World of Warcraft by Daniel Lisi: Book Review
Game cover image provided by Moby Games
I have never played the videogame World of Warcraft.
And before my reader says “it’s not a videogame artard, it’s an MMORPG,” I’ll let them know that I also watch South Park and know that reference. We’ll get to the episode “Make Love Not Warcraft” in a bit, but for now I just want to make it clear, I never played the game.
And I’ll be honest, I probably will never play it.
I did however go on one stunningly bad date with a woman I met the first day of college who was an unapologetic heavy player. We went bowling, she aggressively flirted with me the entire time, asked me when she could see my bedroom, and then she dropped me off outside a Hastings because I didn’t have my license at the time(I had to get a ride home from my Dad(I was around 22 at this point(somehow that’s less pathetic to me than the memory of the date itself))). This experience was the closest I ever got to World of Warcraft(henceforth referred to as WOW for brevity’s sake), and it solidified a long-lasting bias against the game.
This bias was, obviously, unfair.
But that date still sucked, mostly because I unironically enjoy bowling.
My miserable early attempts at romance aside, this perception is important because it explains why I waited so long to finally purchase and read World of Warcraft by Daniel Lisi. Book #12 in the Boss Fight Book series, Lisi’s book is a highly personal account of his experience finding and developing a perception of self through the videogame World of Warcraft. Lisi explores his time playing the game as a young man, while observing how his vulnerabilities and foibles allowed him to appreciate the game, and then literally become addicted to it. Along with several personal accounts of his time playing WOW, Lisi explores the communities of players that gravitated to it, the financial systems that have built WOW into a powerhouse in the videogame industry, the racism and sexual harassment that has perpetuated within the community of players, the addiction that many players developed over hours of gameplay, and finally how Lisi walked away from World of Warcraft while maintaining a complicated fondness for it all in just 128 pages.
Seriously, this is a short book. You could probably read it in an afternoon.
I read it over a week because I work a full-time job, I have a girlfriend, and I’m trying to learn how to make DOOM Wads.
My Patreon link is at the end of the essay if my reader wants to help me afford groceries.
Book cover image provided by Boss Fight Books.
Lisi’s book is mostly personal, and I suspect that’s one of the reasons why I was surprised at how much it resonated with me.
When I was a teenager I played a…great number of videogames, many of them on my Personal Computer(PC) and the rest on my Playstation 2 and Nintendo Gamecube. Apart from the cognitive dissonance, itself, I have to be honest and admit my prejudice against WOW was mostly based in videogame elitism, something that I’m steadily trying to abandon. I was under the impression that there were “Good” videogames like Lost Kingdoms, Super Mario Sunshine, Freedom Fighters, Stronghold Crusader, Grand Theft Auto III, Metroid Prime, Alice: Madness Returns, Luigi’s Mansion, etc., and then there were “games for dorks” and that always meant World of Warcraft.
It didn’t mean Diablo II for some reason though.
Diablo II, fun fact, is flipping rad dude.
Looking at my past self honestly this bias stemmed entirely from poor self image and undiagnosed depression that manifested in criminally low self-esteem. I wasn’t happy with who I was, I didn’t enjoy the company of the people around me, and I hated the school I went to because it always made me perceive that I was out of place, or, more accurately that I didn’t have a place in it. And, on top of all of that, I was a kid who enjoyed videogames, and would rather play videogames than go to church or play sports, the activities that I was supposed to enjoy.
Lisi’s description of himself was painfully familiar when he opened his book describing his past self, and how World of Warcraft entered his life. He writes:
In an aggressively hormonal and socially isolated stage of my life, I used World of Warcraft as a means of social connection, romance, entertainment, inspiration and escape.When WOW came out on November 23rd, 2004, I was thirteen years old. I had been playing video games since the age of four, starting off my lifelong passion with a Nintendo 64 console and all the greats of the time Super Mario 64, The Legend of Zelda, Ocarina of Time, Star Fox 64, Mario Kart 64 and Goldeneye 007.Shortly after its release, World of Warcraft was installed and ready to play on my computer, and I was about to enter a world that would impact me for the rest of my life. (3)
Like Lisi, I also disappeared, and have regularly disappeared into videogames during moments in my life when I’ve felt incredibly isolated. Part of that was simply because videogames are fun and can be a welcome distraction. I recognise however that on more than a few occasions, I’ve relied on those digital spaces as a sort of emotional balm. It’s a lot easier to forget that yet another woman turned me down for a date when I’m busy fighting hobgoblins in Lost Kingdoms or jumping over Blarggs in Super Mario World. Like any work of media, videogames are as much about providing a temporary escape from reality(whatever that is) as they are entertaining and educating players.
