_Wyll_

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My niece has seen me play CoH, but no playing for her yet; her father tends to tightly regulate TV and games (before you criticize, he IS her father, so I'm not arguing that one).

I admit to some amusement, and a genuine warm-and-fuzzy at Hero 1's response. I was inwardly dreading some soulless redname response of 'You do know this game is rated T for teen' or something to that effect. My apologies to the devs for misjudging them.

Oh, and if Sister Flame swings by Virtue, drop me a global buzz; I'll be happy to team with someone competent.

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Oh, I am a big fan of ratings. I am very pleased by the rednames response and others so far. You always wait to hear "omg you let a kid watch pg movies or play T games!".

CoX is rated T for Teen, but I find it an good experience for Flame as long as I am with her . My daughters love movies like "Hellboy", "Indiana Jones" and the like, so I know what will and will not bother them.

I even have my own checklist before I let my daughters near things. Let's take CoX for example:

Blood and Gore? None. Just cartoon/superhero violence which I am good with.

Scary or Shocking? Not for my girls. Some little ones may be afraid by some of of the mobs, but Flame just groans at the "puking zombies" cause they dish out some nasty damage and she finds the Freaks funny.

Offensive Language? Well, she can't read yet so that's good, but CoX has a profanity filter and the ToS prohibits bad words. Still, Flame sounded out some phonetically nasty words at times (under her breath). She tells me immediately and I show her how to use /ignore. (Again, play together with your children).

Friendly Community? CoX is pretty friendly and very noob nice in my opinion. I doubt I'd let Flame near many other MMOPGs (I've betaed and played many of them) just because of their communities.

What's The Universe Like? CoX can be a little scary and dark at times, but its not like playing something EmoWorld or Blood Letting 5 million. Plus, there are lots of bright spots in CoX that I think have a positive influence on Flame.

Flame still can't see all this fuss is about. She feels she is just another kid playing a game much like we played hopscotch or kick the can in our youth. Plus, she love superheroes.

That reminds me. She wants to go Frostfire... again. She likes the slides. You think doing a 3+ hour taskforce is rough? Trying sliding on the ice slides for 1/2 hour to entertain a six year old.

Ciao!

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Extremely cute, and a good example of why parents should get involved with their kid's gaming. Or vice versa...

*takes a deep breath to start a rant about how the gaming industry should do things, but is tackled by his characters, and dragged away. Delilah stays to explain*
"We generally keep him from acting too stupid, but he snuck out this morning."

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Hey, I am a big fan of being involved with your kids in all that they do.

You don't blame the networks for what they air; you watch tv with your kids and ask them about what they saw.

You wouldn't let you children wander around a strange street by themselves, so stick with them when they are surfing the net and such. Same goes with the games they play.

Before Flame got involved with CoX, I soloed alot and I'll tell you... it was pretty boring. There is just something about having someone in the same room playing CoX with you.

One more Flame story for you: Inspirations.

I've been slowly teaching Flame the value of inspirations. She kind of understands the Red means more damage, Yellow makes you hit better and Green heals you. Most of the others go over her head, but there is one color she understands very well:

Light blue... Wakies.

I dunno if it all the early face plants she took or what, but she tends to hoard them. As we play, she'll tell me that she is using up some Greenies to make room for more Light Blues. I glance over and see she has 6 "wakies" in her 8 slots.

One time, we were in a large group of 8 and faced a total wipe. Before anyone could say anything, Flame starts handing out wakies. Everyoen says thanks and good planning. One female made this comment:

"Wow! Are you a mind reader or can you see the future?" she asks.

I type this reply from Flame: "No. I just know that teams I am on die a lot, so I keep lots of wakies."

You can imagine her excitement when I told her you could _buy_ wakies from contact. Guess where all her Influence goes? I think her battle cry should be "Omw. Stopping to buy wakies."

*** Story Off ***
I am enjoying this time now with Flame. Remember, once they hit the teenage years, they will want nothing to do with you. I can see it now...

Teeny Bopper Hero 1: Whose that?

Flame: Oh geez. It's my dad....

Wyll: Hey? Can I get an invite? We can farm in PI for phat loot! I'm down with it.

Flame: *contemplates /ignore*

Poor Sister Flame. She erally doesn't know what the fuss is about. All she wants to do is Go. Kill. Skulls.

I've been reading the patch notes and past flames a bit. It's all water off a duck's back to me, but I can see how it gets a lot of people worked up.

Then, I see why I am glad to play with Sister Flame.

She doesn't care about TFs. The inventions are cool and so is salavage, but Flame is ho-hum on the idea. Power levelling? Bridging? Right over Flame's head. The only Min Maxing she does is 3 damage or 3 endurance reducers. Plus, she picks powers that she likes the sounds off.

I guess what I am trying to say is that playing CoX with Flame (or any young child) really makes you see the best, core parts of the game:

I can make a hero or villain.

I can save people or blow stuff up.

I can laugh and have a little fun for a small monthly fee.

That's Flame's description of the game. I remember one time when I started Manticore's TF and she was about to go to bed. She asked me what I was doing.

"A task force." I explained.

"What's that?" she asked.

"A series of missions that are a bit hard at times you do with a group of people for nice rewards."

"Can I do one?"

"Sorry, honey. They take at least two hours to do."

"People play for that long doing the same thing?!" Flame remarked. "They must be bored."

I love her. I love her to pieces. She still thinks War Witch is the coolest toon in the game because she talks (or so Flame thinks). When I tried to explain about Statesmen and the others as well as the marriage, she was a bit confused.

"Two heroes got married?" she asked.

"Yeah." I said.

"Why?"

"Um... *explaination about events and real-life love*"

Sister Flame wrinkled up her eyebrows. "But, doesn't that mean Mannacore has to get a job and she has to have babies now? They can't be heroes if they got no money."

Words of wisdom, my friends. Words of wisdom.

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I wish my 5 year old would learn to play herself.. she just forces me to make tons of bizarre lookin characters with embarrassing names (skywalkr? puuke? meowgirl?) and then I have to run around and actually play them for her. *shiver*

8 foot tall neon green/red/purple/blue/yellow zombie catgirl archery blasters named rosabelle ftl. FTL!!

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Flame is kind of like that, but she lets me roll whatever I want to roll.

My eldest is another story. Being 10, she has a bit more creativity and being a tween, she's into pop culture. So I have had to make tribute toons based upon Kim Possible and Jem. Yes, playing Kid Stoppable and being my daughter's sidekick is just what I always wanted to do. I just hope she doesn't get the idea of roleplaying or I am in real trouble.

On a sidenote, I have been playing on Flame's account to get a level 50 heroside. She would like to play a PB, but I only have one 50 on my main account... and I would like to play on that more often because of all my rockin' vet rewards.

42 levels down. 8 to go.

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Wonderful story.

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I love stories like this. After all, this is indeed a game! Although, I never thought of it as an educational game.

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Thanks all for the kind replies. Flame is a little emarrassed, but happy.

On the note of educational, being a parent and a occasional teacher, I can find education in just about anything, but CoX has a lot of opprotunities for all ages if you just look for it.

Since Flame is only 6 (soon to be 7), I keep to small math problems. For instance, I ask how many bubbles she has to go until she levels. Say she replies "3", I ask her what 10-7 is and she says "3?". Now, I can say that "I am 10-4 bubbles from levelling" and after a quick finger check (which is rare), Flame says "You got 6 to go.". With older children, you could have them figure out Enhancement cost totals or XP to Level totals.

I even started my little one on "CoH education". I click on an enemy and Princess S (her handle-in-progress) will tell me what color the enemy's name is. Pretty clever for jsut 4.
too bad there isn't any metric of I could add that as well.

Reading, Writing And "Arresting" enemies. CoH has it all.

As I sit here to wait for the servers to come back up, it struck me that I could write a little post about Sister Flame.

Sister Flame is the online handle of my middle daughter, currently six years old. She's been playing City of Heroes since she was 4 and 1/2. It was only over the last year we began to team together with my two accounts and have a lot of fun. I thought I let you know what Sister Flame has learned from CoX.

(1) Flame Learned To Read

At the tender age of five, I let Flame play on my second account on my laptop beside me. For a while, I had to tell her what the train destiantions were, what the NPCs were saying and what the villains name were.

It was only mere months before Flame didn't need my help anymore. We were playing one summer evening and I noticed that she wasn't asking me to read things. I looked over at her screen and watched her for a bit. I was intrigued she knew where to go.

"Need any help reading, honey?" I asked.

"Nope. I can read nope. That says Atlas Park and that says Steel Canyon. Those are Clockworks, but I like calling them Clickey Clacks." she replied quite happilly.

Her teacher was quite surprised at the headstart she had on her reading skills. When I informed the teacher that Flame's headstart was the result of playing a superhero online game, I got the weirdest look. Oh well.

