Where kids are involved, playing games is part of learning and growing up. Nearly all kids play games, and it's not called escapism. In that sense, games like WoW offer a chance to grow up in an accelerated world. This was apparent in EQ. If you looked at the language people used to describe their characters, they frequently equated level with age; and indeed higher level generally meant more experience and maturity within the gameworld.

Obviously i can only speak for myself, but i mostly play for 2 reasons.
1) The people i met.
2) The satisfaction of beating a large scale encounter.

Both might not be very obvious for someone who hasn't played. You can (and unless you intentionally try not to) will meet all sorts of people in an online game and i built very nice and strong relationships. It's a bit like forums, chats for others. Real people.

2) Beating encounters. That one is not that important really, but it gives you a nice feeling when you beat the game. Of course the reward (new items that make your ingame character stronger) is also nice but for me that was mostly a way to beat new, stronger encounters.

And why wow does so much better than others (there have been prior successes) is one of the two questions.

Don't need to read any further. How can you honestly give a reason why WoW is so successful when you don't play it? There are several MMOs that have been completely unsuccessful. Your starting point should be: why does WoW succeed so well when so many others fail? I'd like to read an article on that.

I look at my online gaming experience as a kind of progression, and I think most players would probably agree to some extent, you play these worlds to DO, really.. thats it.. the minute the DO stops, ya get bored, and either make another toon to DO all over again or buy a new world and DO there.

Lots of people go on and on about how its bad, and life absorbing crack, and it is. If it gets away from ya, then yeah, break on the unemployment checks and kiss the wife goodbye cause you gotta raid ZA tonight. But if you keep your perspective, even if that means you plop down $$$ for some gold on ebay, you can keep on playing and let nothing stand in your way.

The biggest hook these games have isn't the social aspect, its the creation and status factor. Players constant trade one item for another, continually on a quest to upgrade, out with the old, in with the new– not just for items but new zones, monsters to battle, spells to cast, effects to see and so on. Its also a game that leverages the idea that you probably don't want to throw away something you plowed 134 played days into. Its easy to walk after character identities that never change, never level, never achieve rep or status, but walking away from hard earned time endured legacy characters that braved the battles of MC and beyond.. that, is really hard to walk away from.