Azeroth the Homeland: World of Warcraft and the Sense of Belonging

Belonging to a place is conventionally tied to the nation-state, and this paper asks whether a virtual world can offer a different model. Drawing on Michael Billig's notion of banal nationalism, which holds that a world divided into bordered nations has been naturalized as ordinary and unquestioned, the author examines how World of Warcraft's Azeroth comes to be experienced as a homeland. The central thesis is that Azeroth shows a homeland can be simultaneously "here" and "elsewhere," with either no clear physical boundaries or a multiplicity of them.

The study is autoethnographic. Data come from the author's field journals and play experience of World of Warcraft between 2013 and 2016, including conversations with other players, along with commentary posted under YouTube videos of in-game content. A recurring example is a 2014 journal entry in which the author and her Romanian partner, who met in the game, joke that Azeroth is their true homeland, since shared meaning there no longer depends on physical location. The sentiment also appears in popular culture, such as a parodic song performed on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon in 2013. Analysis loosely applies Donna Haraway's concept of figure, tracing how "Azeroth" repeats rhetorically in journals, player discussions, and comments, as well as in the material conditions and everyday habits surrounding play.

Theoretically, the author develops a Deleuzian-Guattarian framework for understanding play and uses Deleuze's concept of the simulacrum to interpret the logics of belonging and nationalism. Azeroth the homeland is argued to work both as a representational trope carrying attached meanings and as a fracture where conventional ideas of homeland, borders, and nationality can be challenged. That fracture arises from the disjoint between the game's representation of borders and nations and the affect produced in the act of play, and such fractures are claimed to be central to play.

The author cautions that play is not a fully nomadic or free space, since it contains its own hierarchies and power structures. Even so, treating the game world as a homeland offers a productive route to understanding belonging toward virtual locations.