Kindercraft: Warcraft Adventures with Toddlers
Posted by 
Tyranis on Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - 52 Comments Tags: children, comedy, funny, kids, kindercraft, toddlers
Tyranis on Wednesday, June 3, 2009 - 52 Comments Tags: children, comedy, funny, kids, kindercraft, toddlers 
Like many others, I've been playing WoW since the original beta. My first son, Richie, was barely six months old at the time. A year and some change later, I joined my first, and only, raiding guild. When my second son, Logan, was born, I was slaying Ragnaros. When my kids got older, WoW became a spectator sport for them. Much of my time in the Outlands was spent with one or more children on my lap. I had been promoted to GM of the guild and became their main raid leader. In fact, I fondly recall setting up the assignments for Void Reaver with my son beside me. I keyed into vent to say something to the raid and at that exact moment my son blurted out, "When are you going to fight the wobot?" Hilarity ensued and to this day some guild members still refer to that boss as "The Wobot."So now we're in Northrend and my children are ages 5 and 3. They are no longer content to merely sit on my lap and watch me play. I used to be able to pad my coffers with gold by doing dailies while also entertaining my children. Those days are over. Now they want to participate. They want to click stuff. They want to loot, click on herbs and mines and even fight the bad guys.
Both kids are surprisingly effective at playing my toons. Logan can manipulate the interface, find my pets and mounts and click on his favorites. Richie is so advanced that if he could read quests, he could pretty much play solo. After seeing what my eldest could do, the light bulb went off. At least it seemed like a light bulb, but in retrospect it was just the Bad Idea Bears doing what they do best. So I can't farm and do dailies with my kids watching anymore, but my kids are decent at the game by themselves.
It started off innocently enough: "Hey Richie, you need to knock down 30 ogres to beat this quest." I would run and make lunch for the kids and come back and the quest was complete! Brilliant! What I forgot to factor in is how quickly small children can grow bored and how creative they are at finding ways to entertain themselves. The end result was the birth of...The Tales of Kindercraft.
All-You-Can-Eat Seafood Buffet
I was leveling up my fishing in Azshara. I was gathering darkclaw lobster so I could improve my cooking skills at the same time. I had over five stacks of the crustaceans in my backpack when Richie bounded over and asked if he could help. I took the bait. (/pun) I was all pleased with myself. I was doing chores around the house while my son leveled my fishing and cooking for me. I felt like the modern age Tom Sawyer getting others to whitewash my fence. I came back fifteen minutes later to see how he was progressing. My fishing skill had only been leveled a point or two so I asked my son what he was doing. His reply was, "Eating yummy lobster." Over one hundred lobster vanished in fifteen minutes. Did I learn my lesson? Nope.
The Fruit, the Milk And the Pachyderm
Got Milk? Yes plenty.There have been three occasions where my son has stumbled upon a vacant desk chair with one of my characters already logged into WoW. The first time this happened, I returned to see my son sitting there with an impish grin on his face. I immediately opened my bags and discovered every single bag slot was filled with various fruits from Applebough, the Dalaran fruit vendor. I actually laughed at that one as the damage added up to a few gold pieces, but in retrospect, that only made him think that buying stuff on my toons would illicit a positive reaction.
I was playing an alt one Saturday morning when I got up to use the bathroom. I returned to find my son in my seat and I knew there was trouble when he said, "Look in your bags." This time it was milk, ice-cold milk. However, it was a bit more severe as he had deleted all the items in all of my bags in order to cram as much milk as he could on the toon. I didn't even have my hearthstone. I was just so glad that I was playing a low-level alt that I didn't really care about it.
The final incident unfortunately concerned my death knight. My son was helping me with my Sons of Hodir dailies and I got up to take a phone call. Upon my return, I was 800g poorer but I had a nice new ice mammoth mount to match the one that I already had. So I sold it back and recouped what little I could. That one stung a bit.
Keep in mind that in between these events comes weeks of playing without incident. He learns and in general it is a very positive experience for us both. I just have come to accept that every once in a while my toons will be plummeted from the top of Dalaran to their death or have all their gear unequipped in exchange for trash grays. What I'm really worried about is when they are able to actually spell and type the word Delete.
