I've just been thinking about WoW, and what elements surrounding it can never truly be recaptured. Gameplay systems change, people come and go, whatever, but fucking hell, we had a pretty amazing community back in the day. Fansites were in the thousands, Machinima was uploaded on a daily basis, and Blizzard themselves rocked the fuck outta everyone with the cheesiest novelty rock band that's ever lived in ETC.
Mainstream media paid attention to World of Warcraft in ways that it never had previous games, leading to a more widespread acceptance & understanding of gamers than ever before. I know it's impossible to attribute all (or maybe any) of the change surrounding the perception of gamers to a single game, but I believe no game before WoW had anywhere near the effect that it did. It validated our hobby in many ways, and the only modern comparisons are probably the Wii, Minecraft, and whatever iOS tat is popular today.
These are things that just aren't coming back, and it saddens me to think about it. While we do still have a few fansites, the odd piece of machinima, ETC performances at Blizzcon and whatnot, the perfect storm of developer brilliance & player creativity surrounding the game is never going to return, and I have to wonder if any MMO will manage to do so again... I'm leaning towards no. This genre I've spent so much of my life involved in is actually dying, and I hate seeing it, especially as the flagbearer for the dedicated MMO keeps falling from grace day by day.
It just isn't a special game anymore.
