Family Fun

[Dren]

I recently got another computer.  This allowed me to connect them both up to my network and start up another WoW account through the trial friends account "thang."  Everything worked out great and got my son and daughter started on a few new chars.  I have one character that won a mammoth mount awhile back, so I used him to take them around and explain things, etc.  The account linking to allow summoning the other where you are has been awesome.  I also got the authenticator and it works on all my game accounts since it is all linked to your one battlenet account.  They even got some of my account sharing pets!

So, I've been having a lot of fun with my 9 and 11 year old in the game, a lot more than I had expected.  The kids really like it too, because it is just one more thing we can have in common and can talk about, plan for, etc.  Yeah yeah, nerd family ho!

We have a few other families in our guild that do much the same thing.  I'm thinking the older the original MMO generation gets, this will be more common.  It does seem that Blizzard has set up a system, whether intentional or not, that supports it.  Again, smart.

I think there are a few more of you guys that do something similar.  Sound off about your experiences if you have a chance.

[Fordel]

Blizzard indeed, did that on purpose. There is even a slew of parental account controls that you can setup to limit the child accounts playtime, be it X hours or Y window of opportunity.

[Hawkbit]

I've seen this in two families that I know (irl) and both are heading towards unhealthy marriages, if not divorce. 

In the first family, the mom, dad and teenage son play.  The parents raid hardcore five nights a week together and the kid plays a lot but doesn't raid.  They generally don't eat dinner together or do anything together because there's always a raid to attend.  They almost divorced last year and the relationship is still rocky because they're not spending time with each other outside of the game.  Luckily, the kid keeps his grades up even though the parents have stopped working with him on keeping up with schoolwork. 

In the second family, the stepmom doesn't play but the dad and his two teenage kids play a lot.  There's a serious disconnect in the marriage and both the kids have begun to have serious issues with schoolwork.  The daughter is failing out of her freshman year.  The mom is seriously frustrated with them all, but until she either leaves them or gets him to quit playing games, things aren't likely to get better.

Both families started out small with WoW as a passing thing to do together and it grew into a monster.  My point is that I'd advise setting limits to how much you all play together and make time to do things together outside of the game.  I acknowledge that this is only two cases I've seen in my life and that doesn't set a precedent.  It's simply odd to me that of the two families I know that play WoW together, both have serious issues.  Also, both I would wager had underlying dysfunction that WoW allowed to compartmentalize and/or surface.

For the record, I play MMOs about 60% of the time and console about 40%.  My 4yr old daughter plays some console games for about an hour a day (SMB wii, Lego Star Wars).  I play games overall about 10-20 hours a week now that I'm working full time.  I know that I've been very close to addiction to both EQ and WoW and I've learned to recognize my patterns and can control them. 

In the flip side of the coin, I should add that WoW has brought my father and I closer together.  I'm 34 and he's 59; we live two hours away from each other.  Even though it's casual play, I get to chat with him every day or two in WoW, which is much better than talking to him once a month like I used to. 

Not passing judgment or anything, but just advising to "proceed with caution".

[Lantyssa]

It's simply odd to me that of the two families I know that play WoW together, both have serious issues.  Also, both I would wager had underlying dysfunction that WoW allowed to compartmentalize and/or surface.

This is likely the root cause.  WoW or other time-sucking games will exacerbate existing problems, so families do need to watch out for this.  I know plenty of healthy couples who game together though, so it isn't all bad.

Still, it's always good to evaluate how things are going regardless of interests.

[Nebu]

There's a difference between involving your children in your interests and getting them hooked on your addictions. 

If you play WoW in a healthy fashion, it's very positive to share the fun with your children.  It fosters teamwork, math and word skills, goal-oriented problem solving, etc. 

It's a medium just like television.  It can be a good or bad thing depending on its use. 

[WindupAtheist]

Man, I wish I found WoW as fun as some of these addicts apparently do. I can't get through more than six or eight weeks at a time before paying for it seems like a waste.

[Dren]

I've noticed a really nice opportunity to give the kids a fun reason to read and use math.  It is interesting to see my son, for example, put two and two together on comparing armor, damage, etc. on pieces of armor and deciding which is better than the other.  It is like he is really understanding why it is important to know his numbers.  

