Tales of WoW
by Amanda Miller 
Jan 9th 2008 at 5:14PM
Having Fun (Febrower, Korialstraz)
This is a true story about how playing World of Warcraft not only brought order to one child's life, but also accomplishment, and most importantly, fun. From boosting his reading skills to improving his behavior, WoW has been a positive force for Febrower.
Best Friends (Jonoh, Mal'ganis)
This tale describes a lasting friendship that developed despite faction and language barriers, in the face of danger and established norms.
Personally, I preferred the story of Febrower's growth while embarking upon adventures in Azeroth. It is my firm belief that video games can indeed be used to teach children intellectual and behavioral skills, and that they can in fact be balanced with physical activities and responsibilities.
If you have an inspirational tale that arose out of your WoW experiences, write it up and submit it to Blizzard to have the chance to share it with the world. While there are some guidelines to be followed, the content is what really matters. Better yet, sit down with your children and write one together.
Filed under: Blizzard, Fan stuff, Odds and ends
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Kikr Jan 9th 2008 5:36PM
I had a friend like the one on the "best friends" story :)
Rashi Jan 9th 2008 5:38PM
As long as they stay out of Barrens/whatever Alliance one is chat as much as possible, kids can learn a lot about grammatical speech.
A fair about of people ingame, including myself, use fully literate, correctly spelled, and punctuated sentences all the time. Except for when looking for an instance.
Gizmo Jan 10th 2008 12:48AM
I'm sorry, I must nitpick a comment like that...
You said: "A fair about of people ingame,..."
I think you meant: "A fair amount of people ingame,..."
Sterling Jan 9th 2008 5:49PM
I know that on my server, the trade channel is the equivalent to Barrens chat.
jtrain Jan 9th 2008 7:26PM
Rashi,
I'm not a troll, really...I just couldn't help but notice you spelled "amount" wrong in your post about correct spelling and grammar. Just thought it was kinda ironic/funny. Hate me if you must, but no ill-will intended.
Rashi Jan 9th 2008 10:55PM
Well, my sentences come out correctly spelled, mis-matching words, well thats a different story.
Spad Jan 10th 2008 3:58AM
Oh, the irony :)
Dixinormous Jan 9th 2008 6:13PM
Strangely enough I have one - a while ago me and 2 IRL friends rolled whored chars, and one of my IRL friends got one of his old CS mates to join our crusade. So we all hit end game, do what ever we did (raid, pvp, roll alts etc) and then all quit. Come BC we all begin playing again, although our old CS friend is no longer with us. We hit 70, joined a raiding guild, and got increasingly frustrated with our server, so the main officers of our guild decide to reroll alliance on a new server. We were leveling up, adding guildies, until one day one of our new recruits goes.... 'by the way 'Tony' (obviously not his real in game name but you know), where are you from? only I used to play with a guy with the same name!'. Low and behold, it turns out our old CS mate quit the game, finished Uni, and then started playing again with BC. Somehow he managed to roll the same faction on the same server at the same time as us! I still cant believe it to this day, maybe Azeroth isnt so big after all!
Spad Jan 10th 2008 4:02AM
I had a similar meeting waiting for the boat at Menethil.
A real-life friend who I hadn't seen for a few years recognised me by my characters name, which was a play on a nickname I used to have.
It was quite strange having a random lvl 70 human mage say "excuse me, is your name Paul?".
Shifty Jan 9th 2008 6:57PM
Heh..."whored" :D
kenney Jan 9th 2008 7:17PM
I'm glad the kid learned to read, and started behaving better in school, but it does kind of irk me that the parent could care less that he is being a burden to his teams in battlegrounds. The lesson seems to be that when you encounter people in anonymous settings, they don't matter.
I guess I'm just a stick in the mud, but it seems to me that the parent is happy because the child just moved his antisocial behavior into an area where the parent didn't have to deal with it. It's better to be irresponsible and poorly behaved online than IRL, I guess. Running around stormwind naked is funny- letting other people down isn't.
Hopefully someday someone in game will do a better job helping this kid understand how to act, and the story can be expanded to talk about how people in wow provided surrogate parenting for this troublesome child.
HankD Jan 9th 2008 7:50PM
Now see, having two kids myself, I read that more as "he's 8 and sometimes does 8-year-old things", not "he's completely irresponsible and she doesn't care"... and yes, to your point, I think a lot of people feel it IS apparently more acceptable to be irresponsible online than IRL... spend ten minutes listening to supposed adults talk in General in any city! :)
If I saw someone like that I'd figure hey, he's not an AFKer, if nothing else at least people are killing him sometimes while I'm stealing their flag. :)