Archived from groups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg (
More info?)
"Marshall" <marshall@idea.lvcoxmail.com> once tried to test me with:
> Just wondering if WOW can be played by just a few players - say, your
> family, in a private game. Or does the game lose its appeal or
> purpose when there aren't a ton of players in the game? Can it be
> played in more of a Co-op mode?
No, you can not play the game on your own LAN in a private game like you
could with Diablo 2 or other games like it. World of Warcraft requires a
monthly fee to play for every player, so if you want to play it with your
family you would have to buy a copy of the game for EACH player and pay for
an account for each player, at $15 per month. I don't think the game would
lose appeal to be played in this way, in fact, I'd love it if my wife would
play WoW with me and we could "duo" through most of the quests.
But you WILL encounter other players, and some of them will be asshats.
Fortunately some of them will also be cool people, who genuinely want to
help you and enjoy the game with you. And the vast majority of them will
happily ignore you if you ignore them.
For a large family, WoW could probably be prohibitively expensive. I have a
friend who's got a 9 year old boy and he paid for two copies of the game
and two monthly accounts so he could play with his son sometimes. And he
also convinced his wife to play sometimes also (but he only has the two
accounts, so he and his wife AND his son couldn't all play at once).
IMHO, it would be really cool if WoW could do some kind of "Family"
account, where you can have multiple people logged into the same account to
play on, but pay more per month for that privilege. And this way you could
play with your family. None of the MMORPGs have done this so far, though.
Which is strange because you'd think it'd be a big market segment to go
for, it's not like a bunch of people are going to be willing to shell out
$15 x 3 or however many people are in the family every month just for one
game. But a lot might pay $25 per month for that ability.
If WoW sounds too expensive, I recommend giving Neverwinter Nights a try,
it's a really good LAN game for a family. Unfortunately you do legally need
multiple copies of the game for each player, but there are technical ways
around that that aren't legal. But there is no monthly fee at least, so
it's just a one time investment that can last for months and months. There
are oodles of fan-made adventures for it, too, so you'd never run out of
new things to explore.
Diablo II is also great but not really IMHO great for kids under 11 due to
the "adult" content (lots of gore, demons, stuff like that). Diablo 2 is
more hack-n-slash action than Neverwinter Nights but they both have quite a
bit of combat. But NWN also has quite a bit more story and quests,
depending on which module you're playing through.
--
Knight37 -
http://knightgames.blogspot.com
Once a Gamer, Always a Gamer.
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