The Experiment: A Non-Gamers Introduction To Azeroth
iTZKooPA on Sunday, January 18, 2009 - 19 Comments Tags: alts, gaming newb, girl gamers, girlfriend aggro, gtaiv, guitar hero, mmog newb, the experiment, wii  Not the actual occurrence. |
I have touched on this subject before, but I never truly broke it down for you. I have been dating a lovely lady for almost eight months now and we have enjoyed our time together thoroughly. Heck, those vacations I took, the ski trip and holiday break, were with her. Needless to say, we fancy each other quite a bit, and yet she has managed to avoid a large facet of my life, video games.
She knows that I enjoy them and write about them frequently, but she hardly ever sees me play them. Unlike some gamers, I am not ashamed of my hobby. In fact, I tend to glorify it in my clothing, my home's decorations and even the name of one of my ferrets, Cloud. Lesley just happens to miss most of my playtime due to work hours. So the issue of games didn't really come up for awhile.
When I discovered that my fair lady still thought of video games as Tetris, I knew I had a job on my hands. I introduced her slowly to the newer games, mainly focusing on lighthearted, easy to grasp Wii titles before handing her the axe for Guitar Hero III. Then one night, I handed her the controller during a mission in Grand Theft Auto IV. Hilarity ensued.
Ms. iTZKooPA turned the game into “Grand Civilian Auto,” slowly driving through traffic as if she were in the South. After waiting at lights, allowing other automobiles to have the right of way, and extending the crosswalk to pedestrians, her vehicle strayed into a barrier into a Toll Booth. It caught fire. Panic quickly consumed the rookie gamer behind the controller.
Lesley spammed buttons on the controller until Niko fled the burning car. Once she swiveled the camera around, a horrible realization struck her, half a dozen cars were piled up behind hers trashed vehicle, blocking the exit she was planning on taking. As the fire roared louder and pedestrians begin fleeing, Niko turned...and got back in the car seconds before it exploded.
Our friends who were there upon the fiery demise of Niko have never forgotten the episode. Nor will they let Lesley, but I didn't recant the tale to make fun. No, no, I simply wanted to give everyone a feel for what kind of gamer is finally going to make the leap into Azeroth.
Just to be clear, I am not forcing her to do this, nor is she going the “if you can't beat them, join them” route. We both believe that the experiment will be a fun endeavor and something new to do with each other. So this weekend, Lesley will subscribe to her first MMOG and make her first character. While I will be by her side on a new alt, SolidPumice a soon-to-be Prot Warrior, I will not be helping her too much. The discoveries and designs MMOs have to offer are half the fun. Wonder if Recruit-A-Friend still works...
Who knows, you may see some Horde-based coverage on ProjectLore as I won't restrict her faction choice! Any one who has done the same have any tips?
Reader Comments (19)
Yup, Recruit a friend still works, recruited someone a week and a half ago
You should be with her a lot online because of the extra experience. You two will cruise to 60....unless you wanna keep her at the low levels for longer so that she has more time to learn the games mechanics.
The 3x xp is gonna be hard to pass up though. :D
i hope she does make a horde as i play 2 hordes and 1 ally and all i can say is allys have the worse deal, horde are just so much cooler.
and also loved the bit about Mrs ITZKooPA playing GTA IV lol
Wow never thought there are people like that.
Well good luck later on!
Well I found the part when you had said she went back into the car right before it exploded to be quiet funny but then I stopped myself. Granted I kinda did the same thing back in the day with GTA when it first came out, so I knew better.
When I first started to play WoW I really didn't have a choice which faction to play. All my friends told me to go Alliance so I did, and each time they gave up and went to another realm they changed sides and so did I until I just gave up and went to a RP server where I can happily say I have the most fun with level 80/70 Hordes and 2 70+ Alliance characters.
Here is a tip, try to make friends when your leveling your Horde Character if she chooses horde, also get her to make friends to weither or not she makes Horde or Alliance. Try leveling with different people. Makes the leveling process much easier and by the time you get to 80 you will have a variety of friends to group with for instances.
I got my gf into WoW a long time ago. Before WoW she isn't much of a gamer, but she does enjoy WoW. She would play more but she is worried if she played as much as she wanted she would fail school so it stays purely a hobby now and then. My advice to you is simple. Only help if they ASK for it. Do not give tips/talents any sort of help unless they ask. For one they get angry if you tell them what to do. They also don't learn. If you have someone telling you what to do it goes in and out easier and she won't remember. So although it might be hard to keep your mouth shut. It will make her a better WoW player in the long run. Gl and have fun :)
Haha, poor girl. ^_^ Hope she has fun. Tried getting one of my friends to start playing the game but it was too hard for her. :(
My GF's great and i have introducted her to WOW myself more recently, and she seems to like it! so im going to have to start up an alt so that we may instance together. As for the horde vids that'd be cool but can you leave em to a real horde man... like per say me? hehe. Although i feel im going to have to teach how to heal... (me guild needz a healer.) wont that be fun? FOR THE HORDE!
deidare- prot warrior/ turalyon.
