How Warcraft reigned supreme in 2008

But WoW does it all with grace. The game has refined - arguably homogenized - the formula of an extremely complicated and intimidating genre, and made it approachable to everyone - including women - rather than the usual serious male-gaming audience.

That not everyone is a masochist is the hardest lesson the MMO genre has come to terms with in recent years. For those who don't play MMOs, I'll give an example of how developers historically have terrorized their customers with what's probably the biggest bugbear of MMOs: the penalty for a character dying.

In the godfather of MMOs, Everquest, when a player died they came back to life naked - minus armor, weapons or other items - and several minutes', sometimes hours', distance away from where they had fallen in battle. The player not only was penalized by losing what could be a day's worth of experience points each time they died, but also had to run back to their corpse naked and defenseless in order to recover the gear from their corpse.

This, in a world where nearly every living creature will attack you on sight - offering plenty more opportunities to die and lose even more experience points while streaking back to your corpse. If the player didn't make the trek within seven days, the body, along with everything on it would disappear forever.

And Everquest's system was a mercy over the great-grandfather of MMOs, Ultima Online, where other players could loot every single hard-earned item off your corpse upon death. Oh yes - and other players could (and did) jump you nearly any time they wanted.

Simply put, the extent to which MMOs and its players can screw a person over is a thing of legends.

Kids have it too easy these days. WoW is downright forgiving. When a character dies, the player simply strolls back to their corpse in the form of a completely invulnerable ghost. The only real penalty for death is armor damage, which can be repaired for a bit of gold.

Players are placed in one of two clearly defined teams, and little to no communication is allowed between the two factions to reduce griefing. Not that it doesn't happen of course - this the internet, after all.

Blizzard also continues to simplify and merge character stats, making it easier for players to receive, understand and allocate loot and gear. For instance, before the latest expansion, there were separate types of stats on items to add bonuses to healing magic and to damaging magic. Now both have been combined simply into a "magic" bonus.

I see your eyes glazing over, so we shall speak no more of stats. Let's look at something more obvious. But bear in mind this was a pretty big change done four years into the game's life. It shows WoW is constantly evolving.

Another strength for WoW is it's easy on the eyes despite the fact it's becoming long-in-the-tooth. It all comes down to Blizzard's amazing world design and style. Also Blizzard made a game with hardware requirements achievable in the decade it was created in - something PC game developers will almost never consider. It's stunning how game makers tailor their creations only to a tiny niche of folks running bleeding-edge systems and wonder why they're losing audience to game consoles.

So yes, WoW has a lot of things going for it. But how long can it stay on top? This year it manged to send Conan back to Cimmeria, and Warhammer - the very universe from which Blizzard aped most of WoW's ideas - back to the drawing board. But in 2009 when the powerful Superman and Jedi franchises jump into the fight backed by their massive marketing and development machines, WoW may finally meet its match.®