I played WoW almost religiously for 2 years. I had obtained so much in the game and the only thing left was raiding and maintaining my character via gold farming so that I could raid on a regular basis.

And then my guild fell apart and I lost the enthusiam to play.

And now I realize what that game did. It is incredibly addicting because the game is always about constantly improving your character. It's about getting the next level until 60. Once you hit 60, it's about getting better gear. Then, new content comes out that has even better gear and now you have to work super hard again to acheive the better gear, and it becomes an endless, endless cycle.

There's certainly alot of points of genuine fun but the whole MMORPG setup is built around spending time to get rewards that improve your character, and it becomes a huge vicious cycle because you will never, ever BEAT the game. The possibilities of enhancement grow and you're always behind. To go back to get ahead, you have to spend a couple hours a day doing meaningless farming just to get all the resources you need to run that raid dungeon that you have to run at a certain time that you've played through 10 times before.

It really does take over your sense of accomplishment and your life begins to get wound up in the game. The game is addicting because your entire sense of accomplishment is taken over by the fact that you have to spend time to hit the ever increasing top.

The MMORPG structure by nature is built to feed that sense of accomplishment and never fully satisfy enough that you stop. That's why after playing WoW for 2 years, I will never, ever play an MMORPG again.