Guild Wars 2

I’m in the process of downloading the game right now and I told my 7 and 10 year old kids they could create a character to play with. I would appreciate if you guys would share your thought on the simplest class in the game. If there is a class out there that they can mash the same 2 buttons over and over again it would probably be perfect for them. Thanks for the input.

warrior. my advice is that you join the game and take a look at the map and area chat in some zones before you have your young children join the game.

Dumb question is it possible to turn chat off or is it always there floating across the screen? I hate global chat in games. Either way they won’t be playing unless I’m with them. It would stink if I have to not let them play because of chat issues. Thanks for the heads up either way

Yeah not really a great game for 7 and 10 year olds. Doesn’t anyone know why kids are so screwed up these days?

Disclaimer: I have a 3 and 6 year old.

Oh well. I should have thought of the chat myself but I have not played an mmo in 4 or 5 years. I use to let my oldest play my hunter in wow and he loved it because it was easy and the tiger was cool. That was before he could read worth a flip so chat wasn’t an issue. Oh well more play time for me

Here, I’ve whipped up a guide to the various chat settings that might come in handy for you. There’s no way to lock chat, but if you use these settings, you can keep it more or less turned off and out of the way.

Tweak the settings, then test drive it a bit in the starting areas to see what kind of experience your kids might be in for. As long as they’re not actively searching for the chat box and settings, I think it might be all right. (And why would that? There are monsters to fight!)

Well, you can toggle off map, say, and emote chat in the chat box so unless the kids know how to check the boxes back on, they won’t see chat. Also you could make it a condition of play that they not check the boxes (and so long as you can see the monitor, you can easily see if chat is scrolling in the lower left chat box and if any chat tabs have been added).

I haven’t found chat all that onerous, though I’m hardly a kid any more. Then again I am on an RP server and only look at Map to find out where large things are happening, otherwise I’m just in guild, and I avoid the DR bank area if I have any interest in watching chat go by.

I think the ten year old can likely handle warrior, guardian, and ranger, with warrior the simplest. I don’t think you’ll find anything that works with only two buttons, there just aren’t fights where one can stand still and fire off spells.

Probably you should play a while, get a feel for the game, and decide if it’s in the boys’ skill range both physically and mentally. I’m trying to remember what I was playing with when I was ten … Pong hadn’t come out yet, so I believe it was board games, dolls, and let’s pretend. Along with tree climbing, roller skating (not in-line skates) … mostly I just read a ton of fantasy and science fiction. Book reading is a great way to pass time entertainingly!

Any online game is no place for a child, because there are a lot of children in online games.

First off all, be aware that your technically breaking the user agreement. Account sharing is not allowed. Children are not an exception for this. However if it is not done structurally, I dont think Anet minds too much.

Also consider that the game is rated 12 years and older. These ratings are there for a reason. Even a mechanic like death can be overwhelming for kids. Often I heard lines like ‘my kid can handle it, he/she is so though’, but you never know what triggers a fear in a childs head and a kids sense of reality when experiencing fantasy is a lot less (so it’s much more real to them).

These two things combined I think specially for your oldest its ok to let him/her play when supervised by you, and only short periods. If he/she likes it you can get an account for him/her in lets say a year.

mercury ranique.2170:

First off all, be aware that your technically breaking the user agreement. Account sharing is not allowed. Children are not an exception for this. However if it is not done structurally, I dont think Anet minds too much.

Also consider that the game is rated 12 years and older. These ratings are there for a reason. Even a mechanic like death can be overwhelming for kids. Often I heard lines like ‘my kid can handle it, he/she is so though’, but you never know what triggers a fear in a childs head and a kids sense of reality when experiencing fantasy is a lot less (so it’s much more real to them).

These two things combined I think specially for your oldest its ok to let him/her play when supervised by you, and only short periods. If he/she likes it you can get an account for him/her in lets say a year.