Screenshot image provided by Moby Games.
What’s important for this review is that Lisi is honest about his initial experience with World of Warcraft, and one of the reasons why he played the game in the first place: he played the game because it was fun, and provided a respite from painful emotions.
What I loved about Lisi’s book is how personal it was, and his honesty with the reader is one of the endlessly appealing aspects. While some entries in the Boss Fight Book series have been more historically or technically oriented, Lisi’s book is highly personable. Lisi offers stories of playing the game with his step-father and then eventually strangers on the internet who would become friends. Every one of these passages is written with an honesty that only invited me more and more into the work itself. I have to be honest and admit that this honesty is what left the most impact upon me as a reader because, again, I didn’t care about WOW. After only a few pages I still didn’t care about WOW, but I did care about Lisi and the arc of his journey with the videogame. Lisi’s book beautifully explores being a young man who found an emotional and intellectual solace in a videogame, and then how that solace eventually festered into an obsession and arguably an addiction that he stepped away from.
On that note it’s important to note that Lisi’s book is not purely a celebration of World of Warcraft. His effort is to observe how the game impacted him, but also how it impacted the culture at large.
Most of the impact was positive.
Some of it not so much.
Lisi observes through interviews, articles, as well as his own experience how as much as WOW has provided millions of players an incredible simulated reality where they can freely imagine themselves to be whoever they would like and experience incredible adventures, this game has also allowed certain individuals with addictive tendencies to overindulge leading to personal and financial ruin.
Screenshot image provided by Moby Games.
Lisi writes about the gameplay loop of WOW to illustrate this point. WOW’s general structure is that it hosts a platform where players can go on fantasy quests that vary in complexity and difficulty. These quests can be performed solo, but often players would tackle them as a group, some people even forming up social clubs called “guilds” which Lisi describes in further detail later in the book. At the end of a quest there is typically some sort of boss non-playable character(npc) that needs to be defeated, at which point players are rewarded with certain items such as weapons, armor, treasure, etc. Once this quest is completed players can then begin a new quest.
And then another.
And then another.
And then one more.
And then potentially hundreds or thousands more
Since WOW is an online MMORPG(an acronym for Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game), and since playing the game requires paying its publishing company Blizzard a monthly membership the company has an incentive to keep the game going beyond a single narrative arc, and this involves generating an enormous amount of content to keep players playing the game as long as they can.
In one passage Lisi examines this business structure, while criticizing its effects on vulnerable players as well as the media of videogames period. He writes:
The type of player that World of Warcraft creates is generally one that's hungry for this reward reinforcement. A raider is looking to fulfill that side of the gameplay loop to receive better gear for their character to progress further and further down the endless chain of content. The question this poses is: what does this cultivate inside of a player besides repetitive consumption? What happens when a gameplay loop never reaches an end point, but rather traps its player inside of a whirlpool of content?
The task ahead of game developers is a challenging one. It is becoming increasingly impossible to strike a balance between creating fulfilling game experiences and meeting your bottom line. To me, though, this balance begins with allowing players to keep their gaming and their lives separate, the free-to-play model, which typically relies on the retention of its players for microtransactions is the antithesis to this idea. (101)
Screenshot image provided by Moby Games.
Reading this passage I realize how one of the most difficult aspects of aging is managing how I present my aging. Looking at the previous paragraph I instinctively recognise a thought, “I remember when buying a videogame meant you had bought the whole game.” This thought makes me want to cock my glasses to the end of my nose, make some Earl Grey tea, and complain about the kids on skateboards that zip around my neighborhood; this is to say, this thought makes me feel old. But once I stop thinking about how there ain’t no accountability no more, I recognise that beyond this initial impulse there is a concern with how the economics of the videogame market have changed over time and are continuing to change. One need only look at the garbage island of mobile videogames that advertise themselves as free and then bog the player down with advertisements and microtransactions.
World of Warcraft did not create microtransactions, however its economic model is worth criticizing for the way it feeds off of emotionally vulnerable players.
While writing this review I stumbled across an article about World of Warcraft on Vice.com, examining the game’s cultural legacy. Written by Patrick Klepek and published on 11 November 2019, the article “‘World of Warcraft’ Changed Videogames and Wrecked Lives” doesn’t mince words about what it is and what it’s trying to argue. One particular quote stood out to me for its stylistic elegance as well as its rhetorical effect. Klepek writes:
It was, and is, a game that demands and rewards those who worship at its [alter]. Because its profitability is based on paying a monthly subscription, it’s engineered to find ways to bring you back into the fold, to keep paying that monthly fee. And compared to the real world, it offers a sense of place and community where you can be accepted and praised as a hero.
