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Have you wondered why nostalgia exists? All of us have experienced nostalgia - about home, friends, and for some, Vanilla World of Warcraft. With WoW Classic around the corner, I did some research to understand the psychological purpose of nostalgia and applied it to the fervent and protracted "you think you do, but you don't" debate.

Nostalgia and Classic WoW, Old School Runescape, or other MMO games in our past are more intertwined than one would assume. Per psychological literature, nostalgia is the strongest during our formative years - which happens to be the days many of us had the freedom to play World of Warcraft or Runescape. Nostalgia is also rooted in social memories, for which MMOs were the perfect social playground.

The research behind nostalgia goes much deeper, with a significant amount of studies concluding that its psychological uses range from supplying us with self-esteem to wrangling with existentialism. I doubt anyone would've wanted a lecture on this - it's not in the video but most of the research I used are linked below.

Music:
Thanks to the special OSRSBeatz for letting me use his Autumn Voyage Remix track: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs1rnF_c_VSg74M5CQ-HKWg
Everness (Great Nostalgic Ambient Music): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MW4fASDkQXA

Links to research:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/1439/aca6a593a10c8ca1fa5d654c87063dd479e1.pdf
https://www.psychologyofgames.com/2013/11/the-psychology-of-video-game-nostalgia/#foot_text_2012_1
https://www.southampton.ac.uk/~crsi/Sedikides%20Wildschut%20Arndt%20%20Routledge%202008%20CDir.pdf
https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/11/nostalgia-video-games/416751/
https://variety.com/2019/gaming/columns/digital-rituals-nostalgia-1203111759/
https://www.academia.edu/36479361/Nostalgia._A_Historical_Cultural_and_Psychological_Review._Excerpts_and_conclusions._

Links to videos used:
"You Think You Do...": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Wrw3c2NjeE
IGN's WoW Classic Review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AYZurTLmWdY
Runescape Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RNK0YBdwko
WoW Looking For Group Documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xyPzTywUBsQ