What's a Mother To Do?

Yesterday my son came into my office and asked if AC2 was really still offline. I responded with a laugh and asked why he wanted to know. He responded that he was sick of WOW. What could I say other than, "I was sick of it several months ago." I didnt have any advice for another game to try. We'd done a short stint on EQ2, GW and EVE, none of which captured his attention - nor mine for that matter. I told him that we were in a bit of a summer MMORPG drought and that some exciting games were coming in the next few months. I hope that wasn't a complete lie and that something will prove that WOW isn't the only choice for a highly populated game.

I'm sure there are other games that we could try. However, I don't really want to spend the time or the money on games that might not last for long or get enough players to populate their realms convincingly enough. He's not a solo player and part of the excitement of MMOs is massive amounts of players. We need something other than WOW to be able to command that type of audience. We surfed the net for a while and I showed him Lineage 2 and RF Online. I've heard good things about them except for the grinding, which he's not a big fan of doing. And he's decidedly against anything that isn't fantasy now. How strange - when I first pried his tight fists off the x-box controller and loosed his grip on Halo/Halo 2, he laughed heartily at the idea of playing a fantasy game. Now holding a gun in a game is taboo to him.

So what's a mother to do, when she and son have grown apathetic on WOW but still want that exciting MMO experience? Dunno. Perhaps we will never have that magic of the first MMO together. Those few and precious times when we bonded over something that was just between us. When his inclination to play side-by-side with me in a game was mightier than his friends, sports, the streets and even pretty little teenage girls. *smile*

He's invested a lot more time in WOW than I have. I was shocked at how long he was able to sustain his excitement. But 5 level 60s later, and only 40-man raids that he can't do during the school year and insane amounts of PVP grinding for honor, he's finally throwing in the towel. His level 60s are Hunter, Pally, Warrior and Rogue. The only thing he seemed interested in was playing my warlock for a bit. So I availed myself of the new transfer service and moved my Warlock to a spare account on Illidan.  I'll keep my priest and hunter together for their professions, but will only continue to level the priest. Other than that I told him, "Ah well, it's summer. Go outside and get some sun."

Comments

[Kinless]

Five level 60's? Wow. I thought I played a lot. It turned out raiding took a large portion of my (character's) time. When you have more times played at 60 than it took getting to 60 you'll know you've been raiding some.

I know some guildies are looking foward to Warhammer Online. Graphically similar to WoW, that cartoon look, as opposed to the "realism" of EQII say. It sounds like a nice touch where the characters will "age/mature" as they level up. The more experience your Dwarf has the longer his beard will be. Stuff like that. And more PvP based given it's more of an ongoing war between the two factions rather than there (also) being a force that both sides can fight against to divert some of the attention from faction warfare. (Alliance and Horde vs. the Scourge.)

It sounds that this is a ways out yet though. And that's like the closest coming to fruition if you don't count Vanguard. A new character of a new class in a new faction has a way of spicing things up.

And he's also got the Outlands to look forward to this Fall. 10 more levels in an entirely new land. That might take some time. And then two new races with two new starting lands.

And I'm hoping to see a World of Starcraft someday.

And I thought a historical based World of Warcraft could be interesting. West vs. East vs. Orient, historical divisions. The quest to recover the True Piece of the Cross from infidal held Jerusalem would be quite a long quest chain. And the Search for the Holy Grail, the end-all-be-all of world quests. And how cool to play a Saracen and a Norman on a PvE server. Battlegrounds will be the battles in the Anatolian hinterlands, in the Carpathians, etc. Woops! I've digressed.

[Saylah]

I think what he misses is leveling - that's clearly his thing. Besides the 60s, he has several repeat classes in the low 30s and 40s. I told him jokingly, that he needs to start a toon leveling service to pay for his WOW accounts and expensive sneakers!! I'd forgot that he'll be able to level all his 60s again when the expansion comes out. That should keep him busy for a while. He wasn't able to raid all this time because of time zone and school. Our guild doesn't even start the weeday raids until 8:30 PM CST - that's too late for a student. And the Sunday raids were out because of Sunday School and church. So without the ability to raid when a toon hit 60, the only alternative he really had was to - start again. :-( I think he got his Pally and Hunter to rank mid levels in PVP but then that became a bore.

Last nite he downloaded the free trail for DDO and his trying out the new solo content options.