I played at least another 90 days before reaching level 60 and losing interest.

At the end I even tried to organize a marathon run around one of the continents in the game.

Here is the message I broadcast to my fellow players:

Howdy. I'd like to organize some large events on the Alliance side, namely an all-hands raid on Undercity and a Marathon (26 mile) run. Would you have any interest in participating in something like that?
I'm inviting everybody.
-Piehands.

For the first 60 levels, you find and spend money, but your progress is best measured by "experience points". Once I reached level 60, the game wasn't keeping track of my experience points any more. I had never felt like experience points were the motivation for playing, but once that reward was missing, I wasn't nearly as interested.

Also, I guess I realized there was no end. I could just keep exploring and hunting and generating fake gold for years, and no end boss would signal the ultimate finale.

Two add-on packs to World of Warcraft have been released, "The Burning Crusade" and "Wrath of the Lich King", which allow players to progress all the way to level 80. I could buy these and continue gaining levels for a while, but that would have only delayed the inevitable.

The fact that a game this huge and complex works and is actually fun is the most amazing thing to me. Your characters in the game can gather herbs from the countryside, make armor, set "buy it now" prices at auctions within the game, mine precious gems and odd rocks, cook 300 meals with 300 recipes, cast for fish in any body of water, shoot guns, practice spellcasting, learn first aid, ride dragons and attack an enemy fort with a group of 40 other players.

So long World of Warcraft, I had a great time.

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