Quite frankly, ordinary life is not that different from WoW. You go on quests, you level-up your character through education and courses, and then you earn points (money) that you can spend on shiny things like cars.
But real life is not balanced, and not fair, and everything takes forever. And you can't save and load game, so most people are too afraid of failure to try anything really cool or dangerous.
But they want to feel the achievement so they do it in games, where everything is fine-tuned to be achievable.
Seriously.