Project Lore

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?