More Than Just Questing

One characteristic of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) such as World of Warcraft is the constant community of others.  You are never really playing alone. In WoW, players often login just to text chat with friends more or less the same way they use cell phone text messaging. The real fun starts at about level 17. There are special places within the virtual world that players can attempt in a group or party. The party size is 5 for the lower levels, but grows to 10 or even 25 players at the higher levels. A 10 or 25-member party is called a "raid group" or just "raid." The places that a party or raid attempts to conquer are called "dungeons" or "instances." "Instances" is a better term since only a few of the locations are actually dungeons, although most are inside something - a cave, a castle, a mine or a sunken temple for example. These instances have much more difficult enemies, which players at the appropriate level could not defeat alone; they must work together for the common cause. Players also have to defeat one or more bosses along the way that reward players better items than they would get from questing alone. (Click on any of the images with a bluish border to get a larger version.)

In addition to instances, there are also group quests - generally outdoors - that are easier to complete a party of two or three players at the appropriate level. If you have a child joining WoW to play with a few real-life friends, they may have a "built-in" party for doing instances and group quests, but often a group will need to pick up a random individual (with a particular specialty) to complete the group. I made a number of online friends this way and "ran" a number of instances with them later. Some of those instances became my favorite moments in the game. WoW has a way to keep a list of players as friends (as well as a list of players to ignore), which can be used later to tell when those players are logged in. Players can send a private text message to any other player in the game (called a "whisper") in order to ask if they'd like to try an instance run.

As you might expect, getting together a group of 25 people with the proper mixture of abilities to be successful in a larger, more complex instance doesn't happen randomly - at least, not well. Most players at some point will join a guild. A guild is just a group of players that play together regularly under the same guild banner (name). With a guild, there is a special guild text chat. The guild chat is active regardless of where the player is in WoW (unless the player chooses to shut it off or ignore it). Guild chat is a great way to ask questions about a quest that's proving illusive, to ask for or offer help, to organize raid groups for an instance or to just talk about the news of the day. The guild bank is a guild community storage area (found in the larger cities in the game) where members of the guild can place items they find or produce or get items they need. Every guild has one or more guild officers. They can determine who in the guild has what sort of access to which parts of the guild bank. Higher-level players can leave items that up-and-coming players will need for certain quests. It also becomes a storage area for items needed for raids and some rewards from instances.

Guilds are fairly self-policing. While WoW has tools for starting and maintaining a guild roster, the game does nothing to enforce or require a guild. The officers of a guild invite new (un-guilded) players to the guild. They can kick unruly players from a guild as well. A player is free to leave a guild at any time. However, players that wish to successfully advance in the 10 and 25-person instances really need to belong to a guild to do so. Guilds help provide consistency and promote the right mix of other players needed to complete an instance. Most instances require many attempts to work out a successful strategy to defeat the various "bosses." That strategy can only be successful if the players understand it and know each other's play style. A guild has to fairly reward the guild members in order to keep them happy. Players need to play up to their ability and treat guild members well in order to remain in good standing. Defeating a particularly troublesome boss for the first time with 9 or 24 other guild-mates is a particularly euphoric and rewarding experience on par with winning the "big game." The A-Team's Hannibal had it right when he said, "I love it when a plan comes together."

If your child isn't interested in playing in a group, they can play from level 1 to the maximum completely alone. I have done exactly that when I wanted to create an alternate character (called "alts") quickly. They won't be able to go into instances appropriate for their level. They could, if they wished just to see the content, go alone into an instance significantly under their level and generally do just fine. For example, they could go alone into a level 17-20 instance when they are level 40. There are some parts of some instances that require more than one player to advance though. Very few of the items they would receive while in such an instance would be of any use to them (except maybe to sell in the auction house). Such a player should understand that when they reach the top level (called the "level cap"), there won't be much left to do. They could complete outstanding requests or return to do quests they'd not done earlier (even if those quests are significantly under the player's level), do recurring daily quests, play in the battlegrounds and/or arena instances (although that's not done alone). There's really not much else. This isn't necessarily bad because as mentioned before, reaching this point could take months or years. After that, the player could try a new character class as different classes play quite differently. The same quests need to be approached differently by different classes that have different abilities. Also, most classes have special quests for only that class. If a player reaches the point where they feel they've done it all, they can choose to suspend their account. Their characters and all the character's items are placed in limbo. They are no longer able to play nor are they charged the monthly fee. When a new expansion is released later, that player can reactivate their account and start from where they left off.

