Nostalgia

During my ongoing literature review I often discover interesting facts about things I’ve never thought about. Sometimes I can connect these facts with my own observations: The result is mostly a completely new idea why things are as they are. Maybe these ideas are new to you, too. Therefore I’ll share my new science based knowledge with you!

This week: This time, I think about the way how World of Warcraft has created a completely new dimension of gaming nostalgia.

The unprecedented success of World of Warcraft (WoW) is also resulting in a new dimension of gaming memories. Normally, playing a computer game is like reading a novel. It is very interesting and exciting to dive into a different world and to experience a new story. However, the attachment to the virtual world and the own avatar lasts only several hours until the narrative of the game is exhausted.

In contrast to a regular computer game, the story of WoW is a vast narrative and runs now for more than 10 years. During this huge amount of game time, the players were able to develop a strong attachement to the own avatar and the virtual world. Moreover, the story of WoW is not an endless stream of new events. Instead, the WoW story is segmented into smaller chapters which are added to the game over time. Each chapter lasted for several months and the players were able to gain unique experiences during their exploration of each chapter.

In most of the cases, the story of each chapter evolves around a particular raiding instance. Vested players were running into these instances until the next instance was made available. By now, more than 30 raid instances are available in WoW and the players have made unique memories during their exploration of each instance. Depending on the own experiences and the own preferences, each player has its own favorite instance and is comparing the current content with the ‚good old times‘.

This gaming nostalgia is a completely new dimension of gameplay and is only possible due to the fact that the memories were made in the exact same virtual world. Moreover, the players of WoW are even able to relive a certain content because the instances remained in the game and can be visited by the players. During such a nostalgic instance run, the players are often talking about their memories of the particular instance.

The unprecedented success of WoW has not only caused a new dimension of gaming nostalgia, it even has found a way to keep the memories and history active by allowing the players to revisit a location where they have spent a certain amount of their WoW playtime.