World of warcraft.....is a highly addictive massive online role playing game. Basically you get a character, you customize it, you gain levels. Once you reach the maximum level, you get together with friends to conquor bosses. Usually groups of 5-25 people get together in the online community to do this, and they are highly organized. Imagine a hockey team or football team, only in an online community. That is the level of organization some people have.
The problem is the highly addictive nature of the game. There are always new 'bosses' to be conquored, you can play directly against players of opposing factions (races), killing their characters in the game. Each character in the online world is a real person sitting behind a computer somewhere.
Not only are they able to charge you $15.00 a month to play the game, you need to pay 39.99 (may have gone down) for the game itself, plus around 29.99-49.99 for each of the two expansion packs. So around $150.00 after taxes for the game, plus $15.00 a month if you use your credit card. If you want to do things like change to a different server, change your character from a boy to a girl, change your race, change your name, each of these things costs between $15.00 and $30.00 for a one-time thing.
Blizzard, the company that makes the World of Warcraft game are a bunch of marketing geniuses in my opinion. They know when people are getting sick or tired of playing their game, and it is at that exact moment that they add something new and interesting inside the game for people to do. You get bonuses, like a free month of play and in game perks like pets and horses for recruiting your friends to play. Got a friend who stopped playing a while ago? Well convince them to come back and we'll give you more perks.
The problem is the game is so addictive a lot of people spend too much time in game and not enough time out of game. I'll not deny that its a fun game, but you need to treat it like a hobby. Some people spend 12-13-14 hours a day playing. There is an option to check how many hours you have played non stop, some people have over a year. More than a year of their life in the past 5 years has been spent logged on to that game. I have seen people drop out of school or lose jobs because they don't know when to stop playing. I have seen peoples relationships ruined because it can become an addiction as bad as any other, and people don't know how to treat this type of addiction.
So basically, a really fun addictive game, but only play it if you know how to set limits for yourself (or your children/family etc.). I wouldn't recommend it for anyone under 16, and I would never recommend it for someone of any age who is suffering from any form of depression or has an ultra addictive personality, as these tend to be types of people who play excessive amounts, mostly because their online life is in their mind more productive than their actual life.
