And the newspapers, they all went along for the ride

There's a magnificent article by Caitlin Moran in The Times, "My life as a bearded dwarf". Though there's been a fair amount of media coverage of "online worlds", it's tended to be about Second Life, which is all well and good but misses what makes WoW more instantly addictive: I spent an hour tootling around a pretty snowy mountain running a few errands — delivering parcels, relaying messages, buying nicer boots, earning a bob or two; already the addictive side of WoW was becoming apparent — through a cunning combination of small, quick tasks and longer, more complex ones that can be chipped away at over time, there’s always something you could “pop in” and do, or just spend “ten minutes more” knocking off.