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All of the latest Mists of Pandaria newsBreakfast Topic: Are children welcome in your guild?
by Martha Widra 
Sep 15th 2010 at 8:00AM
Children are so much fun and a joy to have around, right? Maybe that's true in real life (at least for a lot of people), but in a guild setting in World of Warcraft, children present some difficult situations. I've been the "guild mom" for two guilds with child members (one who is between the ages of 8 and 15), so I've had a lot of experience.
We all have seen children in a guild. Many beg or ask for gold. They want to be run through instances or helped to level. They ask silly questions. And their reading levels may not be high enough for them to follow the quest text. Guild chat may be filled with: "Can someone help me level?" "Can I have some gold?" "Are we there yet?" And everyone has to watch what is said in guild chat.
Helping children to become strong guild members requires a commitment of time from other members. Some guilds do not want to give that time, so they say "adults only." Other guilds welcome children and work through the problems. All this requires some planning, some commitment of time and lots of patience. The good news is that as time goes on, children mature, and they may become a core of solid members for the future who know how to pass on the lessons they learned to the next generation.
Are children welcomed and helped in your guild? Does your guild restrict membership to adults only? Are children allowed, but everyone hates it when they are online?
Filed under: Guilds, Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 4 of 9)
Neversummer Sep 15th 2010 8:30AM
We have had the policy of only allowing 18+ to join our guild. We never want to fall into the problems of "my mom said I had to get off". Plus its hard to keep the conversation pg13 when we should not have to. We have been a guild since the beginning of wow and have never modified this policy. Its also not blizzards policy to gear the game towards minors. My children play the game sporadically but I remove them from all chat features and don't allow them to group outside of their friends/family.
www.fearthenox.com
-Never
matt Sep 15th 2010 8:29AM
hmmm... im not quite sure why an 8 year old is playin warcraft. t for teen!
i bet your the same kind of parent that will let there child into an R rated flick by themselves while i have to listen to the little f@cker talk and giggle and do other little f@cker things.
Ice Sep 15th 2010 8:29AM
Nope. Sadly our experience (note OUR) with younger people are that they simply too much "under one's thumb"* by parents.
We had one tank who simply left the raid at 20.30 when at the time had done "farm bosses". Our raid started at 20.00 so before we found out that he is 13 we just thought he was abusing us for easy loot.
They have to go to sleep early, they have to go to eat AT THE SPOT when asked no matter if we have raid in works thus wasting 9 peoples time for searching new guy or simply waiting half hour to one to finish precious supper, they ask about everything and beg for everything and spam only emotes (yes, only with nothing else) "XD" "=P" "=D". After him we started to ask age on our apps. We cant really hold kindergarten here, we are grown people with already precious time and one kid wasting it by staying on fire, wiping the raid by doing something weird and only replying "XD" is not fun.
We are raid guild who take it kinda serious. Thus knowing class and reading spreadsheets is considered plus. Do you see 13-15 year olds going to EJ and reading class info top to bottom? Pfft, they prolly wont even do their homework that much.
Also since we only have old folks our chats can be more free. Our jokes simply are not for faints or kids.
* not sure is that english term for this situation
pinteresque Sep 15th 2010 9:09AM
Close enough. "Under their parent's thumb" is perfectly acceptable English. +10 idiom points!
Evissadia Sep 15th 2010 8:30AM
We don't allow children. We mostly shy away from anyone under 21, but there are a few late teen members that have been around for quite a long time (since before we were a raiding guild) so they have sort of been grandfathered in.
I have enough to deal with when it comes to the adults that act like children. I don't think I could handle the real deal. I am a GM not a babysitter.
Bain Sep 15th 2010 8:30AM
was in a guild that had a hunter that was the silent type, used to md all the bosses on the pulls and stuff, we were also one of the more progressed guilds on our server at the time too.
long time later found out said hunter happened to be 7 years old...