I myself was once a "gamer widow".
My ex began playing WoW in spring of '05 and I was absolutely sure we were going to break up over the amount of hours he was spending leveling up his mage (15 hours a day- really?) and not with me. I am a lover of the old school console games, ala Super NES and N64, but I'd never played any MMORPGs.
One day I got to a point where I just said, "I'm only trying this to see what the big damn deal is" and rolled a gnome warrior. Yes, because they are cute.
4 years later I dropped the boyfriend and kept my WoW subscription and am extremely happy with my decision.
Also, I agree with other posters- give a little love to the Horde!
awww thats nice ;p
crap i cant ever get any pf my GF's to play wow there all like you "love that game more then me" andthen the guilt trip begins until i get off its annoying really
I would like to add a tidbit to Josh's advice. Give help only if he/she requests it, but also check in on them once in awhile. The reason for this is because my older brother didn't do that when he introduced me to WoW (pre-BC). So I was a 54-ish shaman before he looked at my talent trees for the first time. His eyes practically popped out when he discovered that I didn't really understand how that mechanic works... So yeah, there I was at lvl 54 and I had to re-learn how to do everything. It sucked.
I started playing wow on my own, didn't have anyone to show me any of the mechanics of how things worked, but i'm a Video Game junkie and caught on by lvl 20. My wife decided to start a character so i rolled an alt, and began playing with her, currently we are both lvling alts on the horde. As for advise.....1) don't give her to much info but explain to her how to find it on her own. 2) give her a hand when she needs it, but not too much so she depends on it. 3) help her to understand the basics about skills and class and such. 4) don't push her to join your guild, or expect her to like your in game friends. 5) remember she is your girlfriend....act accordingly. :)
My wife started playing WoW in December (Recruit-A-Friend). She definitely wanted a "pretty" character. Human female Warrior was her choice. I let her choose first, then made a character to compliment her choice. She is by no means the best warrior out there (stances? Phsst!)... but she has fun, so I have fun.
You level insanely fast, so it can be hard to level professions accordingly, since we were into Westfall before she could aquire enough herbs to keep up.
Money is also a factor, so I might recommend playing on the same server as one of your mains, and channel a bit of cash for level skill-ups and shopping (or don't show her the AH... my mistake).
All in all, we have a lot of fun, she's lvl 58, has a nice horse to run around with, and never dies (or even thinks about dying, thanks to my Shammy). This will be her last month of play (the addiction isn't there I suppose), but she has a better idea why I love WoW as much as I do.
This is an issue that I'm somewhat torn on. I would LOVE to get my wife involved in WoW and share quests/adventures with her. I think it would be a blast. But we have 3 kids (6 year old twins and a 2 year old) that take up the bulk of her time during the day and my time when I get home from work. I really do't play until after 11 pm server time except for on the weekends. If she played that late, she wouldnt have the energy to keep up with the kids.
She goes from seeming interested in why I like it so much to angry that I do depending on the day's events. I would hate to have her like the game so much that it caused problems with the kids...that wouldn't be aggroing the wife mob, it would be causing enrage of the wife mob and I'd wipe!
What's a warrior gonna do?
I haven't actually "tried" to get my g/f to play WoW. However one day she came home for work and I was leveling my tankadin in Northrend and she happened to catch a glimpse and it caught her curosity. So I was fighting a quest boss, and I told her to take the wheel. What ensued was very entertaining in that she was mashing every button on the keyboard trying to get the pally to defeat her opponent. In the end she succeeded and I asked her.."how was that" lol she said that was great fun. So I asked her if she wanted to try out a character, and she said no that she didn't like games were she has to do quests lol. Any tips for me to get her to play hah?
you need to force her to play mega man 9. on superhero mode. and you need to video tape it.
I joined WOW because I wanted to play with my best friend and because I was Mac and she was PC that limited us to the type of games we could play together on a massive world-wide level. I of course wanted to play Horde when I saw how cool looking they were, but my friend who had already started the game was a Nightelf Druid, so that left out me playing any other race, unless I wanted to traverse the distance and dangers it would take to level with her... so my first long standing character was a druid. The process wasn't easy, learning out the spells and everything, I eventually got frustrated with it... Why? you might ask. It wasn't the class for me. I ended up playing every class under the moon... before finding my one true calling 'Rogue' and yes that was on the Horde side... I can't really explain the change from Alli to Horde since its too personal. But the reason why I am mentioning it, is because, it does help to test out to see which character is better suited to you and I hope that your girlfriend enjoys hers and the wonderful friendships she will eventually make in the process.
My word of wisdom is first to be very careful about introducing her to any of your fellow, female players. It could be a big downer, when she discovers that you were spending 2 hours in an instance playing with some other female. The green jealousy monster might show up. Second, make sure she understands the nature of the banter that goes on between players and don't get offended if she takes to it and has her own friendship circle. A guy in my guild has fits when his gf (priest) plays with other guys and gives them heals. Another guild member, has a female alt just so he can play with his female hunter friend and not get her in to trouble with her husband. Personal relationship are ever so tricky. Good Luck.