The power of compelling

Wired column on World of Warcraft’s diabolical new affiliate marketing scheme:

So, to sum up: If you get one of your friends to shell out for two months of Warcraft, your character will get to ride a completely cosmetic zebra with a horn instead of whatever it’s riding now. It’s a sign of Warcraft’s unrelenting brain-grip that this is incredibly compelling.

World of Warcraft’s developers have mastered the unholy art of in-game bribery. They have discovered that players will do any number of stupid, tedious things in order to earn perks that have no effect on the game.

Just this week I’ve been fighting in battlegrounds — special areas where armies clash and 12-year-olds question each other’s sexuality — over and over just for a chance to win a tiny little flying dragon. This dragon doesn’t fight on my behalf or give me powers or anything. He just follows me around. In real life I try to avoid being tailed by parasitic flying creatures, but in the game I seek it out, even though I hate battlegrounds.