Tri Sep 15th 2010 8:31AM
It's not that I don't like kids - heck, I work with kids for a living. But WoW is a past-time activity, and I kind of want to spend my free time NOT with kids (that is, untill I have my own..). So my guild has a strict 21+ age limit.
It's nice to have this group of people with similar interests as yourself.. I'm in my late 20s now, and I honestly don't want to chat about My Little Pony or Hannah Montana... ;o)
Frankly - if my guild's /g and Teamspeak chat took place around children, I'm also sure that we'd all be arrested.. :O
Moorit Sep 15th 2010 10:45AM
I'm in the same situation. I teach physical education to kids, and after years of doing so I have a hard time interacting with kids in situations where I can't make them do pushups if they screw up. Hard to tell someone over vent that to drop and give you 20...
bui Sep 15th 2010 8:37AM
Yeah I spend as little time as possible with small children in real life so do I want them to follow me into my escape from real life ? Most certainly not. I'm not really a guy who monitors what he says/types a whole lot, the only time I leave out 4 letter words is when I'm trying to get a point across or join in a reasonable discussion like on WoW.com here. I dislike children, I will never be a parent because I don't have the patience and don't want the responsibility. So being in a guild with children is not my idea of a good time. Sure some of them can help and be decent players as they grow up playing the game, but I'm not really willing to invest years in creating a good raider.
Hyzenthlay Sep 15th 2010 8:36AM
Our guild is a large social guild, so it does have it's share of minors. Most of them are great players and lovely on top of it, but on the flip side, those who have been the most annoying and abusive have been under 16 as well.
For most I think it's a case of the perception of an immature attitude rather than them being more 'needy'. Plus a lot of people don't like having to constantly self-censor on their downtime, especially if they haven't specifically gone and joined a guild that openly considers itself 'family friendly'.
Fr0styz Sep 15th 2010 8:37AM
I say this. I am a teenager who plays wow. When i ever wanted someone to run me through something i ask the person in real life (like my uncle or dad or my friends). i have never spamed guild chat for anything and am not against doing dailies or AHing to get money. I have noticed that alot of guild i have been in go "oh your a kid you better be one of those child prodigies" because they all think all kids are immature. I wish that these kinds of things stopped so i could have a better playing experience. Hard to raid when most guilds wont take you.
Gendou Sep 15th 2010 8:37AM
No. We are strictly an 18+ guild right now.
We've had very bad luck with people under 18 in our guild. Our experiences have ranged from simple annoyance ("No, I told you five minutes ago, I can't come help you with that quest right now. No matter how many times you spam 'plz' to guild chat.") to outright ninjas. Every time we make an exception to this rule ("No, this guy is totally mature and not like those other kids.") we end up getting burned. Our one written guild rule is "Don't be an asshat," and in five years we have yet to have a single person under 18 manage to keep from breaking that rule.
I'm sure there are some perfectly mature and reasonable children under 18 (and I'm sure they'll be more than happy to respond to this post to tell me how wrong we are to not allow kids in our guild), but our guild has had terrible luck where kids are concerned. So at this point, we simply don't allow admit them to our guild.
bearmug Sep 15th 2010 8:38AM
We have '18+' limit mostly cause we come online to relax and prefer not being forced to watch our language. Same as having no-drama rule, no-begging rule, no goldshire-type RP rule, making a relaxed place to RP and chat.
Natrii Sep 15th 2010 9:57AM
moongaurd?
Jahreeda Sep 15th 2010 8:38AM
My guild is mostly adults in their mid-20s to early 40s, though we do have a few older, and a few much younger. If I'm reckoning correctly, we have at least 4 or 5 younger than 16. They're almost all children of older guild members, or the children of IRL friends of guild members. I think our youngest is 11, although our First-Mate's 4-year-old does occasionally get onto his mom or dad's accounts to play.
