I personally don't see a positive to either, but then again I'm the worst person in the world.
Oh man can we start a giant debate over whether or not drinking has any positive aspect? I love those.
What in the hell is fun about WoW? I mean, to me it looks like you could get the same results a logging into a chatroom with a bunch of monkeys, where everyone is running Progress Quest.
If you don't get it, you don't get it. The gist is that it's still a video game and technically the best MMORPG ever made. So take any of the reasons a MMO might appeal(did you ever try one and think "this aspect is nice?" WoW probably has it refined to a pleasant science.)
Personally I am a big fan of the raiding stuff in the same way that I'd enjoy sitting down in Devil May Cry or Viewtiful Joe and lighting that mother up on the hardest difficulty. I'm never going to be quite a world firster but I've often remarked that Mimiron's Firefighter is my favorite fight. In English, I was in love with complicated fights that required high situational awareness and the ability to not panic because a thing or two gets wrong. You are fighting a giant gnomish voltron in a room that is rapidly exploding. There is fire spreading everywhere and the mech frequently launches missiles, laser barrages, thermo-nuclear detonations and rings of mines. But it's definitely a paragon of WoW boss fights.
I don't know why Defenestration linked a video of a fight that is in comparison easy enough for a trained monkey to do. In fact, WoW boss videos have a heinous curse of being impossible to watch.
Don't tell me it's "the social aspect", because goddamn it man, there are literally thousands of more interesting things to do to meet and hang out with people both offline and online.
"Your hobby can't possibly be fun because it isn't fun to me?"
It's like Diablo 2 or Borderlands. The social aspect is probably more important than the game proper.
Yeah, "I'm broke" is probably not a good defense for a pastime that requires you to pay a monthly subscription fee to stay active.
WoW is actually pretty cheap compared to a traditional gaming hobby.
Most gamers can't imagine "only" getting a new game every month. That's $50-60 a month, $30-40 if you "just" scratch with a hand-held title.
Even just grabbing the monthly D&D 4th Edition book is $30 a pop.
Heck, how many card game players can only buy 3 packs of $5 cards a month?
And so on. $15(or 2-3 hours minimum wage work) is pretty reasonable when it's the only entertainment spending you make. There's also internet cost and the up-front PC and WoW CD purchases, but WoW can run on ancient, terrible computers and if we math it out WoW will probably win the cheap-o war.