Some players prefer the player versus player ("PvP") style of play of Call of Duty or Team Fortress 2. Others prefer player against computer-controlled characters, which is called "player versus environment" or "PvE." WoW supports both styles of play. World of Warcraft has two main "factions:" the Alliance and the Horde. As you would find out from the in-game lore, these two factions are sworn enemies. To support the two styles of play, there are two main types of servers: PvE and PvP. On PvE servers, players from opposing factions can only battle in the battlegrounds instances, certain "contested" areas of the world or when both explicitly decide to battle (almost anywhere). On PvP servers, any player can battle any opposing faction player (at any level) at any time with no warning in most areas of the world. Battlegrounds are special instances where a 10, 15 or 40 players from each faction (at or near the same level) battle each other. Some instances are won by conquering the other side's general. Others are capture-the-flag instances and in some, the players must control certain spots in the instances for the most time.

For those players that prefer a rated and laddered set of battles, WoW has an arena system, where two teams of a five players per team battle it out. Arena challenges are divided by "seasons," much like football or baseball. The teams have to be arranged and registered before their first arena match and more-or-less remain constant for the entire season. Based on a team's arena rating, they have access to buy special equipment - which is generally tailored to further PvP play.

Apart from the usual quests, Blizzard has a number of special events in WoW that are held every year. Many correspond to (but are not named the same as) popular holidays from various cultures such as Hallows End (Halloween) and Brewfest (Octoberfest). During these events, there are special quests that have rewards unique to that holiday (such as a special mount like a flying broom, the Headless Horseman's horse or brewfest RAM or a special pet.) Many of these rewards can be very helpful to players in other parts of the game. Some, such as the pet pumpkin, are purely whimsical. There is also a weekly fishing derby, the Stranglethorn Fishing Extravaganza. There are unique rewards from that as well. Very occasionally, Blizzard will also have one-time-only events. These often correspond to the imminent release of a new expansion pack and serve to bridge the lore from the existing world to the new content in the expansion. Even though they may happen only once, they are implemented with the same care that Blizzard shows throughout the game.

Unexpected Real-World Lessons

If as a parent, you lament that the time your child will spend playing WoW is a waste of time, that's not going to be entirely true. Any game - golf, bowling, checkers or computer games - is just a form of entertainment like watching television. However, World of Warcraft does manage to sneak in some things that are reasonably educational. Interestingly, they are actually mostly fun.

Playing On a Team

If your child ends up joining a guild (as discussed before) and progresses to the later levels of the game, they will discover the importance of playing on a team, taking direction & criticism and paying attention. The higher-level encounters - especially the 25-man instances - require a lot of coordination and talent to win. There are instances that every member must survive and do their job in order to succeed. Every member of the group needs to know their primary role and what to do in contingencies. Every member has to start the raid with all the items they need for the session such as potions and (special) equipment. I played organized sports in high school, and I can attest that the need to practice and learn group coordination is no less important when playing WoW. There are no spectators in a raid group and nobody sits on the bench.

Economics

The first of the sneakily educational activities that new players are likely to encounter is the auction house. This is the WoW equivalent of Craig's List or eBay. There is an auction house is located in most major cities. There, players can buy and sell goods they created, harvested and found during questing or running instances. Some items that are auctioned will be used by other players directly (e.g., health potions or armor) or as a part of other things they make or need for quests (e.g., a gold bar or a truesilver rod).

Items are auctioned off using a couple of different auction formats: open-ended and those with a buy-out price. All auctions expire a set time after they are created, but the seller has a choice of a few different periods. The longer the item is listed, the higher the auction house listing fee. The auction house also gets a cut of the sales. Once the player puts an item up for auction, they are free to go off and do other things. If an item in the auction house sells, the seller is notified both by in-game mail (which has the winning amount attached) and in their chat window. If it does not sell, the item is returned to them in the mail. When a player bids on an item in the auction house, they may buy it outright (if the auction has a buyout price) or they can also bid less than the buyout price (and higher than the current bid) hoping to win. Potential buyers are also then free to go off and do other things. If the auction is near closing, however, they may wish to stay in the auction house in case a bidding war occurs. If a user wins an item or is outbid, they are notified by the in-game mail system. If they win, the item is also included in the mail. If they are outbid, their bid amount is returned to them in the mail.

The tools included with the game for using the auction house are good, but another nice feature World of Warcraft offers is an extendable user interface. That is, players can install add-ons (generally written by other players) that make actions they do easier or track those actions. Find one of the many add-ons for tracking the items you see at your local auction house. Several of these create a local database of the prices it sees at that moment. Over time, repeatedly allowing this add-on to scan the auction house will give the player a good idea of the maximum and minimum prices for the items that have been seen.  This is one of the most downloaded and used add-ons in the game. There is also a website, WoWuction that is dedicated to tracking the prices of auctions for all the servers in the game. Everyone, once they get to level 20 or so, will need to deal with the auction house for some items. Because of Blizzard's way of making what could be tedious instead be fun and easy, players find this diversion at least a little entertaining.

It's very common to see complaints in the general and guild chat text about spot shortages of an item that has caused a drastic price increase or a glut of some items they are selling, which causes them to sell for much less than they typically do. WoW players, regardless of their age, will learn the finer points of supply and demand in action. Don't be surprised when your child tells you they need to get on for just 15 minutes to check or start an auction. There are certain times of the day and certain days of the week when items sell for more or less than other days, and players will learn when these times occur for the items they sell or seek. Buy low; sell high is alive and well in WoW.

