The short answer: Nothing else can provide so much entertainment for $15 a month. Very few things in my life can provide more joy or more frustration. Of course, the lows are usually me swearing at the screen and pounding my desk. The highs often result in me silently smiling at what I/We've done. If you have tried it and didn't enjoy it, there are good odds that you've been "presented" it in the wrong way, or you have already made up your mind that you wont like it, or a combination of the two.
The long answer: We need some term like "Muggle" to describe those who don't play. Maybe Wuggle? Does that mean anything that I'm not aware of? With my luck it's some slang that only those deep in the drug underground would know, and my blog is now being "watched" by the government.
Well, for all you wuggles out there, World of Warcraft (or WoW), is the single greatest creation in the history of mankind. Sliced bread truly sucks in comparison. The wheel is only a "meh" when placed next to this technological wonder. Over 10 million people play, about 1/4 of those are in the US. It works out to be about 1 in 120 people in the US that play WoW, and that number is rising. Each of those people pay $15 per month to continue playing. That works out to be about 150 Million dollars a month that Blizzard is making off this game. I would estimate that 80% of that is pure profit.
So, how do I convey the entertainment that Warcraft brings? I think we do it a disservice by thinking of it only as a game. I'm not saying that it isn't a game, nor am I saying that it's greater than a game. It's that this software can be so much more than a game. I think a better classification would be to call it a hobby. When people learn how much I play, they think it's kinda wierd. But those same people wouldn't think anything is wrong with the model railroad guy who spends just as much time working on this train set. Think of how many hours of TV the average American watches each day. I replace TV with WoW (but I still watch about 2 or 5 TV shows each week). I consider each of my characters as a project I am working on. I spend a lot of my play time trying to get better gear for them and perfecting how I control them.
That's not saying that everyone takes it at the same level. For some people, it really IS just a game. You play for a half hour, maybe 3 times a week. That kind of player may or may not ever see level 70 (the highest level in the game currently).
Other people have multiple 70's and have them geared up rather well with good armor and weapons. For those people, each character is the end result of dozens of hours of work. For example, I put about 300 hours, spread over a few months, into getting my latest character to level 70. And once you're 70, that's just the start. Now you have to get all your gear. And by the time you have that gear, Blizzard will have announced new content or a new expansion, and that means you can work to get more gear.
The way most people get gear is from running "instances" or "PvP".
"Instances" are special zones that have some computer controlled creatures for you to fight. These creatures sometimes drop "loot". The instances also have a few difficult to fight "bosses", which have much better loot, and at least one item is guaranteed to "drop", or be looted from them. But each boss has several items that may drop, and since they drop only one or two things each time they are killed, you may not get your desired item, even after many attempts.
PvP is another way to get loot. PvP stands for Player versus Player combat, and it is when you get to fight character controlled by another person, somewhere else in the world. Every time you defeat an enemy player, you receive "honor points". Honor can be spent like currency towards very nice equipment. There are designated areas that people can go to in order to participate in PvP combat. These areas are called Battlegrounds, and have objectives that can give bonus honor and/or help your team win the match. The smallest PvP battleground allows for 10 player on each team, and the largest allows for 40 players on each team. The encounters can result in 1 on 1 fights, or 40 on 40 battles. Sometimes it's incredibly fun, especially when some punk kid "jumps" you unexpectedly, but you are able to defeat him. Few tings are more exhilarating than coming out ahead when your opponent had every advantage.
I'll write up some more points in another post. I'll probably cover the crafting or social aspects of the game next, and have another post about the coordination required for some of the fights in various instances.
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