It has been good for me too.  I typically hate helping them read the books they get from school.  It is pretty boring.  This is a fun way for me to sit right next to them and help them when they are struggling with a quest description, etc.  Plus they kind of live within the stories they read, which is fun for them.

As far as playtime, they might get 1/2 an hour every other day during the week.  By the time they are done with sports, homework/studying, baths, and eating dinner, there isn't much time before bedtime.  A lot of times they just choose to play outside or have a friend over.  Once we are between sport seasons, there will be a bit more time for WoW.  (Son plays hockey 3-4 hours a week and plays indoor soccer 2 hours a week.  Daughter plays B-ball 3-4 hours a week and starts indoor Tennis today!  6 year old son is just as active, but not ready for WoW yet.  2 year old son is just plain crazy!)

On weekends, we might get in 2-3 hours if nothing else is going on.  My wife wants nothing to do with it and they can only play if she says it is ok, so she balances it out well enough.  When summer hits, WoW will be even lower priority.

[Xanthippe]

My daughter (now 11) enjoys it more than my son.  She started playing when she was about 7 - mostly hung out in Stormwind, or had tea parties in Goldshire.  She used to strip her character down to her "bathing suit" to swim in the canals.  She doesn't actually play her character much - about 10 minutes is her limit on that.  She likes to ride around on her tiger, or fly around Outlands (I think her character is 61, I've leveled it mostly).  For awhile, she amused herself by going to Booty Bay and doing the chicken emote to Horde, to watch the Horde get killed by the guards after they attacked her.  She's the roleplayer of the family (Club Penguin and the Sims are her favorite games).

My son enjoys console games more (he's 13).  He's played WoW with his brother (my stepson), but most of his interest there was in hanging out with his brother rather than playing WoW.

My stepson (34) played, but it became a bad thing for him.  He's getting a divorce, partly due to achieving in WoW rather than achieving in life (that's a minor reason for the relationship problems, but a reason nonetheless).

[Dren]

My daughter isn't into it much, but has fun when she does play.  She is more about the outfits and things to look at in town.

My son play more, but he seems to do more exploring than anything.  He likes to take the boat trips back and forth for no more reason than he likes it.

[Merusk]

My 11 year-old daughter started picking up WoW again, now that she's bored with her Wii games.   At first she was just standing around Goldshire, getting into duels with people on her 23 hunter.  Then she asked how to do a battleground and I figured, Well Alliance sucks on Rampage anyway, she can't hurt 'em more than they hurt themselves and showed her.

She now does nothing but endlessly run WSG.  She's not any good at it, but she laughs like a maniac any time she helps to get a kill.  Today she ran 20wsgs in a row today while out from school sick.   I've created a monster.

[Cadaverine]

My 7 year old son will watch me play, and try to tell me what I need to do to kill this or that.  I started up a trial account for him to see if he wanted to give it a try himself.  Rolled up a Human Warrior, and off he went.  He ran around Northshire for a few minutes, tried killing a handful of the kobolds, and decided he didn't like killing monsters.  He much prefers the flash games on Lego.com, or Cartoon Network.

I can't say I blame him.

[Khaldun]

My 9-year old likes tooling around and exploring, getting pets and items, and seeing instances (once). The questing bores her to tears, mostly.

[Dren]

My 9 year old son still likes to play with me.  I basically lead him around the low level quests and instances while he gets lewt and exp.  He does go out and do some questing and skilling up when I'm not online too.  I still have to do the skills, gear, and talent work for him though.  He hasn't really caught on to that yet.  If anything, he's pretty excited to be playing and likes to talk to me about the things he does and sees.

The daughter (11) and the other son (6) don't play much, but it is probably because the nine year old is hogging the account.

[Nightblade]

Man, I wish I found WoW as fun as some of these addicts apparently do. I can't get through more than six or eight weeks at a time before paying for it seems like a waste.

No. No you don't.

[raydeen]

My daughter has always liked to watch me play (even back during my EQ days - she loved my BL doggy). She seems to be more fascinated with the wildlife in the games then the games themselves. I've considered introducing her to MMO's but frankly, the wife would kill me. The closest I've gotten her is Phantasy Star Offline on our second hand GameCube. She seemed to like it but I think the mechanics of these games are a bit beyond her. Maybe when she's older.

