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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 9 of 9)
Carlos Sep 15th 2010 3:02PM
pretty cool. :)) Thanks for your quick response
dodgeballer2005 Sep 15th 2010 3:10PM
My guild requires players 18+, though we attempt to make a lot of exceptions when recruiting based on the recruit's level of skill and maturity...
Joat Sep 15th 2010 3:46PM
My guild, (shameless plug) 'Geezers of Azeroth"- Scarlet Crusade, encourage the recruitment of players "of a certain age". And by that we mean 'old farts'. If the median age of WoW players is 24 we're looking for considerably older players. Like 40s and up. However, that doesn't mean will not accept the very young.
It's just we don't think anyone under the age of 30 would appreciate playing with us. We're slow, we're careful, we're disciplined, we feel that having fun is more important than gear scores, we frown on hurting other people's feelings, and we use all the letters of the alphabet and when chatting use them in the traditional order. eg, "the" not "teh".
We would not reject anyone because of their youth. But, we're not too upset if they reject us because of our lack of youth.
Aeneron Sep 15th 2010 4:24PM
See, this is a problem with WoW. A lot of people assume that kids don't know how to play or are idiots, but some aren't. I suppose you could consider me a kid, but I have never been rude (in my opinion). Kids can raid. Kids can engage in intelligent discussion. This is all on my server though, so I don't know what it is like on others. Also, I'm sick of all the "What are you, twelve" responses.
TheBigFatMuffinMan Sep 15th 2010 4:47PM
My server is primarily made up of "young"-ish people. We aren't on top of the charts progression wise (the highest progression guild is that guild that everyone hates the guts of) but that means that we don't have all the asshats and elitist guilds that will turn their nose up at anyone who they think will not move them forward in progresion. At least on Horde side, anyways.
random.gamer88 Sep 15th 2010 5:12PM
I've got mixed feelings on this. The guilds that I've been in have all handled having children in the guild quite well. For example: One guild I was in, the GM required speaking with the child's parents over vent to explain that they (the parents) are assuming responsibility for what their child may be exposed to in guild chat and/or vent in regards to swearing or adult conversations. He was straight-forward about it and it worked well. Another guild I was in was composed of small groups of friends and families across the country that had (in one way or another) found themselves joining the same guild. It was a really great guild as these small groups came together to form a giant family. Anywho... (>.>) Some of the members had children as young as five that would hop on during their parents AFKs. We were all well aware that at any moment one of them could pick up their parent's headsets and listen or even join in the conversations. So we had to be mindful constantly. Was it a bit annoying? Yes. But, what'cha gonna do?
To play devil's advocate... I was once a GM for a moderately popular, long-running guild. This was years ago. I always required that the members be 18+ because of a story I had once heard from our friend guild's GM. She had recruited members in a desperate charge to keep her guild raiding. Apparently one raiding night everyone was on vent together. People were acting a bit crazy; drinking, swearing, talking about "adult" things (nothing out of the ordinary). Well the GM receives a whisper from said recruit's parents who had hijacked their child's computer after overhearing the tom-foolery on vent. The GM was threatened by the parents (reporting her to Blizzard, filing a lawsuit, all that good stuff) for "imposing" this on their child. Well. Needless to say, it didn't go anywhere that I know of. But that story just concerned me. I didn't want to have to worry about that kind of a situation happening. So I simply enacted an age rule. Could I be 100% certain that each member was 18? No. But typing up a disclaimer and adding it to our website at least gave me piece of mind. I also required that the members register to the website (being forced to read the disclaimer) and acknowledge on a post that they had read and understood the terms/agreements of the guild. I would only hand out the vent password to those that had done so.
*whew!* Well there's my rambling thoughts on the subject.
Kaz Sep 15th 2010 5:11PM
My guild has a pretty strict 18+ policy. This was implemented only after years of younger members engaging in repeated annoying behaviors (i.e. whining, immaturity, egregious asshattery) and failing to make commitments (i.e. Not showing up to raids because their parents took WoW/the computer away, or they just didn't feel like showing up).
The age requirement is flexible, but only if the applicant is close to turning 18 and/or is demonstrably mature and has a current guild member vouch for their maturity.
Lyinnea Sep 15th 2010 6:22PM
When I started playing the game back in vanilla, I was about 15. It never once occurred to me to beg and whine and such in game because to me, that sort of behavior wasn't acceptable in real life so why would it be acceptable in game?
I'm almost 20 now but for years I've always been polite in game and if people asked me how old I was they were always very surprised at how young I was. I'm also a girl, which apparently makes a difference, I've seen soooo many guys be jerks in the game it's shocking (and many of them over 18). I've had a few instances where I wanted to join a raiding guild but they flat out wouldn't let me because I was under 18, no matter how much I assured them that I wouldn't be a problem, they wouldn't even give me a chance. I guess I'm just saying that you really can't judge EVERYONE based on their age.
Pottsy11 Sep 15th 2010 6:14PM
I am 15, turning 16, and have played as a rogue vanilla. I disagree with what many have said here. I have consistently turned up to raids early, and have not missed a guild raid in over three months. I don't keyboard turn and have a neat, raid-friendly UI. In addition to this, i am consistently in the top 2 or 3 dps, irrelevant of the fight (rogue), pulling 17-18k on saurfang, and on fights like sindy and pp, still above 10 or 11k.
All this is just to say - 'children' can make competent and reliable raiders, if they have the experience and are willing to look into theorycrafting etc.
