/dance has existed as an expressive emote for a long time (it was in the text muds, for example). However, the range and variety of dancing in WoW is well beyond the singular dance emote that was common prior to SWG. It’s not a system in WoW, certainly. Having the variety (not the game system) is necessary to get the range of expressive stuff that we see such as extended dance number videos.

There are entire dancing MMOs in Asia, btw, so saying nobody else has done it as a system for advancement is not accurate. Audition, for example.

On massive appeal: the goal isn’t reaching mass appeal per se, but market penetration is a useful (though not sole) measure of cultural relevance. It’s easy for us to not stand back and get a sense of perspective on what we are talking about here, basically, so I find it fruitful to reset expectations by making comparisons to other popular media.

BTW, yes, many games DO scale against popular culture. Plenty of casual games do, for example.

Metaplace’s levels: are just about entirely cosmetic, whereas I meant the game design structure of levels in an RPG.