<p>it's the type of game where you just grind so much, you don't REALIZE that you're having fun.</p>
<p>when I used to play halo 2 online, it was so much fun that I was addicted. for this game, the addiction comes from what's in store for you later. </p>
<p>^^just something I noticed.</p>
<p>i'm a recovering addict for about two years.</p>
<p>i was always in prominent guilds, the ones on the server that everyone looked up to. the ones that were always insanely ahead of everyone else. </p>
<p>i used to think it would be easy to quit, but whenever i look at kill shots from my old guild via my IRL friend still in it, i just get an urge to play again to relive the glory days.</p>
<p>that's my motivation: to be better than everyone else.</p>
<p>To answer the originial question, one reason why WoW is so addictive is that it provides a interesting virtual virtual world to people's rather mundane lives. Some nerdy kid in real life who gets beaten up everyday at school can be the most powerful character in these games. It immerses the user into a different "world" and he/she can assume a different identity. </p>
<p>I had a high school classmate who was scrawny, pale, and kinda awkward (probably because of WoW). Yet, he had the best mage or something on the server and he was revered by other players.</p>
<p>^Well not every gamer someone with escapism issues, although I do feel bad for people like your classmate.</p>
<p>I definitely agree with the people who've brought up the social commitment aspect. I avoid people on WoW like the plague sometimes because the really good people will take up much of your time with organized events while the bad people will annoy you to no end and still ultimately waste your time with their incompetence.</p>
<p>One thing that Blizzard does do well though, is giving you little rewards (new level/item/map) just when the repetition and boring parts seem unbearable. I often find myself with the "well I'm already this far into it, might as well keep going until I finish" mentality. Although, you eventually realize there is no end haha. It's actually kind of interesting/smart of them to make the game like that.</p>
<p>LOTRO is better than WoW imo :P</p>
<p>Aww... I want UCLAri to respond.</p>
<p>I'm going to college next year.</p>
<p>I plan to try alcohol. I plan to try drugs.
The one thing I do not plan to try -- is World of Warcraft.</p>
<p>That game scares me.</p>
<p>Plus, it's not open-source. That is totally not cool.</p>
<p>Imagine if it was...</p>
<p>"Yeah, I'm just going to change the code to make myself invincible."</p>
<p>I hate online games....nuff said!</p>
<p>But that wouldn't be the official "vanilla" version of World of Warcraft.
It'd be a modified version, and probably one that no one would play.
Unless it contained nice patches. :cool:</p>
<p>Of course, Blizzard wouldn't make profits off of it, so it'll never actually happen.
But most of the games I play are open-source, so I'm used to that.</p>
<p>Then again, I also think a lot of games should have built-in wizard/debug modes, where you'd actually be invincible and get to test things out. Exceptions should be made for heavily plot-driven games that lose their value after your first win.</p>
<p>does anyone here play Silkroad? my little brother played it for 19 hours straight yesterday...and I'm getting pretty annoyed.</p>
<p>I got WoW for my 14th birthday and played it for six months...on my AOL dial-up connection. By the end, the patches had gotten so annoying and infuriating that I quit a bit after school started (I had just bought a $30 WoW certificate though, so waste of money). It was probably one of the best things I've done for myself.</p>
<p>Has anyone felt that WoW is just one of those games that you can't casually play while you're at a friend's house for a couple of hours? (those are the games that I think are most worthwhile)...</p>