There was also an article recently that explains how WoW is pretty much a slot machine.

http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html

I'm sorta confused, these "friends" you make on WoW, couldn't you say "hey, I'm quitting this game because I want to experience sunlight again, can I call/skype you?" and then do so? Wouldn't you then have gained real relationships with people and also freedom from an obligatory gaming experience (which to me makes it seem less fun and more, well obligatory) at the same time? If not, then you've really not made friends yourself but your WoW character has, which is about as deep of an experience as my pinky gets when it's mining nose gold.

I hate WoW, yet I played it come launch date and stopped a few months ago. The game is vastly multi leveled in play style. It was actually pretty fun running with the elite gear crowd for a few months. Did WoW spoil console gaming. I think it spoiled all gaming for me. Even WoW spoiled me on WoW. WoW has pretty much forced me to a point where I can pick up if a game is overly repatative. Cause I get bored of such games fast. These days unless game is actually interesting ,fun, challenging. Then I put it down pretty quickly.

WoW is a fun but addicting game. Wow hooks you in the social sense. Your commitments to your guild / teams drive you on.  The amount of hours you can put into WoW are huge. Blizzard does a great job in making encounters. WoW is also fairly inexpensive for the number of hours that most spend playing the game. I took a step back not that long ago. MMOs can be fun, but it is important to know when to take a break. 

I would recomend watching "the guild" on xbla for a look at what the extremes look like. "The Guild" is very funny but pretty sad in another way because these are some of the types of people in the game.

I don't really have an answer to that.  People will find friends in all sorts of different places?  How much time do people spend on VGChartz and other forums, so they can talk about games with people they don't really know in person? 

But certainly the experience of having a guild or circle of friends in an MMO is strange, in that once you quit the game you often lose touch with all of them, unless they were people you knew outside the game.  Also, it's always been true that plenty of people out there have problems making friends in real life.  I might even go so far as to say that the group who have hard time making friends in person and the group who play a lot of video games intersect somewhat.

Lol at mining nose gold :)

Sorry, I was trying to make an attractive sounding exit strategy and probably came off like a blowhard. It just would be cool if people did make more human type of contact with these people, it might be really cool for them and even make their gaming more fun too. For sure though, a gamer certainly has something in common with another gamer, so a friendship should be somewhat easy. It would be neat if WoW promoted people having relationships outside of the game as well, if they aren't already doing that, that is.

I totally agree. And I think people are attempting to preserve their relationships more and more in MMOs these days, maybe as they've become more mainstream, and as social networking has become so pervasive. Whether or not people are able to convert game friendships into real friendships is something affected both by the culture at large and the culture within the game, both of which are changing. At the same time I'm sure some people depend upon the distance that games give them.

WoW did nothing for me but the fact that console games are being watered down and casualized makes the PC even more attractive in contrast as a gaming platform (FFXIII and ME2 are prime examples of console games becoming more and more casual).

the more people are posting in this thread the more i want to start playing again lol , the game is addictive thats for sure, but its beyond that, its so masterfully crafted that every game you play after it feels so watered down and simplified.

wow has so many layers to it , so much content and so many play styles. i played wow for almost 5 years straight without playing another game i didnt own a ps2 or xbox or a ps3 or 360 i pretty much just started console gaming the past 1.5 years , and i really cant find a single game on consoles that even comes close to how much fun and complexity wow offers.

i think a large part has to do with the consoles controls(gamepad) are very sloppy and slow when it comes to precision.

many console games are tailored to a slow imprecise control scheme and the truth is unless sony move can replicate a pc rpg control scheme there is no hope for console mmos unless you just want to shoot people with guns all day :P which i find so unbearable now.

i need purpose in my games , i want massive goals that you and 20 other people working together can accomplish, i want to farm for gold and materials and make cool items that i can equip or sell inside a living breathing economy , i need a massive amount of content updated frequently and lots of characters and classes and skills and huge worlds to explore .

wow offered all that plus the best player vs player experience i have ever played , console games feel like appetizers and wow is the 10 meal main course.

looking very forward to FF14 and dc universe if they suck im selling my consoles and picking up one of the newer mmos on pc,  i just really hope they arent gimped because of the gamepad :(

Try Monster Hunter 3. It seems to be the dungeon crawler game to get on a console with a lot to do online.