Mathematics & Online Research

Starting at level 10 and continuing as they level, players are awarded one "talent" point per level. There are many more talents than there are points to put into them. Some talents are offensive like a new spell or attack. Some are defensive. Others are more passive to aid in offense or defense. Added to this, there is armor, weapons, shields (for some players), rings, necklaces and other items that can be used to boost a player's talents or reduce an opponent's effectiveness.  Additionally, there are magical enhancements and some items have slots for magical gems that can further supplement a player's talents. Suffice it to say, there are dozens of ways any player can beef themselves up.

While it won't be necessary for the early levels, eventually every player begins to wonder if they are getting all they can out of their characters. Perhaps they've noticed another player of the same class doing noticeably more (or less) damage than they are (assuming they are a damage-dealing class) or the other players have a talent they didn't choose to put talent points in themselves. When this happens, the player usually turns to one of the many online websites dedicated to discussing their class and the game mechanics in general.  One of my favorites, when I played, was the forums at Elitist Jerks (which seems to have since disappeared).

My (last) main character was a damage spell caster. At Elitist Jerks, I found discussions in the forums that get very spirited with both theoretical and empirical test results by players when they do X, Y and Z instead of Y, X and Z. The math can get pretty involved. I used to use a spreadsheet written for my specific character class that had pull-down menus and fill-in-the-blank boxes that compared various combinations of talents, equipment and spells to maximize my character's ability with alternatives and recommendations. Such spreadsheets are often well above the amateur-Excel-jockey level. However, it's since been replaced with the much more extensive SimulationCraft, which is a C++ program that simulates the damage done by individuals and the raid group as a whole. People take this game seriously because it is no mere game. Nobody thinks anything of an avid golfer spending a week researching a new putter or a fantasy football manager spending 5-6 hours a week computing player stats. The same thing holds true for dedicated WoW players. A player that's serious about making their character perform their best will do the research to see what they need to add or subtract in the way of attack (or defensive) abilities, equipment and play tactics. This type of research can be done to maximize every class, but what that means to each class can be very different.

There is no shortage of websites to aid the player in their research. Some sites, like the Armory, were created by Blizzard themselves. The armory is a searchable database of the players in the game and shows the equipment they have, the talent choices they have made, their achievements and so on. It's a good site for looking at what another player may be doing that seems to be giving them a little more oomph. Other sites, like Elitist Jerks, are run by WoW fans and players. One of the best of those is Wowhead, which is a database of all the items in the game (past and present) and includes all that item's capabilities. The search criteria for Wowhead is very extensive, so once a player determines what they need to add to bolster their character's statistics, they can find out what items with those attributes exist (if any) and how they can obtain them. One of my favorite sites for finding quests or hints about quests is Allakhazam. It helps for finding quests appropriate for a given level or in the area where a player is in or wants to go. It also has hints on where to find items needed for a quest.

Just to add more variables to the mix, every class has three specialties. For example, depending on how I placed my talent points, the class I played could be a healer, a physical attacker, or a (ranged) damage spell caster. At various times in the game, I played the physical attack specialty and the damage spell caster specialty. Every time a player changes specialties, they must pay with some in-game gold to do so. The cost increases each time but hits a maximum. Recently, Blizzard added features to WoW so that players can toggle between two specialties relatively painlessly and cheaply. Of course, each specialty has a different set of attributes (armor, weapons, enchantments, etc.) to achieve to maximize that specialty and requires different research. WoW allows up to ten characters per server and a total of 50 characters per account. If a player decides they picked the "wrong" class for them, is getting bored with their current class or just wants to try a new class, it's simple to start a new character. Blizzard changes some class abilities over time (especially when a new expansion is released) in an attempt to balance how that character plays with or against each other. Because of this, sometimes new research is required even if the player doesn't change characters.

Other sites exist that have strategy guides for leveling different classes, making money with certain professions and how-to guides for defeating instance bosses. Of course, there's more than one way to beat most bosses, so the guides are just a starting point. Every raid group will need to make adjustments to take into account their level of equipment, their play styles, and group composition. There are many YouTube videos on the topic of boss battles. When you have 12 million players or so, there's bound to be a lot of fan support. It's almost guaranteed that a WoW player will at some time use the Internet to research their character and/or how to advance in the game. Doing this type of research is good practice for researching that famous character for an English report, that obscure law for government class or which stocks to invest in.

