Almost 80

So, this whole time I've been writing this blog I've had to admit that I'm not at level 80 just yet (and I'm still not, but I'm closer now than ever before. Now I'm only 1 1/2 bubbles away after running last night with my wife Kydra, my brother Kygongyn, Stromboli, and my cousin Delu. Wow, I have a lot of family play this game with me.

You see how close I got to hitting 80 last night???!!!

I did get this drop in the Halls of Lightning, Avool's Sword of Jin BoE, market value of 2162 gold. I've still been using this Legacy that drops from the crone back in Kara. Its probably about time I start getting some new gear. Heck I'm still wearing 5 level 70 epics. And they weren't amazing epics, mostly again just stuff from Kara. My brother has been primping over me and my wife's toons like a BFF Jill over a teen age girl at the mall in need of a serious make over. Ha! Could you see Aoirselvar in Gap clothes, probably not.

So, after this my brother has a regiment of heroics that we get to do to get geared up for Naxx. I still think my wife and I will probably quest when we play together, we've enjoyed doing that the most. However, even though Kydra hates PvP, she really enjoyed AV (where she wreaked havoc with her mage of death), so maybe we'll do some BGs as well.

So, does anybody know of a mod that will take a screen shot for you when you level?

Oh I thought this was funny. She makes my helicopter look like a slightly oversized remote controled toy.

WoW free weekend - almost

Wow, no WoW all weekend. Weird. We just didn't have time to get to it all weekend.

Oh wait. I did play wow with my 7 year old nephew in West Fall. Good times. I helped him ding 16, woot. He was super excited. That's his highest level toon and he has about 30 toons. Can I tell you how much quest helper helps when you are trying to help a 7 year old quest. They don't have a clue as to where they need to go, but you can also see other people's quests stuff on the map with that addon.

My nephew was particularly impressed with our mad murloc slaying skills. Good times.

How to get your signficant other to play.

How does one get their significant other to play WoW?

I have been asked many times how I got my wife to play WoW with me. I could tell how she got playing, but I've never had a really good answer as to how to help others get their wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, etc to play the game with them. I do understand why people want to have their significant others playing with them. For one, you can spend time doing something you like to do with them. It brings down contention in the relationship (as related to WoW at least). You now have someone to talk IRL about that new piece of gear you just won in your raid last night (that could be a negative point too, as you will see below). You have a questing partner. etc, etc. Its really fun to be able to play with my spouse. I've enjoyed the game so much more being about to explore azeroth with @kydragirl.

But how do you get your significant other to play? Well, it depends. You can't manipulate anybody into playing, it won't work. Beggin has proved to be ineffective as well. I wouldn't suggest just buying a second account for them (sorry Arrens). If they absolutely hate video games in general then they probably won't want to play, but if they already like video games to some extent and they aren't so completely against the idea then you might be able to tap/nudge them over the edge (into playing the newest sensation, that is world of warcraft - but I guess its not that new anymore).

My sister-in-law plays with her husband and ourselves sometimes (although we haven't played with her in a long while). She use to play Heroes of Might and Magic with us when she was dating my older brother. She got into playing WoW by watching my brother play for awhile. She would watch him raid and listen to the conversations. One day my brother got her to role a warlock because she wanted the beautiful flaming horse that those warlocks get to have.

So, in my wife's case, she wasn't against video games, played them on and off with her brother growing up. We both really got into Sims at one point in time and we were addicted to Donkey Konga. You'd have to ask her more about her pre-WoW video game experience yourself (@kydragirl), I don't know all the details.

I was wanting to get her into it, but she was kind of like "meh" about the subject. She wasn't against the idea, but she wasn't exactly for it either. By this time my sister-in-law was already playing and one day while were were at a family party I told my sister to show @kydragirl what some of the alliance girls looked like. (I could be wrong about the details, but that's essential it - I'll add an edit if @kydragirl lets me know anything different). They sat down and played around with it, working out a character, coming up with a name, figuring out the beginning area, etc. As my sister-in-law put it, "there's crack in that game, what can I say".

I think if you can get someone to play the game long enough with an open mind they'll get hooked, most of the time. It also helps to have someone there to explain things when they first start in a way that won't make them feel stupid or overwhelmed. If they try it and don't understand how to play it they might get frustrated and quit early. My other sister-in-law rolled a toon just out of curiosity, got frustrated with a quest in Silvermoon and gave up before she really got started. She didn't have anybody right there with her to help out or show her how it works. Now she won't pick it back up because she thinks it's stupid.

I have had several people from twitter and from my guild wish that they could get their spouse into the game. It has become a source of contention in their relationship. I can understand why, you see your significant other might think that you like playing the game more than spending time with them. Of course its not that you don't like spending time with them, but you enjoy this game as well. Of course if you are using the game as an escape because you are having problems then thats another topic altogether. In my opinion, if the game is causing too many problems for you in real life, then its time to put the game aside, or at least try to limit your game play. A silly video game is not worth ruining a relationship. Of course if you are lucky enough to get your sweetheart into the game then more power to you.

Here are some comments from friends in twitter when I asked how you could get your significant other to play with you in Azeroth.

stoppableforce: I tried that once; it didn't really work. Good luck!



kirikitten: Bribery. Probably using sex.



