Is this just fantasy? World of Warcraft at 20

World of Warcraft was launched in November 2004, helping to bring online fantasy role-playing gaming into the mainstream. Twenty years on, here’s a look through the BBC archive at how the game was treated with a mixture of amused curiosity and suspicion.

For decades, video gamers were basically alone in their battles against computer-controlled opponents.

Fantasy role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons may have been social, but they were mostly confined to players sat at the same table in real life.

Thanks to developments in internet technology, video games could now become more like advanced board games where people could immediately compete with one another in fantasy worlds.

While World of Warcraft wasn't the first massively multiplayer role-playing game, or MMORPG, it helped move the genre out of a niche realm into broader horizons.

Set in the fantasy world of Azeroth, players would spend their time building up their initially weak warriors, warlocks, rogues and others into more powerful characters by killing monsters and looting them for items or money.

While other MMORPGs required time and dedication, World of Warcraft could even be enjoyed by more casual gamers who liked to play in shorter bursts.

World of Warcraft, or WoW, debuted in North America on 23 November 2004, arriving three months later in the UK on developer Blizzard's new set of region-dedicated servers.

By the end of 2005, more than five million people were hard at work trying to turn their apprentice adventurers into fully-fledged heroes.

For all its fantasy trappings, WoW was similar to real life in that money helped make the world go round. Game cash in the form of copper, silver and gold coins could help characters buy better weapons and armour to stay alive longer and climb the ranks of their chosen profession.

This cash could be earned by doing time-consuming jobs such as mining or collecting herbs. For those who had neither the time nor inclination to do this tedious work, websites sprung up that sold gold that might take 100 hours to collect for as little as £20.

In China, companies were set up where people worked up to 12 hours a day to "farm" gold from the game and sell it on to rich Westerners.

One gamer who itted to the BBC that he had used these services did not want to give his surname in case he got kicked out of his guild or even the game itself.

Ryan said: "I have a life outside of the game that's certainly much more important, so the few precious hours I do get to play on my game I don't want to spend doing the same thing over and over again to get in-game money, when I could just buy that and do the stuff in-game that I actually enjoy.”

By the time the first expansion pack was released in January 2007, WoW was too big to ignore.

More than 2,000 gamers, some dressed as their favourite characters, queued outside HMV in London’s Oxford Street to buy their CD-ROM copy of The Burning Crusade at midnight.

It cost them £29.99 to gain access to a brand-new continent, and along with a monthly subscription fee of between £7 and £10 per player, the game's creators Blizzard were making an avalanche of money.

That expansion pack was at the time the fastest selling computer game ever, shifting almost 2.5 million copies worldwide in the first 24 hours.

Itzik Ben Bassat, Blizzard vice-president of business development, told the BBC’s Working Lunch that the growth of unlimited high-speed internet access was a driving force behind World of Warcraft’s success.

“Our research showed that people did not play online games because they had metered internet and it was just too expensive, but with the growth of unmetered internet, we saw the first growth of online gaming,” he said.

“Our bet was that broadband will basically break the walls and bring people in Europe into online gaming, and therefore we decided to make a large investment in Europe.”

But with all this popularity came the worry among some people that the game might be too addictive.

With the average WoWer spending around 25 hours a week on the game, more than 3,000 people ed an online group called Warcraft Widows for relatives of addicted gamers.

When the Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack was released in November 2008, thousands of gamers once again queued in central London to get their physical copy at midnight.

The game’s second expansion included a bonus continent for high-level players, fresh enemies, extra equipment, spells and new professions. It also gave players the chance to take on a new type of character known as a Death Knight.

Psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos told BBC Breakfast there was a danger in playing World of Warcraft “to the detriment of their work life… and other kind of social interactions if that is all you’re doing”.

For gaming journalist Tim Edwards, most of the pressure came from “not wanting to let down your friends”.

“It's a social pressure more than necessarily an addictive pressure - you want to be part of the group,” he said.

Presenter Bill Turnbull asked cosplaying gamer Marijka Jensen the same question posed by many people who didn’t quite get its appeal: “You meet your friends in the World of Warcraft – why not just go and meet real people?”

She replied: “Well, they are real people – they’re just not in the same country or city.”

By 2019, the original World of Warcraft was ancient history, and the game had evolved and changed dramatically over the years.

Capitalising on nostalgia for the original version, WoW Classic replicated a majority of its features.

One gamer who had played WoW since its first release said the game had evolved considerably, but he told the BBC he wasn’t sure if he would commit to this retro iteration.

"I'll give Classic a go, but honestly, it took forever to do anything - I'm not sure if I'd have the time,” said Luciano Frias-Andrade.