Gaming Communities

The internet has obviously had a massive increase in the growth of gaming communities of the past decade or so. Obviously, the word community in this sense is people brought together by a common interest. When I was growing up, gaming communities were people that were (probably) local to each other, living in the same area, in the same school, and so came together much like, for example, a local football club might bring people together. Since then of course, locality has little to do with the growth of communities (gaming or otherwise) on the internet. People are being brought together across a whole spectrum of common interests. In terms of gaming specifically, I have been regularly being playing World of Warcraft, an mmorpg, for more than three years now and that is entirely due to the community I am involved with there. The quality / enjoyability of a game like this is ultimately what determines its success, but the communities that are generated are what keep it going. As good as WoW is, I would not be playing it after so long just for the sake of the game. Likewise, time and again, I have seen people from my 'guild' quit because they are bored of the game, only to come back a couple of weeks later because they miss the other people. It has even grown beyond that. I have flown to England for the birthday party of a 'guildmate' I had never met before, and likewise several of them have come to Ireland specifically to meet online friends. Anything that brings people together like that cant be a bad thing.