But it is not a game that, after hours of play, checks in and asks if you’re okay, or suggests you should come back later. It doesn’t kick you off for playing 24 hours straight. It doesn’t have a link to a phone number to call, or a website to visit, if playing too much has become a problem.
I note that that last sentence is a reference to the Nintendo Wii console which, when it was released, originally offered a feature where it would stop gameplay if the console had been left on and active for more than a set number of hours. This was a reaction to a growing public concern that videogames were too addictive, an accusation most often leveled at Nintendo despite the fact Blizzard Entertainment was a company that offered rewards for players who played the games for extended periods of time, and the Nintendo Wii literally came packaged with an exercise simulator.
On a side note, I really miss Wii Bowling.
Screenshot image provided by Moby Games.
Klepek’s article is informative and provides a number of first-hand testimonies(and often horror stories) of players who became addicted to World of Warcraft, and anyone trying to understand the game’s long-term cultural legacy will need to read and listen to stories like this. Lisi’s book offers a comparable testimonial, however rather than dwell solely on the negative effects, his book goes a long way in explaining how those tendencies can manifest in the first place. Rather than just damning the game as manipulative software, Lisi provides his reader an insider’s perspective into why he spent the time with the game that he did.
For example, in several passages Lisi explains the Guild sub-culture that developed in World of Warcraft, and how the “Raiding” system fueled dedication and in some instances addiction. He writes in one early passage:
For many hardcore raiders, myself included, raiding started to feel like a second job. The social obligation and the risk of being removed from your role in a guild motivates hardcore players to return to the game on a habitual, regimented basis. The chance at better equipment and the opportunity to see game content unfold was only possible when you clocked in every day.Your commitment, then, is not to the game itself, but to your community. (31)
This last word is everything because the defining quality of MMORPG videogames is their emphasis on community. Players play MMOs because they want to play alongside real people. Much has been written about this aspect of online gaming, but for the sake of simplicity (and trying to stay on topic), Lisi shows his reader how World of Warcraft provided him with a community that was socially fulfilling as opposed to the real world. He explains that WOW offered him a place to be alongside like-minded individuals and form meaningful social connections that made him feel confident, connected, and relevant to the world.
Daniel Lisi, author photo from Not a Cult Media.
This is to say, World of Warcraft afforded Lisi a social space.
And not gonna lie here, that was peculiar to read.
Looking at this paragraph it’s clear that Lisi and I played videogames for entirely different reasons, but also the exact same reasons. Lisi appreciated WOW because his social environment and personal self were lacking, and I played videogames for the same reason. Being a teenage boy sucks, being a teenage boy who’s socially isolated sucks, and being a teenage boy who played “the wrong videogames” sucked because the people in your social circle cannot relate to you. Players have flocked to WOW because they are able to find something in the cooperative play that they could not find outside of it, namely social connections that are meaningful and not just based on proximity.
And in one of the most beautiful passages of his book Lisi narrates one such encounter.
Lisi describes becoming closer to one of his guild-mates, a fellow teenager named Margot, and how their communication steadily became romantic until, when they finally met at a World of Warcraft convention, they spent a beautiful series of days together before parting and then steadily growing apart. It’s a beautiful moment in the book that speaks to how this game bridged a gap and gave Lisi a sense of confidence he was lacking. There are multiple stories in his book similar to this, including one passage at the end in which he describes going on a secret roadtrip to meet up with several of his guild-mates in real life and spend a weekend playing the game together.
These passages are not warnings of the threat of addiction, they’re just celebrations of a work of media that helped create a wonderful memory.
Lisi reflects on this mid-way through his book when he writes:
My mildly romantic friendship with Margo only increased my addiction to World of Warcraft. The incentive to play the game alongside Margot heavily outweighed any rewarding feelings I got from the real world. Not only did I have a group of peers who respected the work I did with them– I had a girlfriend. I had someone who listened to me and, without judgment related to me, and I could do the same with her.
I was in a completely different world, detached from the social hysteria emanating from high school. It almost felt as if I no longer needed the acceptance of my real-life peers. I could avoid the social ambiguity and awkwardness of face-to-face encounters. Leaping directly into a place that felt safe and comfortable, and even spent playing World of Warcraft made far more sense than another school dance. (49-50).
