World of Warcraft Parents Guide

Blizzard listens.  Many school-age WoW players have been frustrated because parents (quite reasonably) restrict WoW play time during the school year, especially on school nights.  Adult WoW players have been frustrated because by the time they get home from work, spend some quality time with family, cook, do routine chores, check homework, and get the kids ready for bed, there isn’t enough time (or energy) left to get anything done on WoW.  ”WoW is a time sink,” was the biggest single complaint about playing the game.  Until Patch 3.2 rolled out, it was difficult to progress to higher levels of content or professions without putting in many multi-hour sessions.  With Patch 3.2 Blizzard has reduced the time needed per session to play the game.

1. Patch 3.2 allows high level players to get high level gear by running shorter instances with fewer players.  Much of the gear that was only available through multi-hour raid runs in large groups is now available to kids and adults who only have an hour or two per session to devote to WoW.  A player can now logon to WoW, run a single instance (which typically takes about an hour) with a group of friends or a pug, and over time build up a very high level gear set.

2. Patch 3.2 allows players to extend raids.  Prior to Patch 3.2, raid instances reset every week, and a raid group had to start over again from the beginning.  The highest level raid, Ulduar, has 14 bosses, which get progressively more difficult to kill.  If a team gets stuck on a particular boss half way through the raid or at the end of the raid, when the raid resets each week, the team has to start over again from the beginning.  A raid team devotes an extraordinary number of hours to getting back to the same point again each week.  By extending the raid instance beyond the normal reset date, players no longer have to fight their way through all the lesser bosses each week and can simply resume where they left off.

Blizzard introduced a couple of additional tweaks that reduce the need to logon for long hours each day.  The net result should be less friction between parents and their children.  Prior to Patch 3.2 parental efforts to restrict WoW time to an hour or so per session were met with protests that “It’s not possible to get anything done in an hour.”  The simple fact of the matter was: The kids were right.  Now parents can stand firm.  The kids may want to play for more than an hour, but it is not necessary.  An hour and a half might be a good compromise.

This entry was posted on Saturday, August 29th, 2009 at 9:19 am 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.