World of Warcraft: Addictiveness of Facebook + Pretty Graphics

I propose that World of Warcraft ought to be considered inherently addictive. Whether or not it is "a replacement for real life" is probably another issue which I would like to tentatively avoid.

There are many tenable explanations as to why World of Warcraft ought be considered addictive and for that reason, somewhat psychologically and socially dangerous. One of the more prominent reasons, I think, is simply because the game was and is designed to be addictive in a way analogous to the way other Internet services are.

Analogies of this sort abound: WoW is addictive in ways that often resemble the addictiveness of facebook, myspace, or AIM-for examples. The "social aspect"-however general and incomplete that phrase-has the potential to become primary in the user's life. The fact that the game world changes, responds, and is (to some extent) determined by the players (i.e. cognitive agents) of the world means that we need to stop thinking about WoW and other social services as mere applications. We need to start addressing them as simulations!

Thus, my first justification with regard to the inherent addictive nature of WoW is simply that it's social character guarantees its addictive quality in virtue of responsive, living, and user-determined environment. The classic sense of a video game is to think of a world highly regulated by formulaic rules. Nothing can occur outside the scope of the rules. Now, think of concepts such as "dkp" and/or "the ethics of ganking"-these are a significant part of the world of warcraft and they are not at all predicted or logically contained within the program-that is, within the developer's tool set. The social aspect and user-determinability make it unpredictable in the best way for the sake of addiction.

A second reason why we ought to think of WoW as addictive is simply because users can never really win. There are two reasons why this is the case:

(1) developers always have the possibility of introducing new content