Breakfast Topic: Is WoW worth it when it's a full-time job?

My friend Airaden and I were discussing our various stages of WoW life over the weekend as we leveled our <It Came from the Blog> toons (he's a prot pally, I'm a resto druid; we went from 41 to 45 in a few hours). We've both been through the thick and thin of the game -- everything from a top 150 guild to being super casual, from hardcore raiding to arena PvP. Been there? We've done that.

One of the things we realized is that we couldn't go back to running a high-end progression raiding guild. There was a time where we were both putting in upward of 40 hours a week between guild management and the four days/five hours a night of raiding. At the time, it seemed to just be what we had to do in order to accomplish our goals and enjoy the game the way we wanted to enjoy it ... but of course that changed when the game's core raiding systems became conductive to 10-man raiding in Wrath.

And now looking back at it, we ask ourselves, was that time in WoW really worth a full-time job? Arguably at this point in our lives, it's not really worth it. Both of us have wonderful girlfriends (we did at the time too), and we're both happy with our careers. Could we go back and play the game like we did, putting in forty hours a week? Probably not.

So that's the question I'm posing for today's Breakfast Topic. Is playing in the World of Warcraft worth it when it's a 40-hour-a-week gig? Wax philosophical here, community.