World of Warcraft’s 20th anniversary was a bittersweet trip through time

We shall never see its likes again.

“Stand in the circles of death,” our raid leader said as our Blackrock Depths group came up on Lord Incendius, a giant fire (what else, with a name like that?) elemental.

“That sounds safe,” someone responded.

“Otherwise, he’ll kaboom the raid,” the raid leader finished. It was peak World of Warcraft raid chat.

Reader, we stood in the circles of death, and the only person that got kaboomed was the fire lord. Our group finished him off, several “ty all” comments appeared in chat, including one from yours truly, and my Demon Hunter was back outside the Caverns of Time, ready to hit the next element of the MMORPG’s anniversary event.

Blizzard went all out for World of Warcraft’s 20th birthday. The multi-month, in-game party was at a size and scale that we don’t typically see from events of its kind. Maybe Blizzard understood the gravity of the moment, the rarity of it, and figured, “Why the hell not?” How many games get to do something like this, really? Given the current state of online games still eyeing Warcraft‘s throne (and, honestly, the whole industry), the odds of another game doing something like this down the road seems … small. The king stays the king.

All Tomorrow’s Parties

World of Warcraft‘s anniversary has traditionally been a fun, albeit small, shindig. There are some quests to complete and special bonuses for things like experience and reputation gain, but for the most part, it’s a little celebration. This year? It felt like a party. There was a giant stage where everyone’s favorite Jim Cummings-voiced storytelling panda, Lorewalker Cho, told stories from Warcraft’s history, and you could cry and throw tomatoes. There was a fashion show where players could vote for the best outfits on display and a mount-matching competition. Leeroy Jenkins had a fried chicken stand. The vibe was immaculate.

You could revisit old dungeons that had been revived for the event and fight World Bosses from past expansions that were all teleported to the same place. The original Alterac Valley came back. There were new armor sets to grab, old, previously unobtainable things came out of the vaults, and BRD went from being a dungeon to a reworked raid. There was a whole new questline focused on helping an overworked event coordinator solve problems featuring characters from across the MMO’s history that ended with everyone throwing the two of you a big party to say thank you. You could even ring the Scarab Gong (if you know, you know) and buy items that would give you reputation with factions that had been removed from the game — at last, my Zandalar Tribe reputation no longer sits there, unfinished, taunting me. I dumped tons of hours into the 20th Anniversary Celebration, admiring the obvious love and care for the history on display.

World of Warcraft has changed a lot in those 20 years. I’ve been playing since near the beginning of the game’s life, and it still dumbfounds me. The class I main now, Demon Hunter, wasn’t even in the game at release. There were fewer character customization options and fewer races to play as. Stuff like Raid Finder and Dungeon Finder didn’t exist. You had to sit in Looking for Group and find other people who wanted to go to the same dungeon you did and then physically go there. Hunters used to have to carry ammo! Money was hard to earn! Mounts were luxuries! The level cap was 120 at one point! We’ve gone through, like, three different talent systems! I could spend 10,000 words covering how much WoW has changed in that time and I wouldn’t be able to do it justice.

Blizzard’s 20th Anniversary Celebration wasn’t about making things the way they were but reminding us where we’d been along the way. It was like coming back to your parent’s house and seeing all your friends and finding treasure in the attic. And as I played it, something unpleasant — like tasting food you think might still be good, but as soon as it hits your tongu,e you know that bad boy has soured — wormed its way into my head: We’re probably never going to see something like this again.

Okay, maybe Final Fantasy XIV gets there. Maybe Warframe. Maybe Fortnite, though Fortnite is less about itself and more about being Ready Player One. Maybe a few games make it. The good Lord willing and the creek don’t rise. But can you imagine a modern online-only game surviving long enough to get something like this?

Blizzard

World of Warcraft is utterly unique; at one point, it had more active players than there are people who live in the state of Georgia. Imagine that. It got a South Park episode that was made partially in-game! And even that behemoth, a game so monumental, so important, that its release is literally a demarcation line for how the industry is and how games are made and released, almost didn’t survive the one-two “this game is kinda bad now” punch of Battle for Azeroth and Shadowlands that saw players leave en masse.

If World of Warcraft can barely get here, what hope does anything else have?

Forget the Concords and the Suicide Squads of the world; how many corpses of online-only games has the industry stepped over in the pursuit of the unattainable? How many more of those games are coming because every executive in every C-suite believes that, surely, this time will be different? In an age where servers are turned off if a game isn’t an immediate success, how could anything last 20 years, much less build a legacy?

World of Warcraft was a unicorn; we shall never see something of its kind again. But it didn’t get to 12 million subscribers overnight. It was allowed to grow. Playing the 20th Anniversary Celebration was joyous, and I’m a little sad that it’s gone. The area around the Caverns of Time is once again just rock and sand. It was a triumphant celebration of a great game. But as I think of it now, all I see is what we’ve lost and what we’ll never see again.