Pests

I mentioned above that one of the positive things about WoW is the ever-present community. As a parent of a child, you might be apprehensive about the other people your child will meet in the game. From my experience, the vast majority of other players are just out to have fun, too. The chat text is usually fairly lighthearted and fun. Unfortunately, as in any public place there are those "less-than-desirable" characters. WoW does have a language filter option so that certain words in the text chat windows are bleeped out with "#!^*@!%&@" type substitutions. A player can add any other player to their ignore list so that anything that player types in a chat window isn't seen at all. Individuals that repeatedly cause stress to other players by their actions or language can be quickly reported using the in-game reporting system. These are investigated by the WoW "game masters" or "GMs" who are Blizzard employees that monitor the game and can perform a number of actions in the game. Players found to be a nuisance can be warned and may find themselves teleported to a very inconvenient place. If they persist, such players are usually banned from the game. These bans start with a few hours or days for a first offense, but quickly escalate to the permanent ban on the entire account upon repeat offenses. Blizzard makes an amazing amount of money with this game and they'd like to keep it that way. Players that cause strife don't last long. Blizzard has both the motivation and the resources to make the game safe and fun for everyone that plays it.

Pests could return under a new account, but they'd need to buy the software again since the key on their old version would have been invalidated with their account. I used to wonder why Blizzard still charges for the boxed game. I thought to myself that surely, they earn more from the monthly fees than they do from the box sales (considering the $20 initial software includes the first month of play, which is worth $15). So why hasn't Blizzard gone to a pure online download system for their software (as they do for the game's patches) or just offer the DVDs for free at the checkouts of grocery stores like AOL CDs used to be found? It dawned on me that charging for the software makes it expensive to be a recurrent pest. The minimum cost would be a new copy of the World of Warcraft basic game for $20. To get to the highest areas, said pest would need to add $50 for the Warlords of Draenor expansion. Making a nuisance of oneself and getting one's account banned gets expensive at $20 (or $70) a shot.

Undesirable Game Elements

Wow is pretty tame as computer games go. There is no swearing from any of the game's computer-controlled characters (called "NPCs" for "Non-Player Characters"). There is no nudity in the game either. Characters can remove their clothing down to race and sex-appropriate underwear. So while your child might see provocative night elves dancing in their skivvies, that's about the extent of it. The dances are modeled after real humans such as Britney Spears and Michael Jackson so they are realistic and can be sensual. You used to be able to see some examples alongside their human counterparts in YouTube videos here.

Some guilds on some servers advertise themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) friendly guilds. Depending on your child's age, you may feel more comfortable steering your child away from such servers or at least those guilds. That said, LGBT issues are a fact of life, and your children will have to deal with them sometime. Across an Internet connection in the text of a chat window is about as distanced as it gets. As a parent, you should ask for the details of any guild your child may wish to join. Almost all guilds of any size and standing have their own website (independent of anything Blizzard produces). Ask your child to show it to you if you're not familiar with the guild yourself. If they don't have one, they may be very small (made up of friends of your child's, for example) or very new, but otherwise I'd be suspicious of a guild with no web site. World of Warcraft has a forum area of their web site for every server. Those can be searched for the name of the guild and/or the names of the officers of the guild to see what sort of postings they've had in the past. That's a good way to get a feel for what a guild's reputation on the server is.

Cha .. Cha .. Cha .. Changes

Every Tuesday in WoW is known as "Patch Tuesday." Blizzard has the option of shutting down the servers - all of them in a region such as the US or Europe - between 12:00 am and 5 am (PST in the US) every Tuesday for maintenance and upgrades. They don't always observe the downtime, and it is often shorter than the maximum time. (However, for major new releases such as a new expansion, the downtime can be extended to 24 hours and has gone as high as 72 hours at least once in the past.) A fact mentioned in the talk given by Blizzard executives at the Austin Game Developers Conference (AGDC), most of WoW's 180,000 documented bugs have been fixed. Rolling out those fixes generally requires the servers to be shutdown, the fixes installed and the servers restarted. The fixes may require the software on your computer to be updated as well. Sometimes those downloads are small; sometimes they are hundreds of megabytes. In the same talk, Blizzard mentioned that at that time, 4.7 Petabytes of data had been downloaded. If you happen to live where there is measured Internet or a cap on the amount of data you can download, this can be a real issue. This isn't an issue for most of the US Internet users. (Click on the thumbnail below to get a sample of some recent bug fixes.)

Bugs aren't the only things changed. Occasionally, Blizzard does "fix" classes to bring them up (or down) to par with each other. This has the effect of making some classes less effective than they were and others more effective. The reduction of class' abilities is called "nerfing" after the popular Nerf brand of foam toys (that hurt less than the real thing). An increase in abilities is called "buffing." Most of this balance is to make all members of a group in a battlegrounds or a raid instance have a reasonable effect on a group. It's a very delicate balance with a lot of interweaving of abilities to make an effective group. The good news is that if your child picks a class that they don't think is performing as well as other classes with similar duties/roles, they might get a "buff." The bad news is that they are just as likely to get a "nerf." Even more likely is that occasionally Blizzard changes the game mechanics in such a way that certain attributes that used to be important to a particular class for a particular role may be combined or switched to another attribute. A lot of the research I mentioned above has to do with maximizing the proper attributes for a given class. Sometimes it takes considerable effort to do so. It can be disheartening for a seemingly arbitrary change to make that work a waste of time. When and if this happens to you or your child, it can be a good lesson about life, but a player has an option of putting up with the change, switching to a new specialty with that character or switching to an entirely new character.

