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=World Of Warcraft=

**The Game**
World of Warcraft is a 3-Dimensional "Massively Multi-player Online Role Playing Game," or MMORPG as it is sometimes called, that was developed over a span of 4-5 years by Blizzard Entertainment Inc.. Blizzard Entertainment, creators of the StarCraft and Diablo Series, made a series of 2-Dimensional Role-Playing Games in its early days of production. This game was called Warcraft. This game alone brought Blizzard a huge fan community, and put Blizzard among the greatest game developers of the day. After some time, Blizzard decided to start playing with 3-D Graphics, and came up with World of Warcraft. This video game was extremely innovative in the sense that it was designed to be player-friendly and make for an optimal gaming experience. They did this by creating an open-ended world where players are free to do what they please. The Company also created thousands of quests that helped characters develop as well as avoid what programmers call 'collisions.' It was then when Blizzard decided to split the characters between two warring factions, the Alliance and the Horde. Players can slay members of the opposing factions as well as have full-scale battles in certain areas such as Alterac Valley and Eye of the Storm. They announced the game at the ECTS Trade Show in September 2001. Since then, it has been quite popular, but never quite as popular as when it fist launched. Right now, they have a gaming community of about 12 million. In addition, they just started to advertise on television with their "Night Elf Mohawk" campaign featuring Mr.T from the 1980's TV series The A-Team. This game has had three expansion packs, which raise the level cap (the highest level a character can reach), and add new areas to explore and features to the game. The first, entitled "The Burning Crusade," came out in January 2007 and raised the level cap to 70 from 60, and added a new zone called the Outlands. It also added two new races to the game, Dranei and Blood Elves, which added to the original eight, For the Alliance, Humans, Gnomes Dwarves and Night Elves, and for the Horde, Orcs, Trolls, Undead, and Tauren. The next, "Wrath of the Lich King," came out in November 2008, raised the level cap to 80, and added a new zone, "Northrend." WoLK also added a new character class to the game, called a Death Knight, which expanded the possibilities for players and added a new dimension to the game. This was especially appealing to me, since it was then when I started to really get in to the game. The latest expansion to the game, entitled, "Cataclysm," reforged the zones of the original world, consisting of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms, and raised the level cap to 85, as well as adding yet another two races, Worgen for the Alliance and Goblins for the Horde.This final expansion pack came out on December 7th, 2010, not too long ago.

Community
Blizzard created many ways for players to interact throughout the game. These include, Guilds, Chat, and the auction house. These unique features are showcased in the following video. media type="custom" key="7827395"

An interesting fact abut the foreign reception of the game is that in China, the government imposed changes to the game, including placing flesh on bare-boned skeletons and putting dead characters into tidy graves rather then letting them just drop where they fall and lie there. They claimed that this is to create a more healthy and harmonious game environment. Players purchase game time in increments of 60 days or 30 days, the 30-day option being a recurring subscription which costs them $14.99 USD. When they buy the game, players receive a month of free play, in addition to the 10-14 day free trial they may have played. In South Korea, Players are billed much like one is charged for cell phone use, by the amount of minutes played. They purchase a certain number of hours through the ARS billing system, and once their time is up, they will receive a dialog that says that their prepaid time has expired. However, this will not be a problem for this man, who, to the right, held the record for the biggest game time purchase yet in history. The Game has also been used to advertise unrelated products, such as the Toyota Tacoma. media type="custom" key="7827359"

Also, the quite popular Leroy Jenkins skit, which features a character which has absolutely no patience, exclaims, "Leeeeeeroy Jennnkins!!!" and runs into a mob of Rookery Whelps (Dragonkin, or Small Dragons) and gets killed, as well as gets his party killed off completely. This reception by the popular community has helped world of Warcraft get popular, as well as brought smiles and laughs to the faces of many around the world.

Gladwellian Analysis
I think the major Gladwellian Factor that contributes to the popularity is Connectors. For example, My Cousin, Jason Campbell told me about the game and that I needed to try it, acting as sort of a maven as well as a salesman and a connector, so he got it for me Christmas 2007, and I loved it. I have been playing ever since.

What I would do to the popularity of this phenomenon is to abolish and disprove some of the stereotypes associated with the game to further tip the phenomenon. For example, I am not a fat messy slob, and with marching DCI World Class drum corps, I most definitely do have a life. So, why do people think these crazy things? That is a mystery that I have no idea how to answer.