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Oh, WoW
The epic adventures of World of Warcraft are nowhere near over yet.
The world (lowercase) of Warcraft pitted the seemingly noble Alliance (humans, elves, dwarves, your Tolkienesque usual suspects) against the villainized Horde (orcs, trolls, and other stock monster-humanoids from the trope factory) in a vicious-with-a-touch-of-slapstick conflict spanning three main titles and numerous expansions between 1994 and 2003. I remember smelting tin and copper to make bronze.” The elaborate crafting system in World of Warcraft, which often required materials gained through repetitive in-game labor, represented an explosion in the popularity of the now-ubiquitous mechanic where you, as a player, find some stuff and turn it into something else. “I spend so much time doing monotonous, repetitive tasks, for free, because somehow we have discovered that that’s fun.” Here, in 2024, it’s hard not to feel a vaguely sinister undertone to all of this as the rising tides of capitalistic overreach gamify the gig economy and hijack the natural human affinity for rewards for their own extractive purposes.
Or read this on The Verge