World of Warcraft

The first game I always install on a new PC, and then keep installed there, forever taunting me, is World of Warcraft. I don’t even know why, exactly. It’s not as if I’m a consistent WoW player. I only ever played devotedly for some six months or so back when the game first launched, and Blizzard’s MMO is hardly some graphical powerhouse, perfect for seeing what your new machine can really do.

But you know what World of Warcraft does have, what defining quality I haven’t been able to shake in all the years since I first traversed Azeroth? It has vibes. Oh man, does it have vibes. The way the Night Elf town of Astranaar felt—its lush purple hues, its deep forest energy so rich you could practically smell the abundant greenery growing around you—was particularly powerful for me, but every zone of Blizzard’s game was similarly evocative, created with such care that you felt the atmosphere reaching out of the screen and surrounding you.

Those incredible vibes made such an impression on me that they became, in a way, intrinsically linked to the experience of PC gaming in my mind. So whenever I get a new PC, one of the first things I want to do is just revisit that place, that feeling. I always half-toy with the idea of fully getting back into WoW, seeing what it’s like today, exploring its landscapes anew, but it never happens. Instead, the icon just remains on my desktop, reminding me of how it felt to immerse myself in Azeroth all those years ago. Carolyn Petit, Managing Editor