The essential size of the world is fixed but at any given time, WoW has around 10 million active subscribers and to manage the unbelievable number of players, there are hundreds of realms that split up WoW subscribers. Players download the game and pay a monthly fee to login, taking part in a shared world called Azeroth.
These are the forgotten wonders of the digital world-in this case, the World of Warcraft.įor the uninitiated, World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG). Namely, much like the physical world, whole swaths of towns, islands, forests, palaces, and simple shacks have been constructed digitally and then abandoned. The giant, random crystals of Silithus (All images by Eric Grundhauser)Īs more and more of our time and lives move into the digital world, the online landscape is becoming so vast, we have begun leaving some things behind.