Oh good lord... heheh!!! AWESOME game! People who've never played it couldn't even imagine how deep and complex this game can be. The mechanics behind the game are genius imo; being a cumulative point system instead of a linear percentage deal, so that there's no "cap" on what they can introduce with the weekly updates. What's great about the game though is that they have truly captured the social aspect of old time pen & paper RPGs and the feeling of real acomplishment derived from teamwork. I play on Dragonblight server, and large raiding guilds there are run like high level amateur sports programs; Scheduled practices, incentive programs, tournaments, ect. The game doesn't "raise the bar" for other computer games, it completely changes the concept of the entertainment value of these games; The competition and challenge created by the interaction system of WoW is as real anything you can find in real life. It IS very addictive for that reason. My computer got zapped by a power surge about 5 weeks ago and I'm on an old slow laptop as we speak- or I'd be playing WoW right now. Looking back now it's more than a little concerning... I had been playing for about a year and a half, with two level 60's (one being in a serious raiding guild), three mage characters between lvls 25-35 for farming materials, four bank characters for storing items and one horde character for auction house transfers. The game was starting to feel like a real life job... which at times i was putting in 90 - 100 hours a week on. 18 hour binges? I've done 72 hour binges.
Best video game ever conceived.
Warning: The preceding statement is my OPINION, so please don't argue.
No joke though, it should come with a Surgeon General's warning.