Twisted Nether Blogcast #4

Episode 4 is up. I had got used to it being posted early Monday morning and it was the first thing I went to look for yesterday when I logged on. I was crushed, crushed I tell you, to see it hadn’t been released! I continued to check back all day but it wasn’t until I came out of Kara last night, tired and ready to go to bed, that it popped up in my feed reader. There was nothing else for it, I told hubby to go along and warm up my side, I was going to be a while!

It was well worth the wait. Big Bear Butt had me in stitches….Yada yada yad..”Don’t move in the Flame Wreath!” followed by a big groan. It put me in mind of Joyce Grenfell and her “George don’t do that!” nursery sketch. (Oops, I, got sidetracked at YouTube. Joyce Grenfell led to Hinge & Bracket, and I spied Terry Scott’s “My brother” in there too but I’m back now.)

The item that really got me thinking was the section about kids in raids and the link to this article by Toomanyannas. Kids and WoW, or more particularly, my kids and WoW is something I’ve always had mixed feelings about. I started playing just over 3 years ago and from the first my kids were fascinated with it. At the time Megan was 10 (almost 11) and Ewan had just turned 5. They both begged to be allowed to make characters and so I let them. Shortly afterwards I bought Megan her own copy of Wow and she paid the sub from the pocket-money she gets from her Gran. Megan was quick to learn the etiquette and her character was in the same guild as me, which at the time was still very small. After about 6 months she lost interest and got hooked up in the Sims and Ewan played on her account.

It was really fascinating to watch him play. I thought he’d be happier with something like a rogue or a hunter, the basics of both those classes are pretty simple but he was adamant that he wanted a warlock and he called her “Snowdrop”. Now bear in mind that, at that time, he couldn’t read. He had no idea what the few spells he had actually did. Snowdrop had a dagger so most of the time he just stabbed stuff. I spent quite a bit of time with him on several occasions explaining what his spells did and would be shouting out “hit number 3, then 4″ but he always went back to stabbing stuff. He was actually reasonably successful, although I suspect his imp actually did most of the hard work! What amazed me is how often he ended up in groups doing quests that he needed to do when he couldn’t read a word that anyone was typing. There were several times when i had to whisper his group members (usually after he’d managed to wipe them, or occasionally when they were getting very frustrated with him) and ask them did they realise they’d grouped with a 5 year old who couldn’t read.

Then he discovered Warsong Gulch. This was back before battle groups where only people from your server would be in the battle ground. I can only imagine that there was a collective groan from the Alliance and that the Horde would rub their hand in glee every time he appeared in there. The only melee warlock on the server. He used to spend most of his time in there dead and would sometimes get very frustrated and upset but always insisted on going back.

The thing that used to tickle me most of all was how he used to roleplay his character, and this was long before I rolled on an RP server myself, we were all playing on a PVE server. In the evening, when he logged off, he would bathe his character and put her to bed. He used to strip off all her gear and plonk her in the nearest pond or moonwell, dress her again and walk her to the Inn, and put her to bed upstairs.

Once it became obvious that Megan wasn’t going to continue playing it seemed silly that she should keep paying for the sub. I suspended her account and later I passed it on to a colleague at work who was interested in playing WoW. Megan does have a character that she plays (rarely) on my account and Ewan has loads, mostly on RP servers. His “main” is a druid that’s got all the way up to level 25. He also has a hunter that gets a new pet almost every time he logs in to play it. He has his own little guild which I discovered when I logged in to do his water-form quest for him, complete with tabard! I was quite concerned as to where he was getting the money from and so kept a close eye on him. He has a myriad of friends, some very high level, all of whom he has met role-playing. Yes, I have seen him ask higher levels to help him with quests (something I would normally frown upon) but he always does it in-character and never pesters people if they say no. When he’s logged in he’s almost always in a group and a lot of these players seems to think he’s cute (which he is!) and send him gold in the mail! Sometimes, watching Ewan play WoW is more fun than playing it myself

I do worry a little that he may come across inappropriate role-play (ERP seemed to be everywhere at one time!) or that he will find himself being bullied or manipulated. On the whole though it hasn’t been a problem. He is polite in real life anyway so it wasn’t a big leap for him to lean WoW ettiquette. Myself or hubby is always around when he plays and often Megan will watch him too. He doesn’t meet the age recommendation but he is closely supervised when he plays and not only does he enjoy it bit he brings a lot of pleasure to others too.