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World of Warcraft is, in every way imaginable, a world unto itself. I have spent the past week down this rabbit hole and now believe it is only a matter of time before it achieves United Nations status.

The online fantasy game's gross domestic product certainly warrants such recognition. Since its release in 2004, it has become a dynamic entertainment force that sucks evenings, weekends and monthly fees from more than eight million subscribers around the world. In mid-January, its first expansion pack arrived -- The Burning Crusade (PC and Mac, rated Teen) is a sequel of sorts that adds a new continent to explore -- and 2.4 million copies were sold in the first 24 hours. That is the equivalent of a movie easily surpassing the $100-million mark in one day -- then imagine each ticket buyer ponying up an additional $18 per month.

This ever-growing haul explains the visual image I see every time I hear about Blizzard Entertainment, World of Warcraft's creator and guardian: people with glasses cavorting in knee-deep gold coins, surrounded by humming servers of the human and computer varieties.

This thing is huge and considering the quality of this expansion, it is only going to get bigger.

Before relating a story about my personal Burning Crusade, which sounds either like an unfortunate health issue or a trip to Iraq, I am going to take a crack at answering the question most people have when they hear of World of Warcraft's impressive numbers and the stories that go with them -- players spending 40 hours a week and more questing online, loved ones leaving, exams being ignored, Third World sweatshops filled with virtual gold farmers, and on and on.

In a word: Why?

This is, after all, a 3-D world filled with Dungeons & Dragons-style adventures and names that would make J.R.R. Tolkien roll his eyes. To play it, you must be able to take phrases such as "The Alliance lays claim to the bone wastes of Terokkar Forest" seriously.

But then consider how ridiculous, to outsiders, sports can be: The names of teams (Ducks? Maple Leafs?), the cheerleaders, the odd equipment and insider terms, the amount of time and money adherents spend. After many discussions with World of Warcraft citizens, I think they get many of the same things out of their hobby or lifestyle, depending on whether they are considered casual or hard-core, as sports fans and players: Membership in a community and the companionship and teamwork that goes with it; regular feelings of surprise and joy from great plays and moments; and a sense of achievement when you play a part in creating those moments.

To access these rewards, World of Warcraft, like playing and following a sport, does exact a price that goes beyond the cost of the game, the expansion pack and the monthly fees: It eats your time.

My week of quests and exploring yielded a level 10 character out of the possible 70 offered in The Burning Crusade. I definitely belong to the casual camp; I have not learned the wonders of jewel-crafting or more than a handful of the hundreds of spells and abilities that can fill your screen with colourful icons, and no high-level guilds, which conduct raids in 25-plus-person groups, are competing for the services of my blood elf paladin.

But there were constantly entertaining encounters, once I got over and beyond the fantasy gobbledygook, and here is one small story about where the time goes.

I selected the blood elf character because it is one of the two new races offered up in The Burning Crusade (the other is the animal-like "draenei," on the Alliance side of the game's Alliance-Horde divide). I therefore started in a completely new area set aside for blood elves, which means updated visuals and fresh quests and storylines.

After a few hours of collecting experience points running errands and killing monsters, I was told by a computer-controlled character -- basically a stationary source of missions and rewards -- to bring her the head of "Alderon the Reckless," a local bandit thief.

I found him at the top of an impressive tower, but when I got there another player, a real person sitting somewhere at a keyboard controlling a character who was, disconcertingly, dressed just like mine, had just finished Alderon and his henchmen off. I sat down and waited and in a few minutes the virtual bad guys regenerated, but suddenly another player ran in, killed Alderon with the help of a glowing pet demon, and then jumped out of the tower.

I went over to the ledge to say something along the lines of "Wait your turn," but that allowed the henchmen to kill my paladin. Everything went bluish and my character's translucent ghost was sent to a faraway cemetery. I followed an arrow on the map back to my corpse in the tower and was rejuvenated just in time to watch yet another player topple poor Alderon.

These solo adventures obviously required patience, but eventually they gave way to teamwork as the challenges became more difficult than downing the reckless (and luckless) bandit leader. A few quests and hours later, I formed a partnership with a player -- to charge a crystal near a rune stone, if you must know -- and, after several more resurrections and many more minutes, finally succeeded.

These two quests constitute a minuscule percentage of the content available in The Burning Crusade and yet all those ghostly blue trips added up to more than two hours. But time does fly, they say, when you are having fun -- and I'm almost sure I was.

I am now considering, family and friends will be thrilled to hear, sticking around and seeing the expansion pack's new region, Outland.

And if enough of you e-mail the address below, a casual-friendly guild -- "The Globe and Chain Mail" has a nice ring to it -- may be in the offing.

In other words, stay tuned for more reports from the rabbit hole.

scolbourne@globeandmail.com