Drama Mamas: Tips on getting wife back into WoW
by Robin Torres 
Jul 9th 2010 at 2:00PM
Before I show you the letter this week, I'm going to fully disclose my sympathies here. First of all, I can't stand high-maintenance players. Questions about things? Yes, please. But "ne1 help me?" over and over (particularly if it's something above your level) means a polite warning followed by a gkick if not heeded -- also mockery about the use of "ne1." Ask once for help on something and if no one answers, it's not that they didn't hear you. It's not that they are mean and unhelpful. It means they are too busy with their own fun to help you at this time.
On the other hand, I totally feel the pain of being married to someone with a different playstyle. The Spousal Unit is an accomplished raider. I'm an altoholic casual who is increasingly more and more RP-curious. We used to have wonderful times playing SWG and CoH together. But we have rarely been able to match up our playstyles since we moved to Azeroth. Mostly I blame him, fairly or unfairly, because he won't make a WoW duo with me. Jack and Jane Blaze were so fun! /sigh But it takes two to tango. And if he would rather go line dancing with his raider buddies, then I either need to get a pair of purple cowboy boots or see if I have better success convincing him to do the hustle. Tired of dancing around the drama? Then turn the page.
Dear Drama Mamas, I know this sounds like a dumb question at first, but please hear me out. My wife and I don't always see eye-to-eye when it comes to gaming, but she has tried (and actually likes) WoW. The problem that I'm running into is that for the most part, she got into the game as a tag-along and was on the recieving end of too many run-throughs by nice guildies, or role-playing with random people in capitol cities. I'm not saying that role-playing or wanting to enjoy the social aspect of the game is bad, though I never supported the power-leveling (some of which was begged out of people). But when the run-throughs and RPing dried up, so did her interest and she quit playing and became somewhat hostile to my playtime.
Lately, she has been somewhat interested in playing again, but I really want to avoid the situation we had last time. Any tips on how to ween her off the run-throughs and get her into a more self-sufficient style of play? All I've come up with so far is to level up an alt to one of her main characters and try using the dungeon finder with her. I'm just not sure if she has learned enough group and class skills to make it in a dungeon. One last issue, any advice on convincing her that playing a Blood Elf is inherently wrong, even if she does think they're pretty? All my main characters are alliance and switching factions would be a bit expensive to my watch or wallet.
Half-Way There
Drama Mama Robin: I have a very simple solution for you, Half-way: Roll a Horde duo with her on a server without any friends or alts. Make it Horde, so she can play a blood elf. (A little compromise goes a long way -- and have you seen my avatar?) Make it a new server so that no one she knows is there to fall prey to her begging. This should solve all your problems if done right. Here's how:- Set aside time to play this duo weekly. Set appointments you can keep, and do keep them. If you are committed to spending time playing with her, she will be less hostile toward your time in Azeroth without her.
- Don't invite anyone else to join you. This is a regular WoW date just for you and your wife.
- Don't play the characters without each other. If either of you level ahead of the other, it will not be as fun. And your leveling ahead of her will just mean running her around ... again.
- Be patient about leveling. This is not your progression character. This is your play-with-your-wife character. This is your have-fun-without-stress character. Your expectations for fun rather than progress will help your wife not want to be hurried to catch up to your expectations.
- Don't join a guild. Keep the temptation of begging for help from others away from her. She needs to become more self-sufficient before you subject her high maintenance to another group of people.
- Suggest she make (or transfer) a character on an RP realm to play without you. Just like all your play time doesn't have to be with her, all her play time shouldn't be with you. Let her do her own RP thing on her own time, without you as a safety net or a buzzkill. Yeah, your attitudes toward character choice and RP make you as much of a killjoy as she is with her in-game issues.
I think I've been pretty clear here that under no circumstances should you two play together on your main realm, at least right away. Your playstyles are too different. Neither of you will enjoy it, and as I've said a bajillion times, your leisure time is all about destressing and having fun. But with your duo and your separate play times, you should be able to enjoy the best of playing WoW together as well as the best of playing with others.
Drama Mama Lisa: Half-Way There, I hate to break this to you -- but as far as building an enjoyable WoW partnership with your wife, you're far less than halfway there. If you want to enjoy playing WoW with your wife, you're going to have to play with her. That means finding a situation that you'll both enjoy, not figuring out a way to endure her idea of fun or how to entice her into tagging along with what you'd like to do. Robin makes some outstanding suggestions for starting off fresh as a team -- and a team, my friend, is exactly how you have to approach this endeavor. This isn't about "my wife playing with me"; it's not even about "me playing with my wife" (insert melodramatic, back of the hand to the forehead). This is all about "me and my wife playing." Once you've become comfortable with this new approach to exploring the game as a team, Half-Way, I think you'll find you're effectively all the way there.
