For most of the six million World of Warcraft players, slaying the biggest dragons on the servers, getting the mightiest swords or becoming one of the most powerful mages is their biggest dream inside the game. There is just one little drawback: You don't get there alone. This is one of the reasons why players band together in guilds - groups of players with a common interest. For the really big goals, you need lots of friends. 40 is the maximum and often required number of players it takes to kill the mightiest dragons in ""WoW"" - the affectionate abbreviation World of Warcraft players use for their game. Guilds that specialize on those big hits, are being referred to as raiding guilds.

Members of raiding guilds often recount their ""raiding schedules"" - sometimes with pride, sometimes with a tired sigh. Weekly attendance requirements usually have them play 5 hours on 4 evenings a week. And those time frames are meant only for actual raid encounters and do not include preparations inside and outside of the game.Raiding guilds still seem to be in their infancy when looking at their recent and silent rise. Maybe the competitive members of those online game sports clubs manage to take things a little further. It happened before - take a look at the nationwide success, TV broadcasts and tournaments for the game Starcraft in Korea. If serious sponsors become interested, who knows - maybe dead dragons will soon be presented by Pepsi and you'll see Lenuvien, the Elf popping a can for the next commercial.