We're up to our necks in notable videogame birthdays this month.
The original 1994 Warcraft RTS turns 30 years old on November 15, and then a week later 2004's World of Warcraft turns 20. Half-Life 2 also came out in 2004 and turns 20 this month, as do Halo 2, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, EverQuest 2, and Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines (which famously released on the same day as Half-Life 2... oops).
What a month November 2004 was, eh? November 2014 wasn't quite so stacked, but it did contain Dragon Age: Inquisition, making that game 10 years old as of November 18. Since it got Dragon Age: The Veilguard out in October, we can't quite say that BioWare made us wait a decade for a new game in the series.
- Bethesda marks Oblivion's 19th with a sweetroll, a candle, and absolutely no happy birthday gift for fans eager for the still-unannounced remaster
- I regret to inform you that The Witcher 3 is a decade old this year, but you can forget about unceasing mortality for a few hours at the anniversary concerts
Happy birthday, videogames! Here's a list of some of the most notable games celebrating milestones this month, including console games...
10th
- Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare - November 4, 2014
- Five Nights at Freddy's 2 - November 10, 2014
- Assassin's Creed Unity (and AC: Rogue) - November 11, 2014
- World of Warcraft: Warlords of Draenor - November 13, 2014
- Far Cry 4 - November 18, 2014
- LittleBigPlanet 3 - November 18, 2014
- Dragon Age: Inquisition - November 18, 2014
20th
- Counter-Strike: Source - November 1, 2004 (officially)
- Killzone - November 2, 2004
- Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal - November 3, 2004
- EverQuest 2 - November 8, 2004
- Jak 3 - November 9, 2004
- Halo 2 - November 9, 2004
- Need for Speed: Underground 2 - November 9, 2004
- Metroid Prime 2: Echoes - November 14, 2004
- Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines - November 16, 2004
- Half-Life 2 - November 16, 2004
- Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater - November 17, 2004
- Sid Meier's Pirates! - November 22, 2004
- World of Warcraft - November 23, 2004
- Dragon Quest 8 - November 27, 2004 (Japan)
- Prince of Persia: Warrior Within - November 30, 2004
30th
- Warcraft: Orcs & Humans - November 15, 1994
- Donkey Kong Country - November 21, 1994
- King's Quest 7: The Princeless Bride - November 22, 1994
We're preparing a platter of retrospective coverage for some of these big November anniversaries, but for now I only wanted to comment on the inexorable passage of time. Warcraft being 30 is fine—the '90s feel sufficiently long ago that I can accept that—but the existence of 20-year-olds who've never known a world without Steam is a medium-power liver punch.
If you believe physicist Carlo Rovelli, there is no fundamental variable in the universe that can be called "time," and it's actually an emergent property of our particular and blurred perspective on the quantum interactions that make up reality. But that doesn't make it hit any less hard when he quotes the opera Der Rosenkavalier in The Order of Time. From the book's English translation:
"Everything slips through our fingers. All that we seek to hold on to dissolves. Everything vanishes, like mist and dreams. Time is a strange thing. When we don't need it, it is nothing. Then, suddenly, there is nothing else. It is everywhere around us. Also within us. It seeps into our faces."
(Sorry, but I did ask in the headline if you wanted to feel old.)
