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The latest patch 5.4 newsBreakfast Topic: Do you use WoW to keep in touch?
by Josh Rose 
Sep 28th 2010 at 8:00AM
Most of us have friends and family we don't get to see very often due to time constraints or distance. Keeping in contact can be hard with life getting in the way at times. My family though happens to be a WoW family. My mother, father and sister and her husband, aunt and two of my cousins all have WoW accounts. We each have characters on the same realm and get in touch with each other through the game.
Many people look at WoW as a nerdy diversion or just a game, but for me, it has allowed me to stay in contact with friends and family I would not otherwise get in touch with nearly as often. My aunt lives on the other side of the state, about two and a half hours away; my cousin is in the Air Force stationed in Europe. We use email, phone calls and occasional visits, but WoW is how we primarily contact each other. I hop on my tank, my cousin has his rogue, and my aunt plays her mage, and we run instances or quest together or occasionally level alts all while catching up. We have actually ran randoms with five different family members talking and joking over Vent, catching up on current events in each others' lives.
Do you have family who plays also? Do you use it as a way to keep in touch with them? If so, is it just joking, or do you pass real important news back and forth over the game?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 3 of 3)
jane Sep 28th 2010 11:08AM
I have a son in the Army over seas, and a son living in another state. My sister. 2 other sons and assorted family play. We get together in game and gossip and have fun. WoW is how I keeep in touch with every one and have fun doing it.
Yoyo Sep 28th 2010 11:43AM
I am from Europe, and after growing up I ended up in Canada and one of my brothers in The US, while one brother is still in Europe. We all play on the same realm/faction. It is nice to be able to do something with your family other than just talk, so while playing WoW, we just simply spend a lot more time together than some people would do with siblings who all lived in the same town. My mother even swears that she loves WoW, since it keeps all her kids in touch with each other on an almost daily basis across the globe.
duskhawk Sep 28th 2010 11:48AM
Yep, my mom, sis, & brother are all real-id friended, and since I'm not much of a phone person, it's a nice way to catch up. We also talk to my husband's sister & her family a lot more now that we're all in WoW together.
It's kind of like having a family bowling night or something, but the 1000-2000 mile separation isn't an issue.
Ronin Sep 28th 2010 12:02PM
I used to try to stay in touch with my kids through WoW. It's not really the best tool to use for it, though. The game itself intervenes in place of actual relationship-building. Let's face it, you're primarily just playing a game together-- that's not really "staying in touch". And when they get tired of the game, they move on to other activities.
There are other, much better tools to staying in touch with people. There's nothing wrong with playing a game with a friend/family member-- but I'm kind of leery of attempts to change WoW to make it something it isn't, and to use it for something it can't do very well.
Now when I want to play with my brother and his wife, I log on to our guild's server. If I want to connect with them, I log on to Facebook. I don't really need this game to try to be WoWbook.
Ootanee Sep 28th 2010 12:13PM
Derp. Even as an extremely casual player, (Still havent seen ICC or Ulduar) WoW has been pretty integral to a couple of relationships. I met a girl in New York and we went for a long distance relationship for a couple years. She was going to school and I just got promoted to where I was so we were kinda stuck geographically. In addition to renting the same movie and watching them while on the phone, playing online games like scrabble and shit, and flying back and forth every couple months to visit, we spent alot of time in wow just screwing around running quests. She really really sucks at these kind of games though, to the point she was just clicking every attack on her huntard. I kept wondering why how she was pulling shit off of me, when it turns out she was hitting distracting shot every cooldown. She got excited to see new dungeons and stuff, and learned to hate wailing caverns as she should. All in good fun though. I have also been playing alot more with a best friend from high school lately too. We always half assed kept in touch, and he has been playing since the game came out and leveled a dk tank on my server to show me old school BC and Vanilla raids. I also have a good friend from the military I see online through the battlenet thingy, as well as an old roommate from when I lived in New Orleans. All in all WoW has made keeping in touch with like minded people extremely easy.
bennet Sep 28th 2010 12:19PM
I have several geographically distant friends with whom my primary means of contact is WoW (with Skype). It strikes me as like any other group hobby - hiking or quilting or as duskhawk said, bowling - where the shared activity gives you a focus and you meander into more personal confidences from there. Without that common ground I suspect we would have drifted apart by now - I think it's neat that MMOs offer a new way to connect with people and sustain relationships.
kevin.munoz501 Sep 28th 2010 12:40PM
The person that got me into wow was my cousin, so whenever one of us gets on instant invite lol, I also keep in touch with a good friend over wow, were it not for wow I would've prob never talked to him again because I moved schools
Angrycelt Sep 28th 2010 12:46PM
Absolutely. With friends in military service, WoW has kept us in touch whether they were on the other side of the world, or just the other side of the country. Also, one of our local friends has met a girl who really is his perfect match through the LFD finder. They kicked ass on the daily random, realized they were on the same server, and now I have to listen to them being all smoochy smoochy if I get into the wrong vent channel.
eyeball2452 Sep 28th 2010 1:16PM
No, I view WoW as just another game, not a platform.
I use Xbox Live! to keep in touch with friends and family. A group of us also do fantasy sports together.
I think that Blizzard is too focused on creating a community platform and maximizing revenue. I think that decisions related to those initiatives, at times, negatively impact their games and players.
Maybe it's perception, but I still look at Blizzard as a developer and I wish that they'd focus more on their games. If they wanted to be more, they should've created another company to act as a publisher so that they could maintain their developer brand. Right now, I'm not sure what Blizzard is, but being more like Activision isn't good imo.
Luotian Oct 5th 2010 12:57PM
Communicating with my family after I moved away to college was my primary reason for joining WoW. I don't like IMs or E-mails, and our phones were frequently turned off. It's much easier to get on WoW, snag a healer, and chatter with each other while running an instance. My brother (warrior), sister (warlock), and father (druid) all play. Even my mother tried it once, though she hated it.
splodesondeath Sep 28th 2010 5:46PM
I have three friends, one of whom got me into WoW, that I don't see basically at all anymore, whom I stay in touch with through WoW.
The feeling I get when I see one of them log on is always so great, despite the fact that we haven't seen each other in over a year at the least.
Scott Sep 29th 2010 4:52AM
I am currently on my second deployment to Afghanistan. My wife and I use WoW as a way of "hanging out." You see calling someone everyday makes it hard to have a lengthy conversation but with WoW we don't have to talk the whole time we can just quest together :D Thanks WoW for being a great tool to keep my wife and I in touch!