World of Warcraft

World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing video game made and published by Blizzard Entertainment for Windows and macOS. It was announced in 2001 and released on November 23, 2004, marking the tenth anniversary of the Warcraft franchise, and it is set on the fictional planet Azeroth some four years after the events of Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. Players create a character, explore an open world, fight monsters, complete quests and deal with other players and non-player characters. The game encourages cooperation in quests, dungeons and player-versus-player combat, yet it can also be played alone. Progression rests on earning experience, gaining better equipment and trading items for in-game currency. It drew on earlier online games, especially EverQuest, while easing the mechanics around dying and grouping. Eleven major expansions have followed since launch, beginning with The Burning Crusade in 2007, and a vanilla edition called World of Warcraft: Classic appeared in 2019. The game reached a peak of 12 million subscribers in 2010 and is often named among the most popular online role-playing games ever made.