Drama Buster of the Week: Is your guild chat full of kvetching that is creating an unpleasant atmosphere? Create a separate chat channel for bellyaching. Making it is as simple as /join grawr (or whatever you want to call it) and invite people to join you there. Having a separate chat channel for complaining about things can keep guild chat open for pleasant chatter, helpful discussions or whatever. But it still allows for the release of certain frustrations. If you're not an officer, get approval from one before you suggest this. You don't want to cause extra drama with your drama-reducing channel, after all.
Remember, your mama wouldn't want to see your name on any drama. Play nice ... and when in doubt, ask the Drama Mamas at dramamamas@wow.com.Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Drama Mamas
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 4)
Ivorydawn Jul 9th 2010 2:09PM
I commend this answer! As a wife who plays with her husband, luckily we both have similar playstyles: Medium RP/Casual PvE. We only disagree slightly on PvP, but that's his own little pleasure.
I do disagree about not joining a guild. In fact, I would suggest forming a vanity guild. This avoids the temptation to join a guild, being spammed by invites, and they can have the fun of creating the guild, tabard, and naming it.
Iirdan Jul 9th 2010 2:13PM
"We only disagree slightly on PvP, but that's his own little pleasure."
Something about this statement just made me laugh. Must be narm charm.
Robin Torres Jul 9th 2010 2:15PM
The vanity guild suggestion is an awesome one. I wish I had thought of it.
Pausanius Jul 9th 2010 2:31PM
Absolutely agreed on the vanity guild concept. It's the first thing I started for my wife and I when getting her into the game -- guild name "Matrimony". Just the two of us, no one else allowed, and it keeps the guild invites out. The added bank space that came later on was an additional plus.
At some point, we've considered turning our private guild into a casual guild with the only joining requirement is that it's for couples... I'd imagine there's plenty other married couples out there who only play once the kid(s) go to bed. :)
Eberron Jul 9th 2010 2:36PM
A vanity guild would be a perfect fit. That sort of stuff works great amongst really good friends and couples.
I share a bank alt with my AH-fiend friend (I turn over the mats she pays me so it's a good working marri-er-relationship). She used to be a Draenei, I'm a Druid tank, we became "Goat" and "Bear" to each other respectively.
So while we were questing on some alts out in Dragonblight we were doing that crab trap quest. It becoming a running joke that the damned goat kept stealing my crab traps!
Once she moved over she was greeted with a bank alt guild I'd made. complete with regal red and gold lobster tabard.
That was like a year ago it seems, but lemme tell you, we *still* laugh about that name and how it gets double takes of "Wtf!?" psts.
In-jokes make the best vanity guilds. The more bizarre to the onlooker, the better!
Kylenne Jul 9th 2010 2:47PM
I can't agree with this idea enough. My much more casual gf and I have a vanity guild on our RP server that's just for the two of us. It's a lot of fun, and also saves us from being pestered by people to join their guilds.
jokingjimmy Jul 9th 2010 5:03PM
Vanity guild is THE way to go when there's wife faction loss. I lost too much faction when we took our "main" toons out of our little personal guild and went to a raiding guild. Don't get me wrong, it's the first time that we've been in a low/no drama, social/raiding guild and it is great. However, she's lost a surprising amount of interest compared to when we were in our own little personal guild, pugging raids every week and having fun (instead of the scheduled, very fun and well run raids now). I suppose it's because it's no longer personal time, it's now time shared with others.
Be aware that if you want to play with your significant other, and do it through a vanity guild, more than likely, you won't be in a progressive raiding guild. At least not with the paired characters. Be content to stay and play that way for as long as possible.
vinniedcleaner Jul 9th 2010 2:53PM
Robin's solution is perfect.
Chris Ambrose Jul 9th 2010 2:12PM
I play WoW to relax and achieve goals that I have within the game. Why in the world would I want a hanger-on keyboard turner of a girlfriend/wife to play with me? She can play, but she has to realize that my playtime is built around raiding and arenas. If I wanted to go wander around I'd do it outside IRL, so I could at least get some sun and seem less of a social pariah to friends and family.
Bri Jul 9th 2010 2:27PM
I'm not sure, but I think you've missed the point.
slythwolf Jul 9th 2010 2:32PM
I'm going to take a leap here and guess you're not in a relationship. If you were, you'd probably understand that when you love someone, you do occasionally want to do fun things with them.
