[Milawe]

It's all a matter of perspective. The number of poeple playing WoW by far outweighs the number of people ever playing muds, which is why it's more of an "epidemic" than mudding ever was. Getting on a mud is much, much harder than logging into WoW and requires a bit of computer knowledge. One of WoW's bigget selling points and why it's reached so many people is that it runs on the crappiest computer, and the learning curve for that game is extremely simple. The game itself is incredibly linear which maximizes the feeling of progress. There's not really even 20 things to do much less 200 things to do.

So, while it may not feel as addictive to some of us who have been deeply involved in muds, it's much more addictive to the people who wouldn't know how to log onto a mud if it smacked them in the face. There's also a lot of effort put into mudding. You pretty much have to type or use a voice recognition program in order to interface with the mud. You pretty much have to read (or again, use a voice recognition program), and ultimately, most muds have more to offer than hack 'n slash which then gives you non-linear progression. Everyone who has played WoW knows that you can basically cruise-control even while raiding. It's a false feeling of accomplishment with very little effort.

So, it's not just jealousy. It's not just hype, and it's not just careless blame. WoW's accessibility added to its linear progression style adds up to a lot of college drop-outs. Granted, the people dropping out were probably never going to be your deans list students, but they may have graduated if they didn't get their feeling of accomplishment from a game. Kudos to those of us who wouldn't have failed out even if there had been WoW in our days, but that doesn't mean it's not a real problem for others.