Little Corner of Ania

So, after being exposed for Everquest and Warcraft ever since he was a toodler, our now four year old son is quite an experienced gamer. Since he was two and a half, he's been insisting on playing these games himself, and loves to run around in Plane of Knowledge and taking the lift inside the library, and loves to play Warcraft 3, especially the custom made stuff on battle.net.

Right now he's quite into World of Warcraft, playing a various number of noobs leveling them up to four or five before getting bored & playing new chars. His highest char is currently level ten (he had a level thirteen in beta though), whom he's been playing up on his own & all. He loves to stalk people he meets, duelling them or inviting them to groups & playing along before getting bored & just leaves the pc or walks away on his own and stuff.... (so yeah, if you meet a very silent but somehow rude stalker, it might be my kid you're playing with :p).

As a mom I gotta admit that I'm quite amused and sure, a tad proud of his skills and ability to "get" the game.... when we were starting all over in retail (after the beta), he was quite eager to give us advices on where to go and how to solve the quests even before we actually ran our chars to the questgivers. And yeah, it was all correct :p He loves to point out to me what to do - "hit the seven button now", "heal daddy", "hide" (which means to hit the fade spell, I'm playing a priest), and so on.... and he loves to play "me" when I need to cook dinner or take a break, playing "me" with daddy is one of his favourite things - at least for another ten minutes or so :p. I guess people would think we're a tad funny in a weird way, but I think it's kinda nice that we actually spend some time doing stuff together even though it's sorta through a computer screen.

It's also cute when he walks up to me and then falls down on the ground with a groan, telling me "mommy I need a res" or "I need a heal!" (whereas I gotta make sounds & moves & pretend I'm doing whatever he needs to get up :p). I guess you gotta be a gamer yourself to think it's cute hm... our newphew was around visiting us today too, he's eight and he plays WoW aswell... so they were playing around, and our kid suddenly yelled "You gotta run! I'm red to you!" (in WoW, if you meet a monster that cons red to you it's most likely a mob that you cannot handle on your own, so your best bet might be to just leg it...at least if you're a kid playing :p).