There is some subverted sense of community somewhere in there...

Yeah, MMORPG's are, in my estimation, glorified MUD's with pretty graphics instead of text. The game itself is like 5% of the experience, the main thing people are after is interaction with other players. If people spent even half their MMORPG time interacting with real people and improving their real lives, I think the world would be a better place.

Of course, no disrespect is meant to those who play these games casually (or even to those who are similarly addicted,) but I've had several friends ruin their lives (or several years of them) with MUD's, and I see the same characteristics in many of these MMORPG games. I've had friends lose relationships, flunk out of school, lose jobs, and generally fsck up their lives to feed their online gaming addiction.

Then again, we humans are never short on ways to screw up our lives with addictions to all sorts of things, and maybe being addicted to a computer game and the pseudo-social contact that comes with it is more healthy than being an alcoholic or a gambling addict... But the effects can be just as bad, from what I've seen.