Tiered Experience - The New Digital Divide? 

I bailed very early on from attempting to configure my connectivity to WOW and Everquest.  Some success was gained in accessing the latter, but even 100mbps (via an ethernet connection rather than wireless at home) my Asus EEEPC struggled.

Yes, I may have played using better equipment, but I thought that a 10mbps connection to the internet via Virgin and  2Gb of RAM would have given me *some* experience.

As for WOW, I was very disappointed: a recursive problem with registration/configuration meant that I never got to access and enter the WOW universe, just a browser redirect to a-n-other game site. 

So, are these games really geared towards the Internet and the average user? Or are they still a niche genre that only harnesses the Internet for connectivity - effectively power-hungry desktop applications calling for similar high-end distributed demands?