Well that seems like you are mixing having fun with making fully rational decisions.
From a more scientific position - games like d3 and wow use multiple skinnarian reinforcement mechanism to keep people engaged. Regular schedule reinforcement comes from the xp bar which was made huge so that your regular growth on that is visible. Then variable reinforcement comes from random drops. Getting a shiny new blade is fun because it's useful and makes killing things satisfying. Hence it has value.
There was a really old article (bbc I think) where the op Ed explained one other really important aspect of why games can suck people in : they provide huge fat pipes of data perfectly tuned for the brain to consume.
So that's another reason games and their rewards are so addictive, they are immediate feedback and information in a way the brain craves.
In the end there is no deeper reason. You could ask why people like playing any game with no monetary reward and a luck/loot component. It's just fun.
Status matters only to some sub section of gamers.
Quite a bit more just want to blow stuff up. You should see the corpses of CS players caused by griefers back in the day for example.
Others, such as dwarf fortress or minecraft forums where creating stuff is the key thing and status is secondary or irrelevant.
Similarly during wow, my more hardcore friends soon tired of the base game and meta gamed the auction house instead. At the same time a larger portion didn't care at all for that.
From a more scientific position - games like d3 and wow use multiple skinnarian reinforcement mechanism to keep people engaged. Regular schedule reinforcement comes from the xp bar which was made huge so that your regular growth on that is visible. Then variable reinforcement comes from random drops. Getting a shiny new blade is fun because it's useful and makes killing things satisfying. Hence it has value.
There was a really old article (bbc I think) where the op Ed explained one other really important aspect of why games can suck people in : they provide huge fat pipes of data perfectly tuned for the brain to consume.
So that's another reason games and their rewards are so addictive, they are immediate feedback and information in a way the brain craves.
In the end there is no deeper reason. You could ask why people like playing any game with no monetary reward and a luck/loot component. It's just fun.
Status matters only to some sub section of gamers. Quite a bit more just want to blow stuff up. You should see the corpses of CS players caused by griefers back in the day for example.
Others, such as dwarf fortress or minecraft forums where creating stuff is the key thing and status is secondary or irrelevant.
Similarly during wow, my more hardcore friends soon tired of the base game and meta gamed the auction house instead. At the same time a larger portion didn't care at all for that.