Yes, these are the ones I dropped in to recommend. Most 12-year-olds aren't going to be delighted by "Hello World" or Fibonacci sequence programs. Scratch and Alice are actually fun ways to start, giving instant, interesting feedback while teaching fundamentals of programming. Incidentally, Alice was written in Python, and one of the people in charge of it was Randy Pausch of "The Last Lecture" fame.

Video games are generally contrived to put some success within your reach, if only you'll play for just a while longer.

If you're not hacking/exploiting, your MMO successes fall within the scope of the designers' vision, and there isn't anything to be very proud of in the first place. You've merely completed the exercise.

If you're bothered when lower-end game content is re-contrived for a different audience, then I bet you're just envious and/or ashamed about your sunk costs.

But you'd be right that challenges acquire importance by not having a planner make them achievable for you. You're just having trouble accepting that that was the case for your own apparent challenges too.

I guess I'd accept that downing pre-nerf M'uru is about as significant as devising a slightly personalized way to tie your own shoelaces ... but what getting a life really means is taking on all the challenges that are hard by lack of design.