Firstly, you can't use a term like status and then apply it across the entire D3 player base. The edge cases here are complete player types which make a sizeable portion of the player base.
I think that status correctly summarizes the incentive that the grand parent post describes. And from what I know about gamers I think he's onto something. It may be a more local status; e.g. within a close network of friends, but status is potent.
If you do not want to apply it across the player base, fine. But one must provide an alternative, perhaps some partition across the base according to motivation. I'd be interested to see that from you.
1. I don't see any results. Even the supplamentary link [http://www.nickyee.com/cpb-supp.html] doesn't break down, say, top responses as fractions.
2. In the list of MMORPGs WoW is not listed. That seems strange, casting doubt on this study.
3. The word "status" is the 5th word in table 1.
It's great that there are multiple motivations, but I'd like to see which motivations are most prominent in the sample. That is, are 80% motivated by achievement, 50% by social, and 40% immersion? (And note that in this case, the percentages don't need to add to 100).
It's an old sampling, and even with or without wow it makes no difference.
As I have said elsewhere you can go to the dwarf fortress forums and you will find status to be a far lesser motivator than doing cool stuff.
Gaming is studied pretty extensively nowadays, I pulled the first result you get for video games plus motivation. A few further google searches will help illuminate this further for you.
Firstly, you can't use a term like status and then apply it across the entire D3 player base. The edge cases here are complete player types which make a sizeable portion of the player base.