Entire cities dead on some World of Warcraft realms

While I can emphasize a bit (I used to play WoW, but "grew away from it" and now spend a large portion of my time in search and rescue and musical performance), I have to say that this is a very judgmental POV to take. You're seriously going to compare playing WoW to smoking? Even in the worst case, at least playing WoW is a step up from watching some inane TV show with no interaction. It's not like anybody suffers from second-hand MMORPG.

And you can always play moral superior: instead of reading a book, why don't they start their own company? Instead of going for a walk, why don't they run a marathon? Hell, I could see how someone could look down on the activities I choose ("why rescue idiots who got themselves into trouble? Let natural selection sort it out!" or "why perform music that's already been performed thousands of times before by better performers?"), but FFS, sometimes "wasting time" is some of the best time well spent.

You're a capsuleer. A capsuleer is someone who can pilot certain specially designed ships. As someone who has ascended into virtual godhood by the benefit of effective immortality, you have entered a new plane of power dynamics. And because you're a gamer, the galaxy is an oyster to exploit for your amusement.

The simplest play is to fly around and shoot things. There are pirates, other players, other factions. They all shoot back, probably. Some of them do it better than others. Eventually, you run out of ammo, or your ship is destroyed, or you want something bigger and badder. That gets you to start thinking about how you shoot things and how to do it efficiently and effectively. That gets you thinking about which ship to fly, which guns to put on it, and so on... and how to get all those things cheaply, or at least for a smaller cost than it takes to make money with it.

The ships, the guns, the ammo: these all come from somewhere. Other players make it. They do it by stripping asteroid belts of resources, holding territory where they can conduct R&D, and build every bullet you expend, every ship you pilot. Some of those resources are more elusive: they come from gas clouds which are hard to detect, or components found in uncharted systems. There are ways to get there and exploit those resources, too.

And naturally, with so many moving pieces, so many different agents, you get hierarchical organizations, larger infrastructure, traders conducting arbitrage and moving freight, bigger and badder ships and bigger and badder groups to hold vaster tracts of territory. And with that comes opportunities to scam and con others, opportunities to be a leader or a spy, and so on.

And all of that is supported by the game. You're constantly going to have to deal with the social repercussions of whichever path you take: a lone pilot won't have support infrastructure from their corporation; an alliance leader has to maintain the interest of his members; time spent shooting things is time not spent mining asteroids; and so on.

What sounds cool? What do you want to do? Can you stomach what it'll take to be in that role? Can you understand mechanics and people well enough to make it happen? Then you can probably do it. That's EVE.