Breakfast Topic: What is WoW, anyway?

It's OK, guys, I'm back with another pensive pandaren lady! I bet you're relieved. (As you may know, I'm writing about WoW for a master's degree, and I got to thinking while reading lately. It happens a lot to me, I sit down to read an essay or a book, and end up drifting on a sea of thought.) The topic of this latest mental boat-ride is relatively vague: What is WoW?

Of course, the obvious, logical answer is that it's the world's largest MMORPG in which players undertake various challenges to defeat monsters or other players and improve their gear. But for me, anyway, this is far too much on the surface. It's like asking what a poem is and being told that it's text arranged in stanzas, often rhyming, that people read. Or asking what a song is and being told about the musical scale.

Of course, WoW is an MMORPG, but I've heard it described as the world's most complicated chat client, which I like a great deal. For me, WoW is about the social and about challenges. It's a beautiful world in which people work together to solve puzzles and complete challenges. But there's more. It's also a meeting place for like-minded folk, a stage for roleplay, a world of its own with its own rules and customs. It has its own dramas, its own celebrities, its own code of conduct — and a (fairly) benevolent deity in the form of the boys (and girls) in blue (text).

So when trying to answer the question in the headline, I'm all adrift. So, readers, what is WoW to you? Is it purely an MMORPG? A social world? An escape? A place to prove yourself by conquering internet dragons? A stage? Or something else entirely?

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