whats wrong with wow?

[Quanta]

It's not as a farfetched comparison, from a marketing point of view, as you may think.

Everything in WoW isn't designed just to be "fun", there are tons of MMORPGs there that are very well designed on the "fun" aspects, probably even better than wow. Yet they aren't as popular. Not even nearly.
This without mentioning that "fun" is relative to the target, and not an absolute parameter.

Reality shows are specifically designed to cater to the lowest common denominator of human behavioral patters, so they are enjoyed by a large demographic of people.

WoW is designed to appease the lowest common denominator of gamers. No matter if you're a third grader or a soccer mom that has trouble even with the wii or if you have a PC from world war 2, the majority of WoW's activity are designed so that you can thrive at the game, and when you "hit the wall" (on part of the endgame, that's a bit more challenging), you have invested too much into the game to quit.

It's a simple marketing strategy. To make something mainstream you design it so that it has the widest target possible. Of course such a wide target has it's disadvantages (the quality of the community is one, the extremely and childish generic backstory and art direction is another), but those disadvantages affect majorly only the most demanding and discerning of the customerbase. And those are the vast minority compared to a mainstream target.

So what's the assertion here then? That because the game is simple to get into and progress all the way to the level cap, it's of poor design and quality? We're going to ignore the parts where genuine mastery and quality of play are required to be successful (eg. hard mode raiding and high-rated PvP)?

I mean, what I'm taking from all of this, particularly with this sentence--"No matter if you're a third grader or a soccer mom that has trouble even with the wii"--is that FF gamers are akin to nobles and are expressing their disdain for the peasantry, as if they're somehow better than them. Is that your position?