[WindupAtheist]

Hawkbit fucking ruined this thread in the third post with his poopsock horror stories. Now it's just a bunch of dudes trying to show whose family is least likely to be destroyed by WoW.

"Yeah bro, my kid plays WoW for like 13 seconds per day. He doesn't even know what an orc is, he just likes the colors. Then he goes outside and plays mountain climbing karate rugby the rest of the time."

Bah! 

[Dren]

I actually ran into an internal conflict over the weekend.   The 9 year old wanted to play outside with his friend.  I had just cleaned up the house after making lunch and was getting ready to sit down and play WoW with him.  Obviously, I let him go outside and play.

No mountain climbing involved, but you could probably categorize it as some form of LARP'ing.

[Slayerik]

Back in the day I played some wow with my now 8 y/o daughter and 6 year old son.

They just liked running around, or telling me what to fight.



Now, I play Free Realms with my kids once in a while. It's a little more cutsy, and they get their own house to decorate.

I made my house into a huge playground, complete with an obstacle course up to my roof....and way into the sky leading to a giant slide I made.

My kids get to keep in touch with their cousin (my niece) and play with each other thousands of miles away. Don't be fooled, it's not so Free as it is a realm. You need to be a member for the cooler stuff (house instead of apartment, bonus coins, mounts, etc)

[Kitsune]

Giving WoW to a kid to play is like letting them play with D&D miniatures.  They can amuse themselves with it, but it's not really for them.  The things that kids are most likely to enjoy, like bumming around with cool-looking little pets and crap, you'd get more mileage out of something like Free Realms that caters exactly to the demographic.  Other than that, a kid might be able to handle facerolling fights against basic monsters, but I have a hard time thinking that they're really 'getting it'.  The game isn't rocket science by any means, but it has enough fiddly details to keep track of that it'd take a teenager at minimum to handle well.

[Soulflame]

My 14 year old daughter plays a bit, mostly druids (I AM A KITTY!!!!) or hunters (I HAVE A KITTY PET!!!)  You may be able to detect a trend there.

My favorite moment has to be the time she was working on quests in Dragonblight zone, and she was in the Scarlet enclave, waiting to kill some elite.  She gets jumped by two allies in their mid 70s, and they thrash her.

As it happened, I was in ret spec that day, and just hanging around in Dalaran.  I headed down that way.  When I got close, I asked if they were still there.  She sadly said they were.

So I started a countdown from "10..."  She caught on to what was about to happen at 5, and by 0, I had flown in, blown cooldowns, and laid waste to her attackers.

That was one happy child.

[WindupAtheist]

Giving WoW to a kid to play is like letting them play with D&D miniatures.  They can amuse themselves with it, but it's not really for them.  The things that kids are most likely to enjoy, like bumming around with cool-looking little pets and crap, you'd get more mileage out of something like Free Realms that caters exactly to the demographic.  Other than that, a kid might be able to handle facerolling fights against basic monsters, but I have a hard time thinking that they're really 'getting it'.  The game isn't rocket science by any means, but it has enough fiddly details to keep track of that it'd take a teenager at minimum to handle well.

I dunno, I put my kid brother in front of Doom on the PS1 when he was like three years old. By the age of six or seven he could rape me at Quake 2. Seriously, have you ever been owned by someone in the second grade? I should have turned him into one of those pro Counterstrike e-sport fags and made some money off him.
 

[Rasix]

I dunno, I put my kid brother in front of Doom on the PS1 when he was like three years old. By the age of six or seven he could rape me at Quake 2. Seriously, have you ever been owned by someone in the second grade? I should have turned him into one of those pro Counterstrike e-sport fags and made some money off him.
 

My (at the time) 7 year old nephew could probably beat me 3 out of 5 times on the Wii Smash Bros title.  With his brother that's only about 4 years older I'd lose most matches badly.  Granted, I'd never played the game before (but I'm decent at fighters), but it was still pretty humbling.

Hopefully WoW will be dead and buried by the time my son has any interest (the WoW genpop is pretty goddamn vile).  Games like Free Realm, though, give me hope that he'll have something pretty cool to start with.

[WindupAtheist]

The thing is, I actually played Quake 2 at the time. Just single player on the console, but that's all my kid brother played too. I think he did deathmatches with bots though. Anyway, I would play him on a regular basis and kick his ass while secretly letting him have a few free kills to keep him from getting discouraged.