Molly Jul 9th 2010 2:43PM
Someone takes the game too seriously. Or, perhaps better put, doesn't take his relationships seriously enough.
CrimsonEyedDeath Jul 9th 2010 2:51PM
With a selfish, 'me-first attitude' like that, I'd wager you don't have a girlfriend to tag along with you in WoW.
Which is kind of sad, cause having a SO who plays the game with you (regardless of whether they share your specific playstyle or not) is really a grand thing.
Jeremiel Jul 9th 2010 3:34PM
Newsflash!
There are lots of girls who play WoW of their own volition, and are damned good at it,
who raid in high-end guilds, who kick ass in arenas and wouldn't be caught dead keyboard turning.
But yeah, you're probably right:
With your attitude, you could never get a girl that awesome.
Iano Jul 9th 2010 4:06PM
Hi! My wife is in the third from the top guild for Progression on our Server. I raid BECAUSE she raids. She does PvP because I like pvp. She invite me on a friend's 10-man ICC that was on Lich King, and I got Kingslayer- about 6 weeks after she got it, in 25-man ICC. They're 10/12 heroic modes.
Still, I got my wife into WoW. I started playing first, was first to 70, back then, she didn't make 70 until WotLK, I had two 80s at about the time she got her hunter to 80. I was raiding Naxx while she was questing up to 80.
She has TOTALLY passed me up in virtually all aspects of WoW. She now has 2 80's, the second is a priest.
A reiterate, though- I got her into WoW. I made her promise me, about a year into our marriage, that sometime, when I decided it was right, she would try WoW with me.
Before that, she was really pretty much a video-game-scrub- Mario was her favorite set of video games, but she still almost never played them. We played Mario Galaxy together, and she really wasn't bad at it, but that's about the extent of it. And now she is in a serious, hardcore raiding guild. I am her husband, sometimes heard in vent when I get a long enough break at work to come home for dinner.
It's crazy. It's possible. She is awesome, special, and amazing, but it had happened! Put your SO first, and beautiful things can happen.
Now go have fun! :D
Chris Ambrose Jul 9th 2010 4:46PM
I am single, because I am worried about my career. I consider owning a house, paying off student debt, and getting through the most rough years (I am in a career with an 80% divorce rate) of my career paramount to being in a relationship. This was a conscious decision that I made because I feel that it will allow for the best life for me and a spouse when the time comes.
But I digress. Let me restate what I said, because it was a bit harsh. If the person I am in a relationship with plays wow and finds her way into the same guild as me because she has earned it, then power to her. If she can pvp well enough to help me achieve my arena goals, then let her come play. I, as well as the rest of the WOW population, have had to deal with the 'bad' spouse that is in a raid because of the other partner who rocks. I refuse to hold my raid group/arena teams back because someone's playing that is subpar. I consider wow a hobby like several RL activities I have, and just as in those I won't bring along someone to participate in a competitive activity where it will hold back the rest of the group.
HOWEVER, if I was dating someone and they wanted to just play to play and wander around Azeroth, then power to them. I'd help them where I could but they would have to know and appreciate what I'm doing on my time in wow. If they wanted to play in the manner that I did and could, then power to them. My inner nerd would jump for joy, outer nerd probably would as well.
Also to those that do have a wonderful relationship with a beautiful, charming person who happens to be a nerd, I'm jealous of you. I have yet to meet a person like that so you all have hit the jackpot.
Chris Ambrose Jul 9th 2010 4:50PM
Also it should be noted that I am doing something similar to this plan with my brother because he wants to get into wow. SO.....I guess it wouldn't be outside of the realm of possibility to do this for a girl if she wanted....let's be honest. I'm a guy, I'd probably even let her play on my desktop.
CrimsonEyedDeath Jul 9th 2010 5:48PM
See, all that, MUCH more reasonable. I wouldn't want my SO in a raid just because the main tank (me) is involved with them. If they can't pull their own weight on a progression fight, I wouldn't want them in there, especially if other more capable players are sitting for them.
Thankfully, my boomkin SO can do quite well for themself, so it's not been an issue. But I can understand where you're coming from.
Stuff like ToC or ICC farm content that almost no one needs stuff from is another story.
Al Jul 9th 2010 6:01PM
Does WoW keep you warm at night 'cause obviously GAMING R SEROUS BIZNESS and your girlfriend is just casual for you.
Snuzzle Jul 9th 2010 10:14PM
Playing WoW with your girlfriend/boyfriend/husband/wife can be fun, but I can also understand that some people want to keep it "their thing". One should always have separate hobbies and "me-time" in a relationship... no one wants to be a Bennifer.