Sure, but WoW does already have a huge installed base.
That said, you could be the middleman and not ask permission from anyone. Just build a 24 Hour Fitness/WoW mashup. The 24 Hour Fitness end would be easy if you have a membership (basically just set up a screen scraper for your biometric login history).
For WoW, you might start off by buying a bunch of top swords and stuff from other players to seed it. I vaguely know that Blizzard doesn't like that sort of thing, so maybe you could instead seed it with donations of equipment from people who are going to delete their accounts because of lack of exercise.
At the beginning it'd be semi-manual, with difficult-to-obtain gear traded in person in the game. But I think that would get a lot of buzz on Twitter (and even the NYT) if promoted properly, and would get you a meeting with the Blizzard guys to make it a reality.
Anyway, if anyone is interested in doing something with this, I actually have a whole spec written up (one of 50 startup ideas that I can't actually attend to, what with the primary and all). Drop me a line at sramanujan1729 at gmail dot com if you want to chat.
"I'm going to mull this over and see what I can come up with."
This idea is kind of like having a math game: the majority of the population will not bother with it. The reason WOW is so popular is because it allows you to get away from your real life.
I think people's participation would be much higher in such a program if the rewards were linked to an existing platform.
People have been trying to game-ify real life for years and its never gained much traction. I think this is because people have to sign up for something additional, and at that point (unless the program gains a lot of steam with a lot of people) there's not much tying individuals in.
Right, but that platform could just be "social bragging" through Facebook, other websites, and other methods entirely. It's as simple as showing off to your friends the cool things you're learning while encouraging them to do the same. Meanwhile, those same friends are able to observe the changes to you on a personal basis. It's inherently social and viral; I don't think it really needs to leverage an existing platform at all.
Hmm... I think it could also work well as a Facebook app.
I'm going to mull this over and see what I can come up with. This could really drive society to improve itself in all kinds of ways.