World of Warcraft Parents Guide

BlizzCon 2009 is over and all the kids are buzzing about the announced changes to World of Warcaft. Blizzard has done a great job of keeping the WoW-franchise alive with massive yet evolutionary changes that keep the game fresh while maintaining a cohesive fantasy universe. But Cataclysm, with it’s goblins, worgens, and sundered Barrens (what will happen to the Chuck Norris jokes?) is at least a year a way. In the meantime there is this great game that has already changed dramatically with some great changes in the very near term: Onyxia and Icecrown.
In fact, so much change is coming–it might be hard for your child to figure out what do it with Warcraft now. Summer is just about over. School is around the corner. It’s time to ratchet down the raids and battlegrounds. This is a great time to take a little time off from WoW. Azeroth is in a lull between major patches. The next big event, WoW’s 5th Anniversary, won’t hit until November. By then your kids should have settled into their school routines.
I’m sure you’ll get some pushback from your warriors and death knights. But here are some good arguments for slacking off with WoW:

• Everyone has hit 80 on their main. The level cap isn’t going to change for a long while.
• This summer everyone has geared up on easy heroics earning emblems of Conquest and Triumph. You only need a few piece of tier 9 to remain competitive.
• If you play WoW too much eventually you’ll burn out and drop the game altogether.

This last point is the most interesting one. I’ve seen lots of kids burn out on WoW and move on to other pastimes. I’m sure many parents are relieved when this happens: “Whew! That awful WoW thing is over! Finally Johnny is doing something else like watching reality TV, hanging out on the street corner, or Xbox.”
There are many benefits kids experience when playing WoW (building self esteem, learning how to work in a team, solving complex problems) and none of these benefits can be found in watching TV, hanging out, or even Xbox. While at first you may welcome WoW-burn out, in the long run you’ll miss those night when your child was safely at home DPSing down a monster instead running around who-knows-where getting into who-knows-what.
So encourage your kids to take a break from WoW. Give them some interesting alternatives, and fire up their accounts back in October in time for the 5th Anniversary events. Used in this way WoW is a parent’s best friend.

Tags: Back To School, BlizzCon, Cataclysm

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 27th, 2009 at 1:18 pm and is filed under Hints & Tips. 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.