Generally, they're all respectful and responsible, and eager to learn. They understand that they are in a somewhat privileged position, and are grateful for it. They love raiding with us, and most of them pull very respectable numbers. I often find myself neck and neck with our other raiding fury warrior, who is all of 14 (and a half). We have had issues with younger members throwing tantrums, but they all paled in comparison with the snit-fits we've had from adult members. We have a guild-chat policy, but I like to think it is primarily to keep drama at a minimum rather than us simply sheltering our young'uns.
So my verdict? As long as the kids behave as equals, they should be treated as equals.
Purplestuff Sep 15th 2010 8:39AM
I'm 14 and am up there with the top raiders in my guild, we have been working on hard modes in icc. I don't get any special treatment from my guildies and i never wanted any, if i was an idiot i would be kicked out like any other adult.
Another reason i think why people don't like kids is because of mum aggro, which is a problem negated by having a good schedule.
While there is the stereotype out there I think that if its a child or not on the internet you can end up with a total noob.
Kaillas Sep 15th 2010 8:39AM
My 10 year old son and I play WoW together. We are not in the same guild, but, I do see what guild he is in, make sure I have a chat with the officer and let them know my expectations about guild chat in the guild. My son knows enough to not beg for items, gold and runs (except from mom). He is still a kid in the guild, but, he is fairly quiet and pays attention in dungeon runs. If the occasional raunchy chat get's going in his guild, if he even pays attention to it, I just suggest that he move to his alt and level that one up. So far, it has been a non-issue for us.
He is just as happy to play outside as he is to play on the computer. Winter months he is online a little more but, that is normal I think with the weather and how dark it gets.
Kittens Sep 15th 2010 8:42AM
"Helping children to become strong guild members requires a commitment of time from other members. Some guilds do not want to give that time, so they say "adults only.""
I think it's a little crude to conclude that that's the reason for guilds to not take on children. While maybe not meant that way, that sentence makes it sound like something bad really. Not wanting to put any extra time into guiding kids might be true for some guilds, but I think it's usually more a case of wanting to play with people on your own 'level' or phase of life.
The guilds I am in largely consist of people between the ages of 26-40. We have some younger members, I believe our youngest was 16 but he is very mature for his age. The guilds don't have bad language but will have talk about work, people's own families/kids and just.. the way we perceive the world from our age. Things a 12 year old really would have little in common with, and might not enjoy much.
I think many of our members' wow time is also their 'away' time and they'll indeed be unlikely to want to deal with guiding young children in there after they've just managed to get their own to bed after two hours ;) That, however doesn't mean we don't want to put time in members that need some extra help and guidance in the game. We have those too, and we're always ready to help them out.
We would never tell a person 'no, you can't join!' solely based on their age, but we will look at how they act and talk. If your every other sentence consists of 'lol XD' then you will likely just not fit in our bunch of people.
Tanks Sep 15th 2010 8:45AM
We run a family guild so therefore children are allowed. The adults know which toons the kids run and monitor themselves accordingly. Sometimes they have muck-ups but considering that most of their parents are also in guild it makes things easier. The adults help guide the younger players through the game and through the mire of the social aspect as well. Having them there makes things a lot easier as the parents know they are in a safe place to play and helps to teach them how to handle situations as well as teach them game play so they don't get treated like crap by the real immature players. We have found its not really physical age that matters.. its mental age.
Noyou Sep 15th 2010 8:46AM
No policy against it. We do have a fellow officer's nephew who is 15ish but he was well informed not to say 'typical' teen stuff and is fairly quiet as far as chatter goes. I have booted a few 'children' but sadly they were almost all over 18 true enough. Younger teens probably don't get a fair shake and 'young adults' acting like children make it a lot harder of an environment for them to be in safely. WoW is a 'kids game' at heart but the nature of the internet is hardly a healthy one for anyone under the age of 21 in my opinion. Of course there are well adjusted people of many ages that can handle it at very early stages.