Posts with tag abuse

Drama Mamas Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are experienced gamers and real-life mamas -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of the checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your realm.

Again, we have another serious topic -- and again, we'd really love some lighthearted, fun candidates for next week, please.

I'm in a guild that is mostly comprised of married couples. I am particularly close to one woman in particular. We're the night-owls of the group, up after everyone else goes to bed, and we chat a lot.

She has recently disclosed some pretty awful marital abuse and power-and-control-gaslighting stuff as well as sexual abuse, marital rape, etc. Everyone else in the guild thinks they're together, and makes the usual references and requests that you'd make of a married couple like "hey, can you click the accept-rez thing for her?" or "do you know when he'll be back from work?" but the thing is - she's already LEFT her husband - he just won't let her TELL anyone!

He's still in guild with us, and still uses our raids as an opportunity to harass her, because he knows she'll be there, and knows she "can't" say anything.

The new achievement system that will be introduced with the 3.0.2 patch is going to make this game a bit more interesting. People will begin to do things just so they can have the achievement. In my opinion, this is great. It extends the game play and gives everyone something more to 'achieve.'

What is not great in the eyes of some is the potential and actual abuse from the system that will result.

Take for instance what happened when I created simple macro that did /lol, and spammed it for 60 seconds. I got a nice number of 258 "Total times LOL'd" written down in my achievements page, right there for everyone to see. This just opens up the door for abuse of the worst kind – lol abuse.

What do I mean by lol abuse?

The AP is reporting on the story of a couple in Nevada who claim they were so addicted to "the Internet and video games" that they neglected the health and well-being of their two children, a 22-month old girl and an 11-month old boy. I won't go into the details, although you can read them in the article, but it's a horrific story. WoW isn't mentioned-- "the fantasy role-playing Dungeons & Dragons series" is, but does that mean DDO or does the reporter just, as usual, have no idea what they're talking about?

At any rate, (also as usual) the report eventually turns to videogame addiction and what a "serious issue" it is. Exactly zero mention is made of the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of parents who play WoW and other online games right alongside their children, happily and healthily. A few of my guildies are parents and often play with their kids, and our own Robin Torres writes Azeroth Interrupted, a column about doing exactly that and how to handle issues like playing with your kids. You'll also note that almost no attention is paid to the other problems with this couple-- they gained $50,000 in inheritance, and spend it on computer equipment and a plasma screen rather than anything for their two children. This isn't "abuse rooted in videogame addiction"-- it's abuse rooted in bad parenting.

Kayholder over on WoW Ladies says she gets attacked for playing the game with young children at home-- people automatically say that having children around to take care of should automatically exempt you from playing a game like World of Warcraft.

That's just plain wrong. Any game can be played responsibly by anyone of age, World of Warcraft included. Kay even says that she doesn't raid because she doesn't think she has the time (which is fine as well), but one of my guildies who just had yet another kid is actually our main healer. Good parenting and videogames aren't mutually exclusive-- in fact, in some situations, they're better together.