I think the only thing in this game that could be scary for young children are the risen which are essentially walking half decaying corpses I feel most of the rest of the game is pretty child friendly in the shock department. Sure people are dying but my little mario guy/lara croft died plenty when I was younger and I never thought it was overwhelming.

I think the important thing is to make sure to supervise them playing it and steer them away from areas with risen it would probably be okay (In my opinion).

As for easy professions I would go for either ranger, guardian or warrior.

And if you rather have your child play something that has no violence and is more educational just play the Myst series of games with them.

This kind of stuff always reminds me about this:

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/boy-8-shoots-grandmother-dead-2223955

I’m not going to say he’s gonna stab you after playing a warrior, but even this kind of games can make a child addicitve or even “violent” (With violent I mean that he couldn’t take the difference between killing/hurting somebody in the game and in RL, taking it as normal.) I guess your older kid would get it, playing a hour or something per day, but believe me, it won’t stay at one hour.

But I’m not here to educate your children about games or you about parenting xD

Fay.2735:

I think the only thing in this game that could be scary for young children are the risen which are essentially walking half decaying corpses I feel most of the rest of the game is pretty child friendly in the shock department. Sure people are dying but my little mario guy/lara croft died plenty when I was younger and I never thought it was overwhelming.

I think you are mistaken here. I have worked a lot with young kids and each and everyone is different. Kids dont have our perspective on the world yet.
Jostein Gaarder made an excellent way of explaining. Imagine, a familly with a young kid and dad in the kitchen sitting at the table and mum baking eggs (with her back too the table. Suddenly dad starts hoovering in the air and does a flip flop in the air. The kids reaction is that he starts clapping his hands and laughing bout it. It’s dad, so it must be safe and dad always does funny things. But when mum turns around she is terrified and drops everything. The reason is that mum learnt that people don’t flow in mid air. Kids are in the process off learning.

You can only imagine walking undead to be scary cause you have learned that walking undead are scary (thank you hollywood!). For a kid a rampaging golem or a giant spider can be as scary or even scarier. The thing is that you never know what is going to trigger fear at a child. Also it is different for each and everyone. Therefor my advise to only let them start playing when supervised. As a dad of mum, your presence alone helps in feeling more secure. Besides that when it happens it is a lot easier to have a talk with your kid straight away before the fear moment sets in and becomes a phoby.

mercury ranique.2170:

You can only imagine walking undead to be scary cause you have learned that walking undead are scary (thank you hollywood!). For a kid a rampaging golem or a giant spider can be as scary or even scarier. The thing is that you never know what is going to trigger fear at a child. Also it is different for each and everyone. Therefor my advise to only let them start playing when supervised. As a dad of mum, your presence alone helps in feeling more secure. Besides that when it happens it is a lot easier to have a talk with your kid straight away before the fear moment sets in and becomes a phoby.

Yes but by that notion you have to protect your kid from everything as you can’t know what will scare them or not. I think kids in general are far more resilient than people seem to think. I do agree with that I wouldn’t let a child play guild wars 2 unsupervised as you said it is a good reassurance to show there is nothing to be frightened of and answer any questions.

My main point of the risen is that although the child might not be scared of them it does confront them with a rather adult topic of death and decay that I wouldn’t think is appropriate for a 7-10 year old, especially if they take note and start asking questions which isn’t necessarily a bad thing but I think such a topic could be approached less gruesomely.

But this is why I suggested a game like Myst as it’s one of those games that has no violence without it being super childish in feel and so it can be an enjoyable learning experience to do together for both parent/child. I think games can be a really good medium for parent/child bonding rather than a medium designed to distract your kid to give you some peace.

Warrior.

Get a Greatsword and Press 2 to win…

He asked a simple question, he doesn’t need a lecture. Who are you to judge him? Lol

Warrior mate, give them a Hammer or Greatsword and they’ll have tons of fun.

My 7 year old daughter plays. I use the game to teach reading and comprehension skills, math skills, and team work (especially reviving). I filter the chat so that all that shows is guild chat, which is basically me, my husband, and a few IRL friends.