Now, at six, I can hear Flame reading slowly over the mission text and the NPC dialogue. She cannot type yet, but if we get on a team together, I usually do the talking for both of us.

(2) Attitude Matters; Not Age.

From time to time, I get a little impatient with my daughters. I do recall the one evening I was unwell, but Flame wanted to play CoH and wanted to get on a big team.

"I'm too sick to play, so you'll have to do it by yourself." I told her, thinking that she'd never figure it out or get booted quickly if she did get invited to a team.

I laid down on the bed and closed my eyes to rest. Twenty minutes later, I stretched and asked Flame how she was doing.

"Good. I am in a big team." she told me.

"Oh yeah?" I asked.

"Yep. People keep joinging, but I think they're playing soccer." she says.

"Why is that?"

"I keep seeing the word 'kick'."

I rolled off the bed and scrolled back through the chat. Apart from several comments about Flame's excellent control and attack with her Fire Blaster, I see several conversations/arguments with some idiots who joined the team and did something really stupid. Most of them wound up being kicked by the leader. I also notice that every so often, Flame has written 'ty'.

"What's the 'ty' for?" I asked.

"Thank you. You type it sometimes. Everytime I see 'Flame', I type it. They like it."

I watched Flame play for another twenty minutes. No one in the group had a clue to her age and she played her role as any good team member should: waiting for 'Go' or 'Ready' before attacking, saving her Rain of Fire for large groups and giving inspirations to thoes that needed it.

Finally, I had to type a message for Flame.

"Thank you all for the team. This is Flame's dad. She has to get up for Grade 1 tomorrow and needs to go to bed. She says you were all great."

I still love typing that message and watching the responses. Most are 'lol' or 'what?!'. One time, a player typed 'Wow. I wonder if my poodle could play.'. All in good fun.

(3) Playing Coh Is Just Like Playing House a.k.a Imagination Is Power.

Flame has always had a decent imagination, but it has improved a lot since she has been playing Coh. She likes to spin stories about her toons and give them a backstory. This has translated well to her schoolwork when she has been asked to do creative writing assignments. She has also developed a healthy curiousity into some of the groups in CoH. Some of the things she has asked me are:

"Why do Skulls hang out in Perez Park?"

"How come the Clockworks don't attack cars or make nasty cars to attack people?"

"Why are Trolls green?"

"Where do the Outcasts get their power?"

Now, she makes up toons with funny names (to us anyways), but good backgrounds. Among some of her mains are Takes Care Of Pets (A MM with two mercenaries: Cat, Dog), Takes Care Of Bats (A PB with Bat Wings) and of course, Sister Flame (a Fire Blaster with her partner, Brother Frost [me]).

So, if you ever run across a Fire Blaster named Sister Flame on Freedom, chances are its my daughter havign fun, but learning many things at the same time. Feel free to team with her, but don't be a "poopyhead" (her words, not mind).

Ciao!

P.S. She is working on her typing skills, so if you see her say "Go", "Go", "Go" about twenty times, don't worry. It's only 1 of about 100 words she can spell.

Keep doing that voodoo that you do is my advice. I think it is a winning formula.

A good example is the candy machine. I had a very similiar argument with Princess X (my 6 year old daughter). She was determined to find out who stocked the candy machine or why the deves would put them, but not let you use them. I spent ten minutes arguing about those blasted Candy Machines (Lady Rose joined in as well) before it was agreed that I would PM the devs on their behald to ask about the damn candy machines.

I nearly peed my tights over that S&L exchange. Deja vu... ohr yes, my arch enemy.

Top notch Hertz. I have my 9 year old listening to your works as well. I think you can safely say that Stan and Lou are now part of our househeld lexicon.

Mom: Lady Rose, did you find your hate?

Rose: No.

Mom: Did you look hard?

Rose: Yeah.

Daddy Wyll: Did the hat box go "woo woo woo"?

Rose: No and it wasn't woo woo wooing before I looked in it. Is anything here going woo woo woo?

Daddy Wyll: I think I heard the fridge humming earlier when I went to get my pumpkin flu vaccine out of it.

*** Mom mutters something under her breath about CoH and giggles are shared ***

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Heh, I'm just slightly disappointed I have to wait 24 hours to upgrade my second account.

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I hope you have a different card because it would not let me use my card twice for different accounts.

I got on a different system, went through the whole process and got "You Have Exceed The Maximum Number of Codes Allowable For This Card".

Arg...