I often note in these essays that I have difficulties with reality. I suppose, when thinking about it, this is just a way of acknowledging a lifelong habit of dissociation. High School was not a great period of my life and so videogames and music became more “real” to me than any dances or after-school activities. In my professional life I have co-workers who are lovely people, but the realities of the job typically overshadow my ability to connect with others. And since I work a public service job, most of the social interactions I have on a daily basis are shallow affairs with strangers that typically span less than a few minutes. Thinking about it, most of my life I have been unable to truly appreciate or engage with people either in work or school.
Art, films, comics, novels, and videogames have provided me with a sense of reality that’s far outpaced any interpersonal relationship in my life.
Except my girlfriend of course.
But she plays videogames and likes bugs so that makes sense.
Promotional advertisement provided by Moby Games.
Approaching this essay was difficult because, like I noted at the beginning, I’ve never played World of Warcraft. I try, with each of my reviews of the Boss Fight Books Series, to play the game while reading to get a feel for the energy of the game so that I can understand why the author writes what they write. But with this book I just couldn’t find the energy.
There’s nothing about World of Warcraft that appeals to me personally, and the thought of paying $15 to play a game but not own it was just too philosophically revolting.
The closest I’ll ever get to World of Warcraft, apart from that stunningly bad date I mentioned at the beginning, is that one episode of South Park, which I’ve watched at least thirty times. And I wanted to write something about it since it’s the primary way I’ve encountered the game.
The episode “Make Love Not Warcraft” originally aired on Comedy Central 4 October 2006. The episode involves the protagonists Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartmen trying to play WOW, but everytime they are killed by a player who has played the game every hour of every day for the last year and half. He is, in short, “someone with absolutely no life.” The rest of the episode involves the boys playing WOW for three months solid to level up and defeat this evil player who is killing everyone in the game and, with the help of Blizzard and Stan’s dad, they eventually beat him. This episode eventually won an Emmy award and is notable because it includes the use of machinima, a software program that renders 3D cut-scenes allowing Stan, Kyle, Kenny, and Cartman’s characters to move about a simulated WOW game.
Lisi doesn’t dedicate any serious time in his book to “Make Love not Warcraft”(and in fact as far as I can tell he doesn’t even discuss it). I need to make that clear to my reader so they don’t go into his book and grow disappointed with the lack of the reference. I simply bring this episode up to point out that my experience with an adult animated cartoon from 2006 is the closest I’ve ever wanted to play WOW, and even then whenever I’ve considered playing the game I usually just watch this episode again.
So, with that said, Why should someone read Lisi’s book? What does it offer readers? How does it contribute info or ideas to videogame discourse? Why do I think someone should read this book? What if you don’t play or even like World of Warcraft?
These are important questions, but hopefully this review has answered them already (or at least some of them(or at least one of them(or at least made you want to read the book))). I wanted to read this book because I love videogames, and Lisi clearly does as well. He’s written a book that speaks to how videogames can shape our existence, how they impact us emotionally, how they can help us develop intellectually, how they entertain us, how they can tap into our addictions and leave us disconnected and spiritually starved, how WOW altered the course of his life and the lives of millions of people across the world, how WOW impacted the economic model of videogame production and release, how he found himself so dedicated to a game that he screamed at his step-father for interrupting him while playing the game, how he met young woman who shared his passion and experienced a romance, and finally how he left the game behind him understanding its role in his life and how it was time to move forward.
All of these ideas and testimonies contribute to an incredible book that somehow is only 128 pages long.
Seriously, I don’t know how Lisi accomplished this.
I’m left bumfuzzled and kinda angry not gonna lie (mostly because I can’t even write a damn book review without making it at least 2000 words at this point).
Screenshot image provided by Moby Games.
I’m someone who’s never played WOW, and never will, but I’m glad I read this book because my knowledge of the game and the sub-culture it created are fascinating and beautiful. It was a reminder of the power of media and its ability to shape the reality we occupy and recreate for ourselves every day. And finally, I’m glad I read it because, by the end of the book, Lisi is an incredible writer who’s shared so much of his past with his reader that, by the last page, I felt as if I had gone on a quest with the man.
The ending wasn’t terribly happy, but I’m still glad for the time spent in this simulated reality.
Joshua “Jammer” Smith
5.19.2025
If you’d like to read Lisi’s book you can purchase it on Boss Fight Books website by following the link below:
World of Warcraft by Daniel Lisi – Boss Fight Books
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