Good points. I wonder how many MMORPG developers actually take into account these things. I mean, they probably do (or they'd be retarded), but to what extent? Do they actually cooperate with social scientists to uncover behavior patterns, to dissect how and why players do certain things?
I have a friend who plays WoW and is in a clan with (mostly) people he knows knows irl. he tells me 80% of them are complete jackasses whose sole life purpose is to reach certain goals in WoW and then get pissed off at others when they don't want to help out or some such shit. I always ask him: why do you even PLAY with these people? Let alone get on teamspeak with them (where he, to his credit, largely ignores them).
The answer? Cause it's WoW.
Anyway....there's no stopping to Blizzard now. Unless all their offices and servers and banks get hit by a series of freak meteorites, they've become so dominant on the market and so rich that they can pretty much afford anything. Even retarded nerfs, bad patches, whatever. But they do a surprisingly good job regardless. Just saying they could not give a shit.
