Costafire

Heh, RationalBiker puts it more succinctly than I did.

Whether WoW is explicitly an educational tool or not is irrelevant. An MMO is a social environment like a culture, and just as someone raised in America tends to develop American values, so someone "raised" in WoW tends to develop WoW values. I use "quotes" because WoW's influence over one's development is usually nowhere near as strong as one's domestic culture - but the point is that it does have some influence, and it's a bad influence. The issue with heavily rewarding time spent playing may be clearer if you compare it to seniority rules in a company. An employee gets promoted and rewarded because they have invested 30 years into the company - despite the fact that their performance is pathetic, and they are not the most qualified candidate for promotion. In WoW, a player can duel you in the Player vs. Player arena, and despite the fact that he consistently makes the wrong move, he still wins, simply because he has invested more time into the game and thus has stronger stats and spells. I have chatted online with the author of the article several times (his website is www.sirlin.net - he has some fascinating articles on game design and psychology). Though most of his complaints are just as valid as they were 4 years ago, he does admit that WoW has significantly improved since then.