FoxOfWar Sep 15th 2010 7:04PM
We don't have age requirements per say; we just tend to attract mature and older people. I'm 23, and I'm way on the younger side of our guild. We raid to fairly late (midnight server time, which is 1am for me), and fact is, most under-18 applicants we've had simply haven't been able to conform to our raid schedule.
We raid twice a week, because people have real lives. We don't absolutely require you to be in said raids(we do have social members here and there), but if you are social member, you don't raid. If you apply to raid with us, we expect you to be able to raid on fairly good basis.
Of course, seeing that we need an actual application from anyone who is not a social member (aka non-raiding friend of someone of our regular roster)... already weeds out most "kids" anyway. But if there's age of 14 or 15 in the app, we don't use that to deny anything.
Lichkingspawn Sep 15th 2010 7:47PM
the most immature guilds i've been in were with people who said they weren't kids and they didn't even know how to do toc 10.
Vinna Sep 15th 2010 7:51PM
In my old guild one of the best people in it was a kid who was the ripe old age of 13. When the 30 year olds broke out in a fit of drama that ended up destroying the guild the 13 year old stayed reliable, positive, loyal, and fun. He was way more mature than that crazy lot of 30 year olds.
I was once running a dungeon with a couple of guildies and was told the guildless pally who was with us was one of their sons (that guild only allowed in people 18+) the kid was great, and fun to play with. Ends up the kid was 8, I was shocked.
I would never run a guild again, but if I did, I would have no problem at all with having it be kid friendly. On an up note, you can keep alot of the adults in check as far as guild chat is concerned when they are told they have to keep gchat to a kid friendly tone.
Khirsah Sep 15th 2010 8:41PM
I have no problem with kids in my guild. It gives us a chance to provide them with a little guidance before they become one of the "L2P, Noobs. Ya'll are terrible," Douchebags.
Terrë Sep 15th 2010 9:32PM
I'm the GM of a guild that accepts only new members over 16 unless vouched for by an existing member -young sons and daughters of existing players are also allowed on the proviso that their parent keep an eye on them. We used to take anyone regardless of age but after having too many young people join and change the whole guild dynamic - as well as being complete idiots, begging, whining for help all the time, ragequitting then wanting to rejoin - and the biggest bugbear with older members - textspeak - we changed.
We're still a mix of old and young. The two best tanks and healers in the guild are 16 now and were 14 when they joined. We have immature people who are my age or older (i'm 46 and i'm not the oldest by any means) and mature people who are only 16 - but we all get along just fine and have a great time.
ashesarexfalling Sep 15th 2010 10:29PM
Well, I'm 15 and I NEVER recall acting immaturely in Vent or in any kind of chat.
I raid all the time, but I just keep quiet because I don't usually talk much around people I am not familiar talking to. It's always a shock when I tell them that I happen to be in highschool, let alone 15.
I do understand there are incredibly immature 8 year olds out there. However if you give the mature ones a chance, they really can surprise you. Maybe even benefit your guild.
Xantenise Sep 15th 2010 11:30PM
When I was fourteen I ran a guild that did better than a lot of guilds started in that it didn't flop. Even though I was young, ridiculously new to the game and so on, I did pretty well considering, and most of the members were other teenagers. There was only one kid who begged for runs and for promotions and when she didn't get what she wanted, she was quickly on her way.
We did have a member in his forties who had a ten-year-old daughter - both were in the guild. The ten-year-old girl was very mature, never begged for anything and she was an angel. Would gladly have her again!
Shadda Sep 20th 2010 11:39PM
Sometimes the reasoning behind the age restriction is simply the lack of control kids have over their schedule/Internet connections/gaming rig. If you're a guild with end-game raiding in mind, it's difficult to accommodate someone who can't raid on a school night, or who has to share their computer with a sibling, or simply can't log in because they're grounded. Very few parents understand the commitment that comes with raiding. Obviously adults have issues to deal with too (they may have kids of their own or be asked to work overtime), but in general they are have more freedom to arrange their schedules around raids.
Ruth Sep 16th 2010 6:32AM
My guild had an over 18 policy simply because most of us are parents and we understood what we would and wouldn't want our own children hearing. There are some things we speak of in public and some we only speak of in private, chosen situations.
We wanted the guild members to feel free to be themselves, and while sometimes that did mean being immature and silly, there were often discussions that children shouldn't be listening to, whether they were older and 'mature' or not. It allows people to be themselves without feeling as if they have to restrict themselves, to discuss things without having to worry about who's on. Nobody wants to have someone's parent log on one night and start throwing accusations about what someone else said while their child was able to read/listen.
It should be mentioned that we're also a fairly open minded group of people, and often anything goes when it comes to joking, but that doesn't mean it's right to say it in public. And so we created a private space for ourselves where we were able to speak our minds and be free to explore random and often silly thoughts.
If people don't like it, they can find somewhere else. They don't need to force themselves on us. We don't do it to them - we made sure we had somewhere to go.
Catrena Sep 16th 2010 11:25AM
We have a couple kids in our guild ranging from ages 9-15, they are all clearly marked and have to have an adult family member in guild vouch for them. If there are any ongoing issues we take it to the adult to deal with.
Admittadly we are a pretty kid friendly guild, we already were keeping guild chat relatively clean so it just requires a little more patience. The one time we did have a problem we just created a new rank where a guildie couldn't talk in guild chat until we had a chance to talk to the adult.
Catrena Sep 16th 2010 11:28AM
I should probably note we do advertise as a family guild, we just try to keep everything dirty in Vent or Party chat. :)