World of Warcraft Parents Guide

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.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 5:53 pm and is filed under News & Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.