Drama

The higher-level instances can really only be defeated with a team of 10 or 25 players (depending on the instance) that are playing in concert. Because of real life schedules and commitments, a guild can't have just 25 members for 25-person raids. Having 25 individuals with the right mix of abilities on hand at every raid time translates into a need for something on the order of 40-50 members or more. Any time that many personalities are brought together, there's going to be some clashes. This is commonly referred to as "guild drama" and those that cause repeatedly cause such strife are called "drama queens." Generally, it's not too serious, but I've witnessed the breakup of several guilds as a result of drama.

WoW is a game at its core, but its players take it very seriously. Almost all guild drama starts with someone feeling they have been unfairly "robbed" of some item that comes from defeating some character in some instance. (Getting an item from a defeated character is known as "looting a drop from a mob" where a "mob" is any mobile character controlled by the computer.) These are usually items dropped by one of the instance's "bosses." We've vaguely referred to bosses before, but the definition of a boss is a uniquely-named character that appears only one place in the game and requires a combined effort to kill.) Before you join or your child joins any guild, find out how the guild does "loot distribution" and raid (instance) invitations. There are many ways of distributing the spoils of war, but any guild worth their weight will have a very well documented and implemented method of doing so. One term you will hear is DKP, which is short for "Dragon Kill Points." Most loot reward systems involve some method of earning DKP for raiding with the group and some way to spend it on items that come from defeating enemies. I've seen some mechanisms that are fairly simple and other that rival rocket science. The most important thing is that the reward system be established and rigorously followed. (Click on the link to see an example roster with DKP as taken from the demo at WebDKP.)

Is That It?

One thing that Blizzard would probably refute is that there is an end to World of Warcraft. Many players would, too, and they are partially right. However, there is an end to performing quests - at least ones that are still beneficial to your character. There are quests that can be repeated daily, but those are only interesting for a while. Generally, one only does them to earn gold to buy items needed for raiding. If your child isn't interested in raiding, the game is going to wind down pretty quickly once the top level is reached. There may be a number of quests they skipped earlier that they can go back and do, but if the rewards won't be useful for them anymore; they are just tourists. If the game is played casually, it could take months or years to reach this point. While there is no discrete end to the game, there is a practical one for players not interested in raiding even if it takes a while to get there.

Even if your child is dying to get to the "end game" content and can't wait to raid in a group, there is an end to that as well. There are only so many instances. They can be repeated on a regular basis (as the instances "reset" every so many days on a fixed schedule), but even so, eventually the group gets equipped to the point where certain instances are no longer a challenge. (This is called having the instance on "farm.") It's possible to get to the last boss in the last instance and simply have nothing left to do. Very, very, very few guilds or players reach this point. Most of the time, new content comes out and the guild abandons the previous instances they were doing in favor of the new instances at higher levels and with better loot. Add to that, the fact that the time commitment to complete end-game instances is much higher than for casual questing. It's more likely your child will get bored or burnt out on playing WoW and find something else to do.

If your child finds themselves at the end, they have a few choices. They can try a new character class (perhaps on an entirely new server), a new race and even the opposite faction. Each faction has some number of quests that only that faction gets to do. Every class and specialty within that class plays differently and many have class-specific quests. They will still reach the top level - at an ever-increasing rate since they are experienced in playing the game - but there are a lot of classes and races on both factions. If all else fails, they can suspend their account and wait for new content.

To the left: My level 60 paladin at the top of his game .. in 2006.

Hackers

Another unfortunate truth is that because in-game gold and some items have actual worth outside the game, stealing account passwords and hijacking accounts is a real concern. A number of recent keyloggers (Trojan horse programs that monitor and record keystrokes looking for account numbers/names and passwords) have been aimed specifically at WoW. A number of players have logged on to find all their gold missing and their items sold to a vendor and the gold from that gone as well - having been mailed to another account, which they have no way to track. It is the WoW equivalent of a mugging. One popular way to get such a Trojan horse/virus delivered to a WoW player is to embed it in a modified version of one or more of the popular game add-ons. As with anything downloaded from the Internet, players need to download add-on files only from well-known sites. Blizzard has stated that account hacking has become more popular than gold farming as the way to obtain gold for selling.

One good way to combat account hijacking is to buy and use a Blizzard Authenticator, which is a little device that displays a random six-digit code that must be entered after the password in order to log into the account. The code changes about every 30 seconds, so it would be useless for a key logger to record it. The Blizzard Authenticator is available for the cost of $6.50 from the Blizzard store. Blizzard doesn't charge shipping for the authenticators, and I would guess they sell them at a loss. However, these are a very effective way to safeguard an account, and at that price, there's no excuse not to buy one. Additionally, it gives parents another way to control access to the WoW account. Even if your child figures out your password (because it's the same one you used to lock them out of adult content on your cable channels) they still have to physically have the authenticator in front of them.

