World of Warcraft as a New Form of Religion?

Abstract

In the paper, the author is studying religious phenomena in the vide- ogame called World of Warcraft (WoW) and compares them with tra- ditional religions such as Christian religion and Buddhism. According to author, religious phenomena exist in WoW in the form of myths, rituals and in the creation of communities. This religious phenomena are not completely fictional, because the players are influenced by the virtual (there are cognitive changes), and then we have to accept some degree of the reality here. The author claims that WoW can partially saturate spiritual needs of the contemporary hypermodern man. How- ever, the author states that it cannot replace traditional religion since it lacks its main part – salvation of the man in Christianity (or freeing in Buddhism), which is achieved through self-knowledge, eliminat- ing bad inclinations, prayers or meditation. Traditional religions have a basic structure of religion expressed by the matrix “life – death – res- urrection” which is directly connected with the human body. Human body still constitutes an important part for salvation (or freedom), in- troducing thus a boundary between the real and virtual. According to author, WoW is similar to theatre in the Ancient Greece, the game of WoW can have cathartic effects on the player, but cannot replace tra- ditional religion.