There’s also the sexual predators… that’s not a huge issue in the games he’s interested in playing, but it’s there.

Then there’s the fact that unlike single player games, that have a purpose, MMOs are specifically designed to make you play more and more. You can beat Starcraft. You can’t beat WoW. This encourages addictive behavior, which is a bigger deal (in my opinion) for a teenager than an adult.

Couple with that, in WoW/Runescape, you are competing directly with other players. Once you get into that competition, all of your availble gaming time gets poured into ‘keeping up with the joneses’. If you need to play to level, gear up, whatever, to keep up with your peers, it means you’re focusing too much on one thing.

Right now, it’s pretty much a toss up if my son is going to play Dungeon Siege, Starcraft, Zoo Tycoon, Civ III, Zork, Pokemon, Smash Brothers, Zelda, or some random action game on the Wii or GC or DS. If we allowed him to play WoW, it’s my opinion that within a week, it would be the only game he ever played. And we’d be getting pressure to let him play more, as WoW is specifically designed to make you want to play more, and let me tell you… marketing works AMAZINGLY WELL on 13 year olds.

But seriously, it must be so difficult to be a parent – letting them do what they want destroys them, but ruling them too much makes them resent you and in turn makes them do whatever they want out of spite.

I’m in no place to give advice on parenting, but I would hope you at least explain WHY he can’t play those games – I can’t imagine hearing someone tell me I can’t do something and then watch them go do whatever they said I can’t do. That would drive me insane.

We don’t let him play Runescape or WoW at all. Which annoys him to no end, but since we limit him to a max of one hour a night for video games, it works out well. Runescape and WoW aren’t well suited to one-hour blocks of time.

That said, he’s got such a desperate desire to play WoW that I can say ‘hey, fish for me for 30 minutes’ and he’ll do it, since it doesn’t count against his video game time. I know this makes me a bad person, but he loves it.

“Dad throw me a rez!”

“Sorry son, you should have learned to manage your hit points better. You had all day to farm whipper-root tubers and potions. I also warned you that arms/fury wasn’t the best spec to tank in, but you wouldn’t listen to me.”

“Oh, come on!”

“Now you have something to think about on that long corpse run through Un’Goro.”

*kid finally gets back and goes to loot the corpse but Dad beats him to it*

“DAD DON’T NINJA LOOT!”

“Just trying to teach you some reflexes son, snatch the pebble from my hand, you know that sort of thing.”

“GIVE ME THAT SWORD IT’S A HUGE UPGRADE!”

“Remember when we did Maraudon and that hammer dropped that you just HAD to have? Well the druid in our party could have used it too you know, and it was a much bigger upgrade for him.”

“I DON’T CARE, AND NEITHER DOES HE! THIS IS A GAME!”

“If you want it so bad, sport, maybe you’ll get it for your birthday. But you’d better show me some improved judgment.”

“I HATE YOU!”

“Now, that is no way to talk to your father, young man! You hearth to your inn and think about what you’ve done. And don’t even think of tradeskilling while you wait – if I come in there and see you looking at recipes you’re grounded.”

I consider playing MMOs the modern-day equivalent of watching TV. If someone plays an MMO four hours a night, in my mind, I am thinking, “they watch TV four hours a night”. Same thing. I play EQ2 about three hours a night — I could be watching TV with friends to the same end. Some kids play WoW five or six hours a day, and their parents do nothing — I have an article about that today over on Massively — and then blame WoW when their kid turns weird. Would those same parents have let their child watch TV for five or six hours a day? No? Then why is WoW not held to the same limits?

MMOs can seriously disturb a kid. Parents need to take control. Probably best would be if a parent played WITH their child — and if the kid can’t take it, well, they can go outside.

I was a dumb little pumpkin when I was but a lad because I played a lot of senseless video games. Today I have weird bouts of emptiness and depression that I wholeheartedly blame on all my video game playing in the past. I am in decent shape now, but it took a long time to get that way thanks to my sedentary lifestyle video games gave me growing up (and through most of high school). I also feel I have insufficient confidence and “life-experience” because I was never paying attention and always looking down at a Gameboy.

I still enjoy my video games today, but I make it a point to take time off for books, friends, hobbies, outdoor activities (heh, sometimes), and even television. I feel better, but like just about everyone I wish I had listened to my parents sooner.

I can remember some of my first teachers suggesting I might be “gifted with exceptional intelligence”. And for a while it was true. But at some point I stopped growing. While the brackets for each grade level got larger, I stayed where I was mentally. I believe the mental growth hit the doldrums around the time I discovered Nintendo, come to think of it. From there, perhaps my own free will betrayed me as I opted to play video games instead of read, play outside, or complete my homework. It made life very hard and confusing for me – but I lucked out on numerous occasions.

My brother seems to be doing alright with his daughter. She’s about 3, and is honestly one of the brightest little people I have ever met. She was brought up watching those “Little Einstein” videos, and I feel pretty confident stating that those were a huge influence. Now I look back at myself and wonder, will she also hit a plateau in learning? Will her free will betray her too?

They have developed better television for children which has been proven to take them to newer levels of intelligence over previous generations. I would love to see something similar for the bracket of preteens and beyond that would keep that learning going so that it doesn’t just drop off like I allowed mine to. School is not enough – there needs to be something to do in the off-time that will not only reinforce what they’ve learned, but also be entertaining. Homework is not fun, not at all.