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Home » Categories » Games » Roleplaying » World of Warcraft- Today’s Role Playing Games and My Son the Dwarf » Printer Friendly
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He runs like an overweight body builder whose pants are too tight and thighs may rub together. His facial hair is abundant with bushy poorly groomed eyebrows, long sideburns, and a beard that any family of sparrows could call home. All his clothing appears to fall into this year’s line of medieval retro with leather straps, chain mail, and shiny metallic highlights. He handles a bow as an expert marksman and wields a set of axes that would intimidate any man. He is always prepared, organized, frugal, and outfitted for any of life’s obstacles. He has seen things that would cause a normal man to cower and has traveled effortlessly in distant lands. Short in stature but massive in musculature he seeks adventure and shows no fear. He is a young man who is a good to all those that offer their hand in friendship but brutal and without mercy to all those that defy or despise him. He is my son.
My son recently saved his money and purchased a great new computer of his own. Through hard work, planning, and saving he was able to buy a computer that would allow him to do his homework for school, learn more about computers, and join his friends on a role playing game called World of Warcraft by Wizard Entertainment. World of Warcraft is a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer on line Role Playing Game) with an estimated 8 million subscribers. Players buy time to select and become any number of characters that can be as unique as the individual who creates their alter ego. They visit far off realms in a number of online servers to explore worlds, seek adventure, collect treasure, and kill creatures. As you accomplish the games goals you become more powerful by rising in level to a point that you and those like you become the elite among the game’s players. At the onset you pick a side by joining as an Alliance player or a Horde player. They are swore enemies in this virtual world and will fight each other to the death.
Recently, psychologists have been calling for a new classification of addiction that involves up to what some believe is 40% of these on line players. The players become so enthralled in the games that they eliminate real world social contact, play compulsively and constantly focus on their achievements in the game’s worlds. Real life becomes secondary with jobs being lost, families torn apart, and even child neglect that results when parents become addicted to the fantasy.
In countries like China , small industries have developed which call upon low paid workers to become players in the game, level as high as possible, and then sell the rights to their character and the virtual gold it has collected on EBay.
Being the involved parent that I have always worked to be, these reports interested me since my son has spent many hours in his room playing on line. He has not missed meals, eliminated family time, or forsaken his chores and responsibilities. He has also bathed and changed his clothing properly. At first I felt a little guilty trying to limit his time on the computer by asking him to get off the computer and “Come down and watch TV with the family" which struck me as a sad commentary to my alternative family activity. I have watched him intently as he read books on how to succeed in the game, found on line web sites to understand the nuances inherent in the programming, and discussed strategy with new on line friends. We even discussed how his character was thrashed by a player who said she was a 10 year old girl and stalled by a player who indicated his wife just got home and he had to bring in the groceries. Players are made up of real people that are as good as the characters they portray and I suspect some in World of Warcraft as evil (but cowardly) as they represent. Although I do not have the patience to create a character and play the game from my laptop and fight wolves, alligators, bears, vultures, and demons side by side with my son, I do get regular reports of his successful quests and the treasure he plunders. He is also quite the hunter who skins and eats what he kills and shares his food with his pet bear.
Now maybe, at my age, I would be more interested in a role playing game if I was allowed to be Superman, Rooster Cogburn, or Dirty Harry. I could get into looking down the barrel of my .357 Magnum and saying to a flesh eating troll, “Go ahead punk, make my day." Experience and confidence with my son tells me he will tire of his online game and not let it become an obsession, but for now I can hope and pray that his success in life will reach the lofty heights of his success as a hunter, and fighter in World of Warcraft.
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