MMORPG games

So whats the attraction? There is obviously a big attraction for these types of games as Blizzard, I believe it is estimated to have 10 million active worldwide and is estimated to make around $1.3bn a year. I've only played it a bit myself, played it for a few months a couple of years ago before quitting because I started to get bored and wasn't really playing it often enough to justify paying a suscription fee but in my short time playing the game I could see some of the reasons why some people get so immersed in these games, the ability to develope and improve your character is addictive and gives people a sense of achievement every time they advance to a higher level. The abilty to have professions, join guilds, go on raids, do quests are all appealing and give the players many different options on how to spend their time, you don't have to do quests if you don't want to and you can still level up throughtout the game without doing any quests(albeit at a slower rate) but its biggest attraction has got to be the online community, doing quests is more fun in a group than on your own and joining guilds gives players a sense of belonging to something important