If you or your child has a cell phone or iPod, Blizzard also has several versions of the Blizzard Mobile Authenticator (for iOS and Android devices). It's an application that functions like the Keychain Authenticator. It's a free download in the Apple or Google app store for your device. That gives you even less reason to not secure your account.

Addiction (or Time Sink, Take Two)

There have been a number of stories in the news about video game addiction. Since WoW has the largest number of players, it's natural that stories of addiction to playing WoW are big news. That's not to say such attention is entirely unwarranted. There have been apparently true stories of an infant in Korea that died of suffocation because it was left alone while both parents went to an Internet café to play a few hours of World of Warcraft. In another story, a girl in China died due to exhaustion after playing the game for several days straight. Another story tells of one player stabbing another player to death because the other player "stole" an in-game item. These stories can still be found online, but the dates of most of them are in 2005 - not long after the game was released. I chalk much of this up to media sensationalism at the time. The game's been out for many years now, and it's lost the media's interest. We don't see stories about the guy that lost his job because of getting caught spending a couple hours a day updating his fantasy football stats on company time, but just Google the term "fantasy football addiction" and you'll see both satirical and real stories. Such stories are just not new and noteworthy.

It is true that for the players doing end-game raid instances, World of Warcraft can take large chunks of time. Organizing a 25-person group, making sure everyone is there on time, has the items they need, and knows their tasks and so forth can be a bit of a logistical nightmare. Once inside the instance, failing at one boss can mean a lot of having to redo earlier work. Learning the strategy of the fights that works for a particular guild may take many attempts stretching over days or weeks. The time required to do end-game instances is one of the major complaints made by end-game players. Blizzard doesn't have a complete answer to this problem yet.

Blizzard has made a number of changes to the game to reduce the time commitment for these players specifically and players inside instances in general. (Time commitment isn't a problem for other parts of the game.) The end-game raid instances used to require 40-person groups - period. That's been dropped to 25 and 10-person groups, which results in less cat herding and allows for smaller guild sizes in general. A more recent change is that players anywhere in the virtual world can be "summoned" directly into instances to the spot where the party is. This aids in substituting a player that has to logout or is having computer or Internet problems. The design of the newer end-game instances allows them to be done in smaller chunks of time with breaks between major fights where the instance can be paused for the day (or night). Even with these changes, end-game raiding still takes a larger time commitment than many parents would like. You and your child will need to address this issue if and when they get to the point of running end-game content.

I don't want to belabor this topic longer than necessary. Any activity can become an addiction to those so inclined. Eating, smoking and even exercise can become addictive, so why would video games be exempt? As a parent, the trick will be allowing your child to play enough WoW so that they don't feel they are unjustly restricted while limiting play time so that it doesn't preclude other activities such as family time, school work or sleep. That's not unlike what parents are expected to do for any of the activities that their children really enjoy. As mentioned, WoW provides some tools to help enforce limiting play time, but ultimately, parents really just have to do their job.

Software

World of Warcraft can be purchased either as a boxed copy or digital download. The game and expansion packs can be purchased from the Blizzard store, Amazon, Wal-Mart, Best Buy and just about any other place that sells PC game software. The table below summarizes the purchasing options. The links in the table below are to the Blizzard store, but they are not always the cheapest.

The last time I played a character, Blizzard had made the initial download and the game free to play for the first 20 levels. That is enough to decide if there's any interest in going further, but lots of good stuff happens at level 20. Most that make it that far will go on from there, so at the very least, the game is going to cost $20. There is no advantage to buying the expansion(s) right from the start.

I prefer digital downloads to boxed copies anymore. The nice thing is if you ever have to reinstall WoW and have lost or damaged your DVDs (if you ever had any), the entire game can be installed from online downloads (assuming you have a fast Internet connection). A word of caution about the installation process itself: it takes at least an hour to install WoW plus the expansion(s). The base game is first installed like any other game. Next, the game downloads any patches and updates released since the version installed was created. A physical copy can get way behind in the number of patches needed. These can take quite a while and require more than one download. If the expansions are purchased, they must also be installed. I have spent as long as three hours installing everything from DVD.

One or two pieces of free software are needed in order to talk with other players over the Internet using a headset. These are Ventrilo and TeamSpeak. Most guilds will have their own Ventrilo or TeamSpeak server, but sometimes you may run a combined guild event or with a pick-up group using the other type of server. Since both are free, it makes sense to have both installed. Ventrilo seems to be the more popular of the two.

