Blog Azeroth Shared Topic: Introducing friends to WoW
Each week, Blog Azeroth hosts a Shared Topic for bloggers to answer on their own blogs and then link to in the forum. This week, frinka from Warcraft Street asks:
Have you ever tried to introduce real life friends to WoW? If yes, how did it go? If you never have, why not?
All of my gamer friends are playing or have played WoW, and my non-gamer friends have neither the inclination for video games nor the systems to run MMO. So no on the friends.
Moving on to family, I wanted to get my mother into it -- like I got her into Might and Magic, XCOM, and Spaceward Ho -- but her laptop was able to run Pogo, and that's about it. My gaming sisters tried WoW and other MMOs on their own. The Spousal Unit of course played; he's taking a break to be addicted to play Minecraft.
That leaves The Spawn, my now 6-year-old daughter, with whom I've had both success and failure getting to play.
When The Spawn was 3, I wanted her to join in on the game she saw her parents playing. In before "ZOMG, you neglected your child!" and "Kids should play outside!" and "GAH! Trade chat!" -- go read the article I wrote about it and chill out, man. The Spawn and I played Itchee the gnome warlock together. She worked the keyboard while I used the mouse and provided strategies. We had a blast. After a while, however, she preferred the solo play of the browser games that companies like PBS, Disney and Nickelodeon provide.
I tried again a year or two later. Taking advantage of the pre-Cataclysm discount on vanilla WoW, I bought her an account. She made a couple of gnomes to play with me as well as a couple of Forsaken (she's into zombies). But The Spawn just didn't like the fighting. Super Mario Brothers combat is much more to her tastes. So I tried getting her to collect flowers and fish. She liked the exploring part, but nothing else. Ah well.
Neither The Spousal Unit nor I have succeeded in getting her to play any of our favorite games except for console and handheld ones. Oh, and Plants vs. Zombies -- she likes zombies and gardening.
Have you had any success getting friends and/or family to play World of Warcraft? Have you tried? Blog about it, then post your link at Blog Azeroth -- or just leave your answer in the comments below.
