Blizzard sits at the apex of a legacy that few companies in the game industry share in; creators of not one but three influential franchises, they are also responsible for the defacto MMOG. Whether you love it or hate it it's hard to deny the impact World of Warcraft has had; bringing a strange sort of genre out of the limited reach that Everquest and Ultima Online possessed, eventually reaching double-digit millions in terms of subscriptions. Almost every MMOG title coming after has tried to take a piece of the WoW pie but none (for better or worse) have managed to topple the giant.
At any rate, World of Warcraft has just celebrated its 5th anniversary but more than that, the Warcraft franchise itself has reached the 15 year milestone. Warcraft: Orcs and Humans was a pivotal addition to the realtime strategy genre, carrying through with two additional sequels before Blizzard released WoW. Warcraft was a big part of my childhood and I have nostalgic memories of attempting to change TCP/IP settings on my modem so that I could play multiplayer maps with my friends from school.
In commemoration Blizzard has launched a mini site dedicated to the anniversaries; there's a lot of "coming soon" plastered over the page but eventually it promises to have artwork, interviews between the devs and the community, and other pieces of notable history related to the franchise.
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