to relocate to Horde on Emerald Dream US in the lead up to the next expansion.
Warlords of Draenor
However, Dianic would bail on this plan the night of launch, leaving the other COMMIES to figure out what to do. Instead of having a group of raiders ready to join, as Dianic had promised to deliver, COMMUNISM turned to its most effective weapon to recruit: Controversy. Prude, Succ, and Shelarahn all began relentlessly trolling the RP tryhards on the forums, generating a large amount of heat from day 1. This feud eventually culminated in the hacking of HaX Radio and the pirate takeover by COMMUNISM.
Unfortunately, the guild never went anywhere beyond very light dungeon groups, never once stepping into a raid. The project fizzled near the end of 2014, as the group began being interested in Rust.
Legion
Legion was the first expansion that saw no coordinated effort from COMMUNISM, as the group was involved in Rust and the newly created BMW. Individually, however, several members went on to play for a period of time. Taylor pushed hard to bring BMW into WoW, but his efforts were undercut by rogue admins within the group.
Battle for Azeroth
Like Legion, BfA launched with zero interest from BMW. This changed in the first few months of 2020, when as a result of the Coronavirus outbreak and the resulting lockdowns, Blizzard instituted a permanent 100% XP bonus, halving leveling time. Capri Sun Tzu chose this time to reveal that he was an officer in a fairly successful raiding guild on Thrall US, encouraging Bimmers to roll characters there. Taylor took the initiative to reach out to the guild, resulting in many Bimmers joining.
Shadowlands
With renewed interest, Shadowlands became the first WoW expansion that BMW was present for at launch. All except for Taylor, who in typical fashion played for 10 minutes and got butthurt that there was too much Thrall and Jaina, and went back to playing Old School Runescape.
January of 2021 saw the creation of the independent BMW raiding crew, WIDEFORCE, and its associated Discord who were able to quickly work through Castle Nathria, downing Heroic Sire Denathrius within a few months. 9.1 was planned to be the official coming out party for the WIDEBOYS guild, however, the patch proved to be disappointing and with Capri Sun Tzu unable to lead raids for several weeks, the project was shelved indefinitely.