1. Its Addictive. Noreally.
Youre clearly aware by now that World of Warcraft is extremely addictive; in fact, even if youre one of the fifteen people left in the world who havent at one point tried the virtual crack known affectionately as WoW, youll still have heard horror stories about poor victims of this addictiveness whove thrown their lives into the toilet in favour of their online existence. But perhaps you werent aware that its actually scientifically addictive, as are most MMOs. Basically, WoWs addictiveness revolves around a few simple, but effective premises: Remember when you farmed for that single item, for hours upon hours at a time? Each time you made a kill, and looted and found it wasnt among the spoils, remember how you imagined that itd be the next one, and the one after that, then the one after that; almost like an addicted gambler at the slot machines. And then it was 6:40am. Thats the concept of
Variable Ratio Reinforcement at work; the idea that a rat will push a switch indefinitely if it thinks it will eventually be rewarded food. Except this time, youre the rat. WoW also starts out easy, fast and satisfying; youll get to level 20 in no time. But then Blizzard cuts you off, like a drug dealer. But youve tasted the satisfaction of levelling your toon by then and if you want to level to the top, youre going to have to put the grind in, and keep sitting there clicking into the weeks and months, all the while handing over your wages to Blizzard. And if you want to excel at end-game (which you undoubtedly will by the time you reach top level), youll have to add years on top of that to collect the emblems and pieces of armour needed to reach serious raiding level. And even though it will depress the living crap out of you, youll still do it, because by this point youve been conditioned to. Its a very natural human instinct, the urge to hoard and collect, and you could say that this is even the entire basis of WoWs addictiveness. Make no mistake, WoW is a computer program that has been designed to get you in and keep you there. To one degree or another, every MMO, even every video game, operates around the same principals, but its clear that WoW, with its insanely huge player base (11 million +, even after the recent subscription drop) is one of the masterclasses in how to get us totally addicted. For more ways that WoW is exploiting human behaviour to get subscription fees,
check this out. Blizzard are only going to keep getting stronger; I'm very doubtful that anything will come along soon that'll kill it completely. Any moody Blizzard incidents you'd like to get off your chest? Do tell...