I don’t have children and don’t ever plan on it but if I did and my child wanted to get into WoW I’d probably start by turning off trade chat and I’d also try and help them out on my own toon when possible
Just leave all the general channels. you can still communicate in /party and /say.
Remove trade chat
Play with him, show him the ropes.
Sounds like fun.
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I let them play games like Overwatch with no chat, but I’m not letting them play WoW. It’s purposefully addictive, and I’m not doing that to my soon-to-be teenage boys.
If they want to do that when they are an adult, I will give them the best info I can on game/life balance. But until then, I’m gonna be a parent and keep them away from addictive substances of any kind. I like WoW, but I think we should be honest with ourselves that it’s not the greatest thing to be inside all the time playing it.
Lol good idea
And for the people saying the addictive part that’s a good point. He hasn’t brought it up again since I made this post and unless he really pushes I’m just gonna leave it alone. He plays NBA2k1 online and he’s not the best and I’ve heard some people on that platform be pretty open about their thoughts on his skills and he seems to just let it roll off so im not too worried anymore but yea my boss/good friend warned me not to play this game when I was like 22 when I started. He’s like dude don’t do it, that sh#t is super addicting, he had watched a couple documentaries of people losing jobs/spouses/etc bc of it and I swore I’d never let it get that bad. Fast foward 13 years and I’m 35 still playing. Lost jobs/girlfriends not 100% due to wow there were also other addictions lol but it surely didn’t help. I think I’ll just try my best to keep him away or let him mess around with my alts if he wants to try it he will probably get bored quickly like with everything else at his age.
Thanks for all the advice
My youngest started WoW earlier this year. I was ok with it since her older sister started when she was 11 and had very few issues but from her experiences I was definitely better equipped to preempt what could happen.
I done the following:
- all chat channels were off.
- guild invites turned off.
- Because she’s 8, I banned her from doing looking for group (way too many knobheads in there)
- made sure she only played when either I or my partner were on at the same time, playing grouped with her, computers next to eachother. No exceptions.
She made it to around level 35 and then decided she wanted to play the other mmo my eldest daughter plays. While we didn’t have an entirely wholesome experience thanks to a couple random idiots, it was a lot smoother than what my eldest experienced with WoW and it’s community.
If you let your kids play, you have to be there every second they are, have rules and stick to them.
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When my little sister wanted to try a long while back I helped her make a character on my brothers account so I could run around with her on my own. Turned off the chat (Remember the chat bubbles too) and just let her explore and she was fine, was just the Tauren starting area so not like it was full of people.
She ended up getting bored and going back to her dinosaur games (Too bad Ztroll druids didn’t exist then) but I think she had a fun time. I think most players these days are too busy playing to even socialize like before too so I doubt your kid would even get into a convo with a stranger in the first place but better safe than sorry.
I wouldn’t let him get into group content or anything just out of consideration for other folks but I’m sure he’d be just fine running about solo.
… this should apply to the internet as a whole.
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Personally I would say that it really depends on how prohibitive you have been with other online games.
The OP mentioned that the kid played fortnite and there is plenty of toxic behaviors there and if you failed to censor already you may have already failed in advance shrug
Really, use the same rules for WoW you would any online game that has means of communication built in. As an aside the worse commentary tends to come from trade but that is more of a ‘because there’s a large amount of people there’ thing than anything else.
Yeah aside from YouTube and Netflix she doesn’t do much online.
Sucks so many parents treat the internet as a babysitter.
As others said, I used to disable all chat.
My twins grew up playing WoW, and still play.
Because I allowed them to Game they learnt to regulate it, so now they will play in moderation, which is nice!
(But my youngest thinks WoW is so boring. He plays LoL, Geometry Dash and OG games like Pharaoh, and Diablo 1 & 2, but never MMOs.)
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I think that’s fine! no chat but plenty of fun to be had with all the content available in the game
pretty lucky kid if u ask me I would have treasured the chance as a child to play wow
(With Hadvar’s voice): You picked a bad time to visit Azeroth, orc. 
My daughter started playing when she was 9 or so. She didn’t interact with anyone and I taught her how to respond if anyone ever asked her if she was a girl IRL. Heck, unless you SEEK interaction with other players, it isn’t going to happen. In my 10 years of play, I can count on one hand people trying to strike up any kind of conversation not directly related to the game.
I honestly don’t understand the mentality from parents that disabling chat is going to somehow save their child from being exposed to toxic language. This isn’t a WoW problem, it’s a today problem. Sure some communities are a lot less toxic because they ban for toxic language. Seeing that big lawsuit I would expect changes are coming, not just at Blizzard but in game as well. I remember a time that spamming emotes for the sake of disruption could get you a mute or even break and now it’s the common thing for people to PvP with unsportsmanlike emotes macroed to every ability and movement. How can I pay attention to anything else when my opponent is laughing/spitting/pooping at me at an inhuman pace? I would find it very refreshing if they took the same tack they take with tournaments and take punitive measures on all the disruptive players (anything that detracts from other players experience outside of intentional combat mechanics is disruptive)
Personally, I wouldnt let my young kids play this game. 10 might be old enough. maybe. lots of female body objectification in the game in some areas. Id definitely make him keep the chat tab unselected while he’s playing.
You’re concerned about your kid and toxicity and you let him play fortnite? …
In my opinion I wouldn’t allow my 10 year old to play the game nowadays, to much of a in game toxicity/unfriendly vibe, along with the fake political pandering that is promoted by the current decision makers, back in the day when it was just a video game would have been awesome. But now nope I wouldn’t do it. (imho)
I’d say let him play the game. Don’t try to boggle it down to crap like that. Think of it, he wants to play a video game, regardless of any political/social upheaval.
I always allowed my kids to play like farm/race/ sims/dungeon crawlers, and such until they were old enough to understand the content and such. Kept them away the FPS and toxic games until they were around 14 or so.