WoW add-ons are programs - usually made by a third party, but not always - that are installed into WoW to add some sort of functionality the game didn't provide originally. I already mentioned Auctioneer earlier in this article, but there are thousands of others. Some are specific to a certain class such as Hunter or Mage. Others are specific to a certain specialty such as healing or a profession such as herbalism. Still others help during group combat and with managing a raid group. I used about a dozen such add-ons during my time playing WoW. Although there's no need for them for a beginning player, they quickly become very helpful. I don't recall ever seeing an add-on that requires any sort of payment, but I recall a few that allow for donations. In order to avoid viruses and Trojan horses hidden in add-ons, it's important to download them from a known site. A good site to start with is Curse Gaming. I downloaded more than ¾ of the add-ons I used from there.

Monthly Cost

This is the part where your children tell you how much they love you. Assuming your children want to go beyond level 20, World of Warcraft costs $15/month (in the US) on a month-to-month basis. There are lower monthly terms for paying for 3 or 6 months at a time, but they are not refunded if the account is closed (by you or by Blizzard). You will need to either use Visa, MasterCard, Discover, American Express or PayPal to sign up for an account. Thereafter, the account can be paid with any of the above or with a World of Warcraft Prepaid Game Card (after canceling the other payment method manually). The prepaid game cards are $30 for a 60-day subscription. Paying via a checking account is only possible if using a PayPal account that is tied to a checking account. Additionally, in some states, state tax is charged.

Apart from the software and monthly fee, there shouldn't be any other costs required for playing the game. However, Blizzard has made a number of "services" available for a one-time fee. For example, characters can be transferred from one server to another for $25 (USD) per character. The name of a character can be changed for $10. A character's race (e.g., Dwarf, Gnome) or faction (Alliance or Horde) can be changed for $25 and $30, respectively. As these can add up (especially if moving 3 or 4 characters from one faction or server to another), you should encourage your child to take care when they start their characters. Visit Blizzard's support site and click on Character Services for a list of the services available.

Picking a Server

You've helped your child with their first steps, first book and occasionally first aid. Now you can help them pick their first WoW server. Tell them to treat it as their first quest. Finding a server should be done in concert with your child picking their first character. If they are joining with friends who are also just starting out, they all need to choose the same server and faction (Alliance or Horde) in order to play together. If their friends have already started, the choice of server and faction may have been made. If your child's friends aren't too far along and another server looks more promising, encourage them to all join that one. For a group of friends playing the game together, it's best if they all start out together at the same level and stay at nearly the same level as much as possible.

The very first thing that needs to be decided is if your child wants to play on a Player versus Player (pvp or PvP) server or a Player versus Environment (pve or PvE) server. These two basic types of servers were discussed in the section, More Than Just Questing, but a synopsis is that on a PvE server, players from the other faction can only be engaged in certain areas or only if both factions specifically flag themselves for battle. The only things that can attack them at any time are computer controlled characters in the environment - hence the name. On PvP servers, any player can attack the other faction's players just about anywhere in the world (with some restrictions in neutral cities and areas). I would encourage most players to start out on a PvE server until they are certain they plan to play for a while and have a good feel for how to play the game. The very lowest level areas where new characters start are fairly well-guarded against the opposing faction even on PvP servers, but those only cover the first 10-12 levels. There will be characters 60-80 levels higher that have fun just "skinning newbies" for hours at a time. It's not against Blizzard policy on PvP servers. My recommendation is that your child's very first character should be made on a PvE server. Once they gain experience, they can start a new character on a PvP server to see if they like it.

Additionally, your child needs to decide if they want to play on a normal or "roleplaying" server. On a roleplaying server, they are generally expected to stay in character at all times in anything they type in-game. Also, the name of their character is also expected to reflect a roleplaying one. If I am to give some advice here, which can be happily ignored, it would be that unless your child is already well-versed in the World of Warcraft lore through the other Blizzard games and books, they should probably stick to a normal server for their first character.

There are some tricks to picking a good server. As mentioned in the Economics of WoW section, each server or "realm" as it is called in WoW is housed in one of Blizzard's (or Blizzard's partner's) data centers scattered around the world. Knowing this, one can use the wowwiki.com Realms List  (unofficial list of existing realms and the data centers they are housed in) to pick a geographically close server. For US players, the US Realm Server List by Datacenter is the list to use. If you live the state of Pennsylvania, for example, a New York-based server (or maybe even a Chicago-based server) makes the most sense. The responsiveness of the game is often pretty good even for those players geographically far from the actual server, but typically, the closer the server is to the player, the better that response is and the more consistent it is. On some days and nights, Internet traffic is such that those closest to the datacenters have a noticeably better playing experience than those who aren't. It's not the end of the world if a player located in Maine chooses a Arizona-based server, but there will be days when their play becomes sluggish. It may be momentary or last for several hours. You will probably also want to pick a server with the same time zone as the player, but it's not mandatory. (There are servers located in Los Angeles that run with an Eastern Time Zone setting and New York servers that have a Pacific Time Zone setting.)

