Bah, for some reason it cut out the rest of my post. Sorry about that.

Anyways, when I went to Blizzcon last year, I noticed that there seemed to be two kinds of people who play WoW: people who didn't play games before and got into it because of a friend/spouse, and people who are "gamers." If they weren't playing WoW, they'd be playing something else... another MMO, console game, pc game, etc.

The friend I went with was part of the first group. Her boyfriend got her playing WoW. I'm part of the second group. I'm culturally a gamer. :)

Hmm... So maybe other MMOs should stop worrying about competing for WoW's non-MMO gamers, and focused on drawing the MMO fans (who tend to be the most critical, I think), who are the ones that will eventually bring the non-MMO players into the fold ? Interesting stuff!