World of Warcraft Parents Guide

I hate to say this, especially in the forum of a blog devoted to responsible gaming, but World of Warcraft is addictive again. Fall of the Litch King (aka Patch 3.3), which was released last Tuesday, has restored WoW to its former habit-forming glory.

I’m not saying that Wrath of the Litch King wasn’t fun. The world’s most popular MMORPG is the best of it’s breed, perhaps the best computer gaming experience yet invented. But WoW was getting a bit tired. The challenges were either too quick and easy or too time-consuming and difficult.

I’m sure many parents noticed this phenomenon: Slowly over the last few months kids have been drifting away from leveling their warriors and farming honor in Wintergrasp to other pursuits: Reading manga like Bleach, watching anime like Naruto, and playing FPS games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2.

The changes in Patch 3.3 have brought WoW out of the doldrums. Suddenly gamers are staying up all night to play marathon sessions. Homework and housework is suffering. Family Guy and South Park viewership numbers are falling.

The root cause of all this obsessive-compulsive fun is the new Dungeon Finder. In previous versions of WoW it could take hours to find a group of players interested in the same instance. Players became stuck—not geared enough to raid and not raiding enough to get gear. The new Dungeon Finder assembles a team on behalf of the players. No negotiating roles or looting rules or gear checks. Just click and within minutes your character is off fighting Soulguard Bonecasters in the Forge of Souls or any of the other 16 level 80 instances that WotLK offers.

Some smart engineer or social anthropologist must have figured out that the players’ fear of taking risks, even virtual risks, were creating antisocial behaviors. Many players, especially casual players, were playing alone and locked out of WoW’s mostly group-oriented content. The new Dungeon Finder includes incentives and buffs that encourage random groupings. At the current gear levels and player content experience these PUGs (Pick Up Groups) that were once avoided are now a pleasure to do.

More than ever WoW is a virtual amusement park were the audience is the biggest attraction.

Patch 3.2 has arrived in the World of Warcraft. A patch is a free upgrade to the gameplay in WoW. Over the years Blizzard has released several major patches that bring new quests, achievements, raids, gear, and more to the content hungry mages and paladins in Azeroth. Patch 3.2 changes many aspects of the game and your child may end up spending a lot of time reading about how to deal with the new badge systems, talent points, and spell enhancements. Most of these changes do not come as a surprise: Patch 3.2 has been tested for months on the PTR (Public Test Realm), a special set of servers where any player can go to help Blizzard find bugs and fine tune game play before a patch is release. There is a comprehensive guide to Patch 3.2 at wow.com or you can read Blizzard’s own patch notes.

The NY Times published an article on how Americans spend their time. The best part is a cool interactive chart where you can browse the habits of different demographics. While World of Warcraft is not explicitly mentioned computer use is. No matter how you slice and dice the data Americans still spend far more of their time sleeping, working, and watching TV than using a computer.

Computer use doesn’t seem to grow to much more than 4% of Americans at any point during the day. But WoW is such a time sink, with all the questing, leveling, raiding, and PvP going on it’s hard to believe that it doesn’t account for more lost productivity or lost study time.

Once answer is that even though Blizzard sold an estimated 8.6 million copies of WoW so far (as reported by Gamasutra) that’s a small number compared to the 238 million people who are estimated to watch TV everyday.

Another answer may be that WoW and other computer-based social networking activities like Facebook, MySpace, and Instant Messaging are reported as socializing which the study reports people spend about 10% of their time doing.

National Public Radio reported that a recent rapper feud could shed light on the behaviors of nations in world politics. Well, we see similar negotiations of power and dominance played out daily in the World of Warcraft. Every MMORPG is a social game and WoW does not shirk it’s responsibility by providing several features that make it easy for players to feud and challenge each other like Jay-Z and The Game. We aren’t talking about WoW’s official honor point system for PvP or the Bloodsail Admrial Achievement (which you get from killing hundreds of Booty Bay NPCs to become hated). While fun, these activities require no political skills and just a lot of button pressing to win.

The real politics of WoW is found on the street of Dalaran, Stormwind, Origrimmar, and the trade chat channel. Players with difficult to get gear or titles are admired and ridiculed in equal measure. A Spectral Tiger Mount or Val’anyr, Hammer of Ancient Kings will get you plenty of gratz and celebrity treatment. It will also get you plenty of /spit emotes and demands to duel.

For kids WoW is a great opportunity to safely figureout how to respond to social politics. A WoW player can create as many personalities and reputations as he can alts. He can test out different reactions or just be himself without risking much more than a gkick every now and then.

The New York Times reports that a trio of ex-blizzard developers have developed an iPhone game that awards achievement points for completing “quests” (like buying a new pair of shoes) in real life. Hopefully your kids will be able to earn Booyah points for taking out the trash, doing homework, and practicing the trumpet.

The Telegraph.co.uk reported today that “Medical staff are creating their own ‘avatars’ in online fantasy games such as World of Warcraft in the hope of treating youngsters addicted to virtual worlds.” Like any other activity, too much WoW is not good for kids and adults alike. Blizzard even includes a message on one of WoW’s loading screens reminding players not to not spend too much time in Azeroth. The jury is still out about online addiction but it’s pretty clear that as a parent you have to limit your warrior’s online time until he is mature enough to understand limits. Parental controls are your friend.

Kids of all ages love a good fantasy/action epic and Blizzard announced a movie based on World of Warcraft years ago. Finally we’re getting some details! The Washington Post reports that SpiderMan director Sam Raimi has been hired to “transform World of Warcraft into a movie“. Will Jaina kiss Arthus while hanging upside down?

On May 5th, NPR’s Talk of the Nation invited Richard Blumenthal (Attorney General for Connecticut), Lenore Skenazy (author of Free Range Kids), and Janis Wolak (research assistant and professor at the Crimes Against Children Research Center at the University of New Hampshire) to discuss the dangers our children face online from child predators. The discussion focused more on social networks such as Facebook than on MMOG such as World of Warcraft, but the bottom line is that the online world is not much more dangerous than a suburban neighborhood.  We do not lock our children in the house and forbid them to go outside and play.  Similarly, we would be naive and over protective to ban our children from playing online at all.  Both online and offline, parents need to be careful about how our children interact with strangers.  

Here are a couple of recommendations that came out of the NPR discussion:

* We parents need to talk with our children and make them aware of online hazards.  Just as we teach them not to get into cars with strangers or cross the street without looking both ways, we must teach them not to give out personal information (age, gender, address, phone number) on the web.  Parents who do not know what to teach their children should make sure the schools or other parents do the job for them.

* Parents must insist that children use computers in public spaces such as the living room or the kitchen.  Children should NOT use computers in the privacy of their bedrooms.  Screens should be clearly visible by anyone in the room with them.

* Many cell phones can access the internet.  If your child has internet access on his or her phone, make sure you have the means to monitor what they are seeing and doing.

Interested parents can listen to the NPR podcast at the following link: <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=103819119>

WoW has many fun, and occasionally silly, holiday weeks through out the year. One of our favorites is Children’s Week which runs from May 1 to May 7 this year. It’s a chance for the ferocious warriors of WoW to get a feel for parenting. Players can earn gold, loot, and achievements by dragging an “orphan child” around to battlegrounds and instances. Wow Insider has a great guide to how to earn the Children’s Week titles “Patron” or “Matron”.