My Azeroth

Note: This is my character on a throne. 'Cause I'm the king.

Though I haven't mentioned it yet, there has been a lot of video game playing in my life, more hours than i can count. But in my recollection no game stood out as a greater influence than the media I’ve mentioned thus far, rather they aided in driving home the lessons I learned more prominently elsewhere. That was until I remembered when I first started playing World of Warcraft. It had all the things I mentioned before that I learned to look for in stories; expansive universes, some over the top crazy design, and a feeling that the artists were speaking through that design. But was most important and crucial to the immersion it brought me was how it played, most notably the social aspect. I had played games with others before but never in the scale or persistent way an MMO like World of Warcraft asks. Playing with millions of people in the same world, either working together or facing off against one another made me feel like I was my character in a way no other game had before. This introduced me to a whole new level of what the potential of video games could be. How the aspect of interactivity can bring so much more to the presentation of art and its ability to invoke emotion and empathy. I think this was when I decided definitively that someday I would work on games.