I find this project very interesting because it amazes me the effect that the games have had on our society. They have raised economic, social and civil. I would be interested to find out where this money comes from for the players. Do they spend it in place of entertainment or recreation? Even with the decline of the economy in 2008, the number of people playing these online games, specifically World of Warcraft are still increasing.

Also, I wonder what effects this will have to this generation of people who spend increasingly more time online in virtual worlds. Do they substitute this for real face-to-face interactions? Along with the other questions proposed in the abstract, there are a lot of issues that can be researched.

I do not have done any prior research into this topic. There are countless websites that are devoted to these MMO's and have millions of fans discussing the game. This would be an excellent place to gather information about what keeps them interested in the games and willing to pay the fees even in time of economic struggle.

What I find interesting about this project is mainly how MMOs have become such a huge part of our society. The amount people can obsess over these games is remarkable. I would look forward to figuring out what makes people so fixed on playing them.

I myself played the popular MMO World of Warcraft for a time and have experience with dealing with many people who also play. In a way I understand how easy it is to get caught up with these games. I also know many people who play and I would love to get their input on these questions.

I find this project interesting from a few different perspectives. First, from an economic perspective it is quite amazing that reasonable economies have sprung up based on the acquisition of virtual goods. Not only do many of these games have robust economies based on creation/sale/trade of virtual goods for virtual money, many players in these environments in fact invest real money for stake in these virtual environments. I have read that large scale Chinese "sweat shops" have been created just to farm gold and other resources in the game World of Warcraft. In second life, users pay real money to acquire virtual land so that they may promote their product, idea or use it towards what ever end they may envision.

From a psychological perspective these virtual societies may be even more interesting. I have heard countless stories of people who have met, then married, someone through these games. In fact my good friend's sister recently sold her house to move to another state in order to date her World of Warcraft guild leader (seriously). I have also heard of studies that indicate that playing these games activate reward centers triggered by many drugs including opiates, as well as reward centers that cause a feeling of accomplishment after a large achievement.

Further, these worlds have have reached a level of fame that they are truly pervasive throughout American culture. South Park has paradoied WOW, Mr. T and William Shatner do commercials that run on broadcast television and many celebrities are self proclaimed "WOW addicts".

I have always wonder why all of my computer science friends play WOW or other MMOs. I have watched them play WOW for a long time now, and all I see them do is run around and complete tasks in a video game world. I have asked them why they play it and the only answers I receive is that it's addicting and it passes the time.

I am curious to see how the other virtual worlds and games will develop overtime. It seems like they allow introverted people, like most computer science students to interact with each other with out the social anxieties that they may face in the real world. I have been wondering about this question for quite a while…

The concept of the MMO has been around for a while. I agree there are many factors that motivate players to the game. I have found that there are even players who spend more time creating things for the game than just playing it such as wiki's, forums, in game mods, movies, even theory and real economies. This has effects on society at many levels in both positive and negative ways.

It would be good to use the findings of motivation in MMO's in application with creating similar environments which motivate people in learning environments, also to improve . Getting to know reasons for people stop playing would also help in a way to change a person's motivation from being directed to a learning environment.