WoW = low risk, high fun
World of Warcraft
is successful largely because it is such an accessible game. You can get started without being a gaming-genius, and you can make progress in it without playing all day. There are advanced challenges to overcome if you want to excel of course, but for most people, WoW is a just a place where you can have a bit of fun without much chance of a negative experience. You don't have to pay a huge penalty for mistakes such as death, and you're likely to find variety of meaningful things to do in a relatively short period of time. The fact that there's not much actual risk in WoW is one of the things that lets so many people see how fun it is and sets it apart from other MMORPG games.
I can understand the reasons some game designers and players may wish there were more serious risk of failure versus success in their video games. We are taught from real life that great success requires one not be afraid of failure, or at least be willing to take the chance. In real life, you may lose a lot of your hard work and all your efforts may come to naught, but if you don't try anyways, you'll never reap some of the great rewards that this world has to offer.
But to apply this rule in a video game doesn't make any sense, because the majority of people, no matter how good a game is, are wisely unwilling to invest a lot of time and energy into it if it may end up to be a waste of time. It is just a game after all, and its rewards are only real within its little game world.
On the other hand, there is a small segment of the population that truly values the rewards they attain in any video game environment such that they are willing to make great sacrifices of time and energy even if something may go wrong and make them lose all their hard work. They may feel their ultimate achievement means something only because of this risk involved.
If these people value video game rewards so much, that's fine. The problem only comes when people start belittling other players as "noobs." Some players even suggest that WoW should heavily penalize noobs for being stupid, or even kick them out of the game. Granted, there are people out there who get to 70 without learning some important or obvious things, and the accessibility of the game makes this possible. But the fact that WoW is "easy" and relatively risk-free is what enables all of us to get into it in the first place, gradually leading us towards the more challenging, riskier activities, such as raiding and arena battles. If World of Warcraft were as complainers wished it to be, it would be a pretty small world to be proud of.
