num_pages: 304
description: In 2005 the video game World of Warcraft struck the cultural landscape with tidal force. One hundred million people have played WoW in the twelve years since.But those people did more than play. They worked they fought they triumphed they held entire game servers hostage they even married each other in real life. They developed new identities swapping their workaday selves for warriors mages assassins and healers. They built communities and rose to lead them. WoW was the worlds first mass before Facebook or Twitter millions of people established online identities and had to reckon with the consequences in their real lives.Blood Plagues and Endless Raids explores this wild incredibly complex culture partly through the authors engaging personal story from absolute neophyte to leader of North Americas top Spanish-speaking guild but also through the stories of other players and the games developers. It is the definitive account of one of the worlds biggest pop culture phenomena.World of Warcraft is more than ones and zeroes more than lines of code and so its history must be more than pushing buttons or slaying dragons. Its the tale of a huge and passionate community of the connections they made the experiences they shared and the love they held for one another.
language: English
title: Blood Plagues and Endless Raids: A Hundred Million Lives in the World of Warcraft
publisher: Chicago Review Press