WoW (2004)
“World of Warcraft” was not the first MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Roll Playing Game), but it is unquestionably the biggest. Adventure gaming had always owed a debt to old-school table-top role-playing games like Dungeons & Dragons, but with the MMORPG the experience was finally able to be replicated digitally. No longer did you have to sit in a basement with other sweaty nerds. Now you could just connect to the server and control your level 2 billion Battle Mage with sweaty nerds all over the globe. Everquest may have been first out of the gate, but Warcraft, already a successful strategy game in its own right, became the leader in the subgenre, a position it still holds today despite many pretenders to the throne.