Stay tuned for more Tales of Kindercraft! In the meantime, do any of you have any misadventures to share about things that happened to your character when you weren't in control? How about any other stories about playing WoW with children?
Reader Comments (52)
Your addunits are taking a crap on the page, I can't even read it.
hrmm, Conqueror's Darkruned Faceguard 'Do you wish to delete this item?' That would be a sad day..
as long as DSS doesn't get involved, rock on little richie and logan
Well I have no kids, but my cat sits right next to me as I play and it has ended badly more then a few times. He has a few moves that will end up killing me and wipe a raid.
1. The "Head butt mommy's mouse hand for a pet while shes healing a boss fight" is the most common. In fact I swear he waits until I am so engrossed in little green bars I don't see him coming in for the kill. I won't even admit to how many toons hes killed in his search for some pets and a ear rub.
2. The "Sit on mommy's hand so she can't play" Where does a 16lb cat sit? Where ever he wants! That includes on my hand this little move called "The plop" ends up pretty much the same as the first move with some poor toon dead because I lost the use of a hand.
3. My favorite move however is the "Sit on Mommy's key bored". The fastest raid wipe ever was when his bum meet my moon fire hot key while setting up for a High King attempt. My 24 guild mates were not buffed nor ready for my cat's bum's awesome pulling skills.
I have more kitty horror stories and he tries to make new ones every day by finding just the right(wrong) time to be cute and lovable. I guess I should just be happy he notices I live here even when there is food in his dish.
LMFAO! At the ice cold milk incident. And when they do learn the word delete, then..erm GL LOL. Or just lock your keyboard LOL. Must be fun times in your house. I really like this post, made me laugh so much.
I have a nephew of 5 who does this all the time, the worst thing he ever did, was i was in SW looking at AH. Anyway i was looking at some epic items in there, trinkets etc. And the phone rang, 2 minutes later i come back to the PC to find, i have just bid 1111g on a 2000g item. LOL.
a little tip. log out when leaving the computer. even if its just for a minute.
i would rather make the kids a char they can play when they want, or when you wanna allow them.
or just continue the "game" :P:P
how far can you go :P:P
Don't have any kids of my own, but my 8-year-old nephew has learned to play Wizard 101 quite well. Sure, it's like WoW lite (extremely lite!), but a lot of the basic concepts are the same.
He even watched me playing WoW once when I was visiting (before I shooed him off for asking a billion and one questions about every little thing I did -- he likes to give a running commentary, too), but it was clear that he remembered the game when he showed me Wizard 101, referencing Warcraft directly.
I don't think any of the computers he has right now can handle WoW, at least not at anything but the lowest settings, but I'm sure it won't be long before he starts playing. He's a bright kid and I know he'd be able to pick up on all the different mechanics right away.
that was a funny post. as a parent myself, i created an alt toon for him to play on with my help (hes six).
I am guilty myself of letting my younger sister fish for me while i head out to work ... which is probably more work then its worth ... turning on chat filter ... turning off the bag bar etc.
My guild leader is a jewelcrafter and his children would create lower powered gems while he would get up from the computer. When he would get back you would here him exclaim quite loudly about what had happened in his absence. quite amusing... except when you were in line for a gem that could have been made from the gems used... i can't wait to have kids of my own....
So, my 8 year-old son loves to watch me and play and would gladly take the reins if I let him. My issue: trade chat. Man, oh, man - is that not good news. Daddy, what does [anal XXXX] mean?
Good article!
The closest I can actually relate to this was playing LOTRO with my [then] 5-year-old nephew, but I rarely let him play my character(s) for more than a few moments unsupervised. My Hobbit walked off a few cliffs, but beyond that, no real harm done.
lol “The Wobot.”
I don't have any kids (Im 15 years old) but i do have a cat and those experiences can be just as funny. I was Main tanking the opera event in Kara (9 manning it thus it was even harder) when my cat decided to jump on my keyboard and settle down on it. That incident did not end well in game but i couldn't help myself from laughing. Another time I was off tanking the last boss of Arachnid Quarter 25 man and my cat ran over the on-off switch on my surge protector (thus turning off my computer) lol. but the best one was when she bit through the mouse wire on my computer right as I was starting a timed run for CoS. For five minutes i was try to find out why my mouse wasn't moving. To make a long story short, I had to get a new mouse and a new group.