With a list of potential servers in hand, the next investigation is into the health and population of those servers. This is where the World of Warcraft Census website is very handy as an aid. (The numbers in the census are only representative of the whole and not absolute, guaranteed numbers. The census is taken by users that have a census taking add-on running in their game and periodically upload the census data to the website.) First, look at the Quick Server Stats for either the US or European realms. (If you're handy with spreadsheets, the data from the table can be copied into a text (.txt) file where it becomes tab-separated. That file can then be imported into Excel. Just make sure to use Text rather than General cell format for the Online column.) Look at the reported population of the servers you are considering. I found that a good population range is from 12,000 to 22,000 players - give or take a thousand or so. Those with more players are overcrowded and tend to have mostly high-end server players. The cities are jammed with players causing the game to slow down in those areas and the dearth of lower-level players makes it hard to get groups for questing at those levels. On the other end of the scale, low-population servers may not have enough players to find groups for instances at any level. The economies of lower population servers can also be quite odd or severely broken.

Another aspect to look at is server age (looking at the "Online" column) versus population. That column lists the month and year that the server came online. New servers that have large populations are typically "free transfer" servers. That is, Blizzard offered free transfers to players from one or more overcrowded servers to that new server. Additionally, that server was likely the suggested server for any new player starting WoW for the first time. These servers can be odd in that while the population is in the right range in total population, it's made up of two discrete groups: those under level 30 who took Blizzard's suggestion to use that server for their first character and level 80 players whose whole guild(s) transferred to the new server. The economies on those servers tend to be quite broken for a while but balance out as the lower level players start to hit the middle and higher levels. It can be hard to get started on these servers as well. One last item is that if your child is going to try a PvP server, it's good to pick a server where the population is fairly balanced or favors the faction that your child has decided to play.

Hopefully by now, the list of potential servers is fairly short. With that list, go to the Census Data page and enter each of the servers into the server pull down and press the Go button. This displays a list of players by class and race for both factions. Ideally, whatever class your child chooses, it is best if there isn't a glut of that class on that server. If they've decided to be a mage, for example, they will find life easier on a server where there is a lower percentage of mages than that found on other servers. The list can also be filtered by faction so listing the Alliance mages versus all mages is the number to look at (if your child has chosen to start as an Alliance member). Do this for the other servers on the list. If the percentage is lower on one particular server then that might be the one to choose since that class should be in demand.

With the final list of (hopefully just a few) servers, a good thing to do is to check each realm's forum on worldofwarcraft.com web site (near the bottom of the linked page) to get a general feel for how the other players on that realm feel about it. There are always moaners and complainers on any server, but in general, it is good to see if the realm seems to be relatively drama-free. If you see a number of guilds recruiting, some congratulations to a guild's or player's latest achievement, and some good general banter, that is indicative of a healthy server.

The very first time a player logs onto WoW they are assigned a suggested server. Typically, these are low-population servers that are new as mentioned above. That realm is only a suggestion and there is a change realm button that lets a user pick the realm they wish. Check the short list of realms to see which of those, if any, are medium- to high-population at the "busy" hours of the evening  - generally about 8 pm to 12 am EST (5 pm to 9 pm PST). High population servers can reach their maximum number of players and begin queuing players over that number that attempt to log in. Waiting in the queue for other players to log off is never fun. If the list of potential servers can't be whittled down to one, your child can start "throw away" characters on each remaining realm to see how it plays. They can also hike their character to the nearest large city to get a feel for the chat in the general text chat and visit the auction house to peruse the list of items and prices. (Staring a dwarf and running to Ironforge on the Alliance side or an orc and running to Ogrimmar on the Horde faction tends to be the most direct.)

Your Child's First Character

If you're trying to stall for a little more time, tell your child that you won't set up the account until they have picked a faction (Alliance or Horde), a class (mage, rogue, hunter, etc.), their class specialty (or two), the primary professions (alchemist, weapon maker, tailor, etc.) they think they'll pursue and a short list of names they wish to call their character. They can use the WoW Community forum to check if that name is already taken on the server on which they'd like to play. Don't be surprised to hear your child complain that all the good names are taken. Blizzard has a strict naming policy against "offensive" names that your child should be aware of. Getting the answers to those questions could easily take another day or two (or at least long enough to get the game installed).

Your child really should be able to give you at least tentative answers to the above questions. Their choice of faction (alliance or horde) determines some quests they will be offered as does their choice of class. As for specialty, that's really something that can be chosen later for most classes, so don't be too insistent they have that figured out. As for professions, a player can choose to play any of the primary professions, but certain professions make more sense for certain classes. A mage, for example, may want to pick up tailoring so that they can make magical cloth items that help them as a mage. A warrior might want to take up mining and armor crafting.

Once they've decided all that, they should be ready to make their character on the server of their choice. Congratulations! You child has spawned - in a manner of speaking.