Wikipedia:Wikipedia is an MMORPG

Wikipedia – The only absolutely free MMORPG in the world!

One theory that explains the addictive quality of Wikipedia and its tendency to produce Wikipediholics is that Wikipedia is essentially a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG). After all, the 'Pedia shares many characteristics with MMORPGs:

Gameworld

Wikipedia has an immersive gameworld with over 1.3 million players (editors) and over 1.7 million unique locations (articles), including about 1,000 secret areas (featured articles). Magical items and powers (images/categories) can be found scattered over these locations. Some of these locations, as well as items and powers, become problematic (unencyclopedic), and unbalance the game world. Players (editors) will generally dislike these (nominations for deletion), and Game Masters (administrators) respond by destroying (deleting) them.

Game mechanics

Players can accumulate experience points (edits), allowing them to advance to higher levels. Players (editors) develop unique distribution of stats (edit distribution), and can choose between a number of pre-existing classes (arbitrators, mediators, vandals, wiki-gnomes...etc).

An in-game economy (wikimoney) does exist, but the real prize for being an experienced player is the acknowledgement (barnstars) recieved from the community. Players (editors) can take on quests (join Wikiprojects), fight boss battles (FAC), enter battle arenas (AIV), and even take class change trials (RfA) to become Game Masters (Administrators).

Social

Every location (article) in the gameworld has a pub (talk page) where players have the opportunity to interact with any other player in real time. Players often become friends with other players, and some have even arranged to meet in real life. On the darker side, some players (editors) become addicted, unable to leave the game, and spent all their waking hours on the site. It is often the most experienced players who end up spending the most amount of time in the gameworld.

Players with similar ideals will group together to form guilds, and raids (collaborations) may form to tackle exceptionally difficult quests.

Battle

Trolls are one of the most common enemies in the gameworld (Wikipedia), and often turn up in boss fights. Orcs, the natural enemies of the Trolls, who oppose trolls using methods which are equally unethical or destructive (such as baiting) can also be fought.

Illegitimate battle strategies are abundant. Sneaky players like to use excessive summons (Sockpuppets) to trick Game Masters (administrators). And bots are sometimes used by some players to abuse the gameworld.

Players can also cause disruption by attempting to destroy (blanking) or mangle (vandalising) or disrupt (edit warring) parts of the game world. Player-killing (biting) is strongly discouraged, but nevertheless happens. New players (newbies) are most vulnerable. Game Masters attempt to control this by banning and blocking offending players, but more often than not, criminals (offending editors) end up being brought before the imperial court (Arbitration Committee).