This weekend I spent 5000g in world of warcraft. To the uninitiated, that’s a lot of in-game currency - an epic amount in fact. An average, casual player can spend months before being able to spend that amount of money. What I bought was a skill which allows me to ride faster flying mounts (and cooler looking!).

Now what’s interesting is not that I bought this mount but how Blizzard have managed to almost perfectly pitch the constant progression through the game.

The mount progression is cleverly devised; starting with a first mount at level 30 followed by a faster version at level 60. Once players hit level 70 they can get a flying mount which can be upgraded for a faster version once 5000 gold have been saved up. In between there are also numerous ‘rare’ mounts which can be acquired through very hard challenges or achieving the highest reputation level with one of the games many factions.

Now add to that additional progression trees for reputation, guild title, cooking, fishing, tailoring, blacksmithing, mining, enchanting, raiding, gear etc etc and you may start to see where one of the clever bits in Blizzards creation lie.

At it’s core WoW is not about flying an admittedly, awesome looking Nether Ray, but about a sense of constant progression with moments of generosity. Couple that with the strong community and great game mechanics and you have a recipe for high level addiction.