Everyone I know who used to play World of Warcraft doesn’t do so anymore, so that idea that it doesn’t get boring is kind of silly. What’s more, having played newer games that are supposed to be more realistic and more engrossing, none of them grabbed me the way WoW did, and I suspect they just can’t do it anymore. The reason I used to play a lot of WoW was because of who I was at the time, not because WoW was somehow miraculous.
You mention playing cards and playing chess in the same list, as if there aren’t lots of people who have dedicated their entire lives to those pursuits? In fact, online poker is massively more popular than WoW, and I’d easily bet even money that it is more popular than all MMORPGs at their peaks combined. And people play other games with cards as well, and they play games with cards in person.
From the list you gave and the questions you asked, “Playing cards.” is the hands down winner, and it’s been ruining people’s lives for at least hundreds of years, maybe thousands (though not with our standard modern deck). People will be ruining their lives playing cards long after every game and game system to date is known only to esoteric historians.
