Because most of his friends dont live physically near him
Kind of hard to snail mail around a copy. Of course I guess if you purchased it the cdkey is all you need, certainly other ways of getting the game alot faster than physically mailing the cd. But then you dont get a nice manual.
And those are horrible examples, hellgate londons company has fallen apart, and I assume you mean WoW, which sucks. But for cheaper than this, we could be playing any number of good strategy games. I pirated dominions 2 to play with a friend, and it convinced me to buy dominions 3 to play with the same friend.
But to get a 3rd into the group, is basically impossible, and its not like BOTH of us arent trying.
Its too expensive.
Besides, its just an MP game anyways, the AI is so horrible that SP is really just a way to check out the races and strategies for MP.
If it was cheaper, fine, lets see they would make less money, but they would have a much larger community. Whats more important, a bottom line, or a community? A community is going to keep sales of a game going alot longer, because people get attracted to communities more than the get attracted to games.