I was showing my game to my niece, she was 4 at the time.
She loved flying around on the mounts, and spiraling around and giggle. We were outside Shattrath and landed to look at the spiders. She commanded me to "beat it up"
so I attacked...
After a hit or two she then commanded me to "make friends with him now"
Every battle went on like that every time she came over for a month 8-)
Ever since my 5 year old cousin pulled emalon(im a mage) and got demoted in my guild...i have never left my computer unattended while they are over.
My son used to watch all the time. On one of my alts, a hunter he used to pretend that he was my Gorillidan.
Eventually he started asking to play. He's 5 and only understands the basics. So one day I leave him flying around Azeroth on my Prot Warr main. 30 minutes later I come back and he's smiling at me. Daddy, I've been jumping off the Tauren City! Well yes he was. And every piece of gear was broken.
After that I showed him how to make his own characters and that's what he plays on.
My soon-to-be 5 year old son's current favourite thing to watch isn't Spongebob, or Dora, its watching Mommy play WoW. He even helped me "design" my now newest 80, a gnome warlock...but picking out what race and hair and eye colour (face). He's picked up on a lot without really having to have it explained to him, too. Red means bad monsters, yellow means "nice" monsters (non- aggressive is nice to him), which colours are which classes (though he has his own names for the classes sometimes), and even can recognize the characters of people we (my husband and I) play with regularly.
I got sabotaged by passing dorm residents once, their limited skills managed to get me run into a lava pit in Shadowmoon. *shake fist*
I do miss the Wobot though. : )
Are you retarded or what?
Kids at this age should not stay near a PC or even a TV.
Are you so low at parenting that you belive now that you are doing this stuffs because is ok?!? Or are you "slow" (I would understand that.)???
I would delete this post man, this is ridiculous.
I wouldnt allow my kids to play this game due to the mature content that is frequently encountered in a lot of the chat channels, and sometimes it just cant be helped.
@ Alex
Are you the retarded one to not actually find it funny?
I have kids myself and often have my children on my lap whilst playing and they also have the tv on all day. Trust me Alex when and if you have children one day youll realise how hard it is to look after children.
anyway I found this post amazingly funny as most of the anecdotes have happened to me keep the posts coming :D
Yes I have kids. Yes I play WOW. My young don't need a parent on there back every second of the day. They need time to play on there own. They also need time to play with family.
In our house we have a limit to how much T.V. and Computer time is aloud. Mostly because of behavior, they seem to act better when they have less tube time. I have also shown them the game. The love instances. We have hooked up the game to the living room T.V. yes we turn off chat window just incase. My kids learned early how to read.
As for them playing they really don't. Most of the time it is just making new toons and running around in circles. They really like watching Mommy and Daddy play. Every once in a while they will play. Mostly it is buying armor from any vendor because it looks cool or Battlegrounds.
The other thing is we have a lot of family that plays. Grandma to Cousins to Brother-in-laws to family friends play this game with us. This is a great way for us to keep in touch and have fun together. I don't see a problem with the young playing just the amount of time. Kids are always interested in what the adult is doing. As long as you are setting a good example then it doesn't matter :)
P.S. I like the post :) Send more kid stories lol.
Luckily I have no horror stories (short of those I caused to myself) as I have no children or furry companions of my own (some day though to both :D).
But my brothers played a mean trick on our younger sister.
She was 8 at the time and they shared an account (til I paid for them to separate it after one of them won a laptop). Anyway my sister got quite intrested in what they were doing and after having watched them for awhile asked them to make her a character which they did. She loved running around with her mage and was (to all accounts) actually quite good at it, to the extent of my brothers could no longer get on the computer and couldn't force her to get off the computer (Mum FTW). Anyway they told her she was under-age and that the gamer police would come and arrest her if she continued to play. She believed this up until a few weeks ago when I was playing at home during a visit and told me all about it.
I have now given her both my brothers user names and passwords and told her to go make some characters, but not to play on any of their characters as she knows how to type and spell DELETE. I don't think she's ever played a character long enough to ever make it to capital city though, so she hasn't had to face trade chat. Think I'll get one of my brothers to leave the chat channels for her.
@Clark
The game is ESRB rated for teens.
So why would you let kids under this age to play??