Then one day I had this whole experience of "Haha, okay, that's enough free kills, time to put him in his place... fuck I'm still dying... fuck I'm STILL dying... ALL RIGHT NOW IT'S ON YOU LITTLE SQUIRT! FUUUUUUUU--!" while he laughed his little six year old ass off the whole time.

[Dren]

Giving WoW to a kid to play is like letting them play with D&D miniatures.  They can amuse themselves with it, but it's not really for them.  The things that kids are most likely to enjoy, like bumming around with cool-looking little pets and crap, you'd get more mileage out of something like Free Realms that caters exactly to the demographic.  Other than that, a kid might be able to handle facerolling fights against basic monsters, but I have a hard time thinking that they're really 'getting it'.  The game isn't rocket science by any means, but it has enough fiddly details to keep track of that it'd take a teenager at minimum to handle well.

I never expected him to raid, if that's what your getting at.  Otherwise, WoW is playable by most any age.  I do most of the min/maxing for him, but it isn't really necessary and I think he's getting the hange of it (9 yr son.)  He enjoys the game enough to play on his own.  I've been taking a break from it for the last two weeks and he still plays sometimes.  He went from 20-30 on his own.

If the game becomes too much for him or becomes boring, he'll stop.  I never push him to play.  This all came about from my kids asking if they could try it.  He's really the only one that cares much about it.

We still have a Wizard's 101 account.  They play that sometimes, but that combat is so repetititve they get bored with it quick.  I should probably look into Free Realms.  Fusion Fall was a loser with my kids pretty quick.

Realistically, it is warm out now and they spend very little time in front of the TV/Computer before having to hit the sack.  Games will take a backseat for awhile now.

[Lantyssa]

Free Realms is awesome.  If they do stick with it, membership is pretty cheap compared to other online games and does have worthwhile benefits, though there's still plenty to do without it.

[Merusk]

My daughter, if I haven't previously mentioned it, has gotten really into the BGs on her hunter.  She's done the last 7 levels on her hunter exclusively in BGs, most notably WSG. (It's taken a lot of goading from me to get her to go out and randomly kill NPCs to raise weapon skills.)

She's beginning to sound like an old PVP vet.  "Dad, the Alliance sucks.  The Horde team sticks together while Alliance runs around in the middle getting kiled all alone.  Nobody goes after the flag except me, but I get killed because there's 4 Horde beating me up."

Brings a tear to the eye.

- For those worried about it I've got many, many chat channels disabled on her char. She gets /gu and a global the family is all in.

[Lantyssa]

Funny, I think those are the only channels a lot of us are in.

[Arrrgh]

My daughter, if I haven't previously mentioned it, has gotten really into the BGs on her hunter.  She's done the last 7 levels on her hunter exclusively in BGs, most notably WSG.

Last time I checked weapon skills still didn't go up in PvP.

[Merusk]

Thus the part in the (). She's 11 and doesn't quite get why it's important to raise those skills.

[Dren]

I have the skill raising issue with my kids but in a different way.  They don't do PvP yet.  I power level them sometimes through instances, etc.  I try to explain to them that they have to go out and do questing on there own too inbetween times I help them to get their skills up and understand their character.  Some get it, some don't.  We have fun anyway.

I'd like to get my son into PvP with me.  I think it would be fun to get frustrated with Alliance's stupidity together!

[Shrike]

I was under the impression that weapon skills were automatically maxed in BGs. Hence, no real need to max those skills until you hit a PvE environment again.

I've never really noticed myself, but my twink warrior usually is way behind in skills when she exits a certain bracket, but it never seems to affect her while she's in the x9 part of said bracket. Of course, with her, low skill just means more crushing overpower crits on hapless NPCs, soooo...dunno. Still, I seem to recall reading somewhere that skills are auto-maxed while in BGs.

Just to stay (vaguely) on topic, our own guild has had a number of family units (still a few in there to this day). I'm not what you'd call really close to these people, but most seemed to balance things in their lives well enough. There were a few rather spectacular breakups in the TBC era, but those were between college age kids.

[Rendakor]

Shrike, I think the point was that they need to level their weapon skills so that they're not useless in PVE. Also, the way I understand it is that weapon skills don't matter against players. However, in AV or IoC you'll need skills to be effective against the NPCs within.