SlowWolf: Only way would be to at least get her to like dressing up the characters... but she's never going to actually play. =D


Ithato: my gf has finished Rock Band 2 on her own and loves The Sims and a few other titles, but didn't have the patience for early WoW


pugofwar: I love research like that. Hmm. One tactic is to play up the lore so that s/he feels like part of a greater narrative.


Arcania: My husband and I played together from the beginning, but for anyone I would suggest appealing to the aspects the SO would enjoy.


Arrens: If you can figure that out, lemme know. I've been trying for the past year with zero success.


Spoonwolf: I actually met my wife playing WSG WAY back in the day in vanilla wow



pikestaff: the main thing to remember if that if he/she doesn't want to play, he/she probably won't, in my experience >.>


Jezriyah: I plan to meet my significant other through WoW and save myself the trouble.




It looks like a lot of people have had no success with this up to this point. But to look on the bright side for those who haven't been able to get their snookums into the game, Pike mentions that there can be some negatives about having them play as well:

Pikestaff: Be aware that there are downsides too, heck, sometimes I think a lot of things would be easier if my boyfriend didn't play =P For example we raid on different nights because of scheduling. So that's two nights of not seeing each other Oh and the realization that 90% of things you discuss as a couple are WoW-related is always a lil'... shocking Oh and sometimes you get tired of WoW and don't want to talk about it . But guess who wants to tell you all about their raid =P

So, there you have it, I don't think I really helped anybody, but what is your take on the matter?

Balance

I've been playing the game for almost 3 years now and I've had my fair share of neglecting RL for the game, but I like to think that I've found a much happier balance in life at this point. The game use to be an issue of conflict between me and my spouse. I would play too often or when she needed help with the kids. She still reminds me how much she hated it when I would play all morning on Saturdays. More recently I've cut back my playing time and this has greatly decreased contentions concerning this game, and added more balance overall to my life.

In my opinion there are certain things that should always supercede playing WoW. If you have a family they should always come first, you probably shouldn't lose your job or fail a class because of the game. Your health and personal hygiene would be bad to neglect as well (lol - don't forget to eat & bathe).

The people who don't do this make the rest of us look bad. These idiots give gamers in general a bad name and are the reason people do studies that claim that WoW breaks up marriages, makes students drop out of school and increases the crime rate in the lower 48 states. Its pretty common sense if you think about it.

Yes, I understand WoW is more than a video game for those probably reading this blog. Most non-WoWers think of our game as something that should be easily set aside like a nintendo game. They don't realize that we consider this game more of a hobby. We all have hobbies, our just consists of killing demons and dragons and stuff with our guild on-line.

Now, I have kids, young kids. My oldest is 3 years old, and I have 2 others that are younger. I have come to the point where I try not to play when they are awake. So, I play in the morning before I go to work and intermittently after we've put the kiddos to bed. We got a second account so that my wife and I could play together. Now its together time instead of contention time (of course those times when our computers are being stupid we are still contentious, but not with each other). Now its much more balanced. Of course we aren't raiding (we're still level 78), but we'll get there. We'll never be hard core raiders. We'll never be doing the hardest raid. We're okay with that. We are much happier this way and we can always talk about WoW through out the day if we want.

Now, during holidays all of this balance stuff is kind of thrown out the windows for us. Its a good thing there aren't holidays all the time.

Arrrrthas

So, I was opening World of Warcraft the other day with my 3 year old daughter on my lap. She looked up and so the Lich King sitting on his icy throne (the loading screen). My daughter, looked at me and said, "A pirate, dad. A scary pirate." Well, I shared that with my twitter friends and Nightravyn decided to make Arthas the pirate a reality (with a little bit of photoshop). Here we have it. I'll have to see what my daughter says about this picture (probably just about the same, but he's a little less scary as a pirate in my opinion).

Family of WoWers

So, pretty much my whole family plays this game. It started with my older brother who worked on us. I was in graduate school with dial-up internet at the time. But he let me play while I was at his house. How quickly addicted I was. I started playing on a friends account on my dial-up modem (which wasn't as bad as you might think). Later I upgraded to my neighbors fast speed internet (inevitably someone you live by will have an open wi-fi connection).

My other brothers started playing as well. My older brothers wife started playing because she thought the warlock fire horses were pretty. Later she sat down with my wife and rolled a cute human mage.

Kind of a snowball effect going on here. Now my brother-in-law plays, my brother's kids play (rolled a DK with one of them the other day). I have 3 cousins that play.

So, at family parties we frequently talk about wow. My poor mother usually is clueless and one of my sister-in-laws think we are clueless for playing (or at least very geeky, but she tried to play her self, got lost and frustrated and refuses to try again. Meh.)

So, should I work on my parents? Should we start having family raids instead of family parties? (family raids, lol, sounds like we are going to attack the next door neighbors house - they put an encryption on their Wi-fi - they must go down).

We have interacted more, but we don't always play together. Its really fun when we go do an instance together, but that doesn't happen very often. sad I know

Does your family play? Has your family given into the modern day epidemic called World of Warcraft?