She is more interested in gathering, crafting, map completion, and playing dress up than killing stuff. She likes to play Ranger and Mesmer. Mesmer because it’s “magic” and Ranger because she enjoys having pets and searching for new pets!

My bank is full of crafting material, so she can craft as she pleases. Jeweler and Taylor, so she can play dress up.

She likes to go to the cities (no bad guys) and do map completion. I"ll also buy her a bunch of dyes from the trading post so she can play dress up.

She will go out into the level 1 areas to find nodes, and look at the scenery. She loves Celadon Forrest and thinks it looks like a fairy tale. If she does battle somethings, it’s usually a mosquito, firefly, or spider.

I dropped her in Lion’s Arch yesterday and told her to get inside the cauldron. She had a blast climbing to the top and being transformed into a glowing green spider, then running around LA.

Ranger in PvE is simple. Get a bear to hold agro and use a bow. They can stand off at a distance and pew pew most mobs down. And I bet most kids would enjoy having a faithful pet friend to tame, name, and play with.

Warrior is good but can be fragile against mobs that have a lot of conditions. Guardians are much tankier and may be a better choice if deciding between these 2.

Astral Projections.7320:

Ranger in PvE is simple. Get a bear to hold agro and use a bow. They can stand off at a distance and pew pew most mobs down. And I bet most kids would enjoy having a faithful pet friend to tame, name, and play with.

Warrior is good but can be fragile against mobs that have a lot of conditions. Guardians are much tankier and may be a better choice if deciding between these 2.

NOOOOOOOOO

Don’t start em as bearbow rangers. What will this game be in 5 years? All bearbow all the time…… :P

I would say Guardian

GS let the kids play tanky or be a ranger with long bow the Tiger here looks even better then in WOW.

but as u know better dont let ur kids play alone

Most MMO’s are not for children.
There is not only the chat issue, but the content and talking of NPC’s that are not suitable for small children.

They might like to watch and see you playing, thus thinking that it is adult thing to do and as they want to appear more older, will want to play such games also. It is your job as their parent to decide if you want to expose your children to the filth and horrors of internet MMO’s, but if you are asking for opinions here then I have to say DO NOT LET THEM PLAY.

There are MMO’s more suitable for children and you can easily find them from sites such as www.mmorpg.com , but any game that focuses on killing and violence is not a suitable for younger children. You might think that you can control their players, but you are only fooling yourself there. They will start to play when you can not supervise and they will be open to the abuse of the player base.

I’m surprised so many people are worried about chat/the game in general. I would have thought as long as a parent is with them they should be fine.

I may be biased by my own experiences – I started playing computer games when I was 2 (Hungry Horace on the ZX Spectrum!) and played a lot of games I was too young for, I’m not sure if there just weren’t many games for young kids in the 80’s and 90’s or if I was never interested in them but most of the ones I remember – Eye of the Beholder, Darksun, Doom 2, Mortal Kombat 3, Triad, that Terminator FPS, Warcraft 1 & 2, Ultima Online etc. were made for adults and would definitely be 16 or 18 rated these days.

But the computer was always in the main room of the house and one or both parents were always around to supervise. The only actual rule I remember being given was don’t play any game where things die (Doom and Warcraft in particular) during breakfast because it sounds like people throwing up. (And don’t play Theme Park because people actually throw up.)

But we were talked through a lot of things. Including the first time someone tried to chat me up in a chat room (during the week or so we had AOL) and when my little sister discovered that scamming newbies and charging for cyber then logging out were quick ways to make money in UO. Honestly I think it was more effective and helpful than simply being told we couldn’t play those games and pretending those issues don’t exist.

GW2 by comparison is pretty tame. There’s no blood or gore, you won’t see characters with their limbs cut off or horrible injuries and any damage/conditions heals pretty quickly once you’re out of combat. Some of the enemies look a bit gross or scary (if they play a charr – the cