will work for doughnuts

Much has been made of World of Warcraft’s addictive game design and it is cited most often as the aspect of the game which is most damaging. While addictive, from levels 1-60, the game elements basically cease to hold their grasp on a large number of players because there is no longer “one more level” to achieve. What then causes all those 6.8 million subscribers to stay in a nearly 2 year old game? From my perspective it’s a matter of social addiction or community addiction. Much like a familiar IRC channel or a community message board, for many players they have developed a sense of community with those that they play with. In other cases, a community may have moved into the game. For instance, I play with people that I know and see outside of the game. On a typical night it’s a place to chat and do something fun together despite the geographic distance. It’s also a place where you’ll see friends sign on just to relate that the concert they were at sucked, so they are here to join in. Like any community atmosphere, there is a level of trust and familiarity. When the community was formed outside of the game it becomes difficult for an individual to step back out of the game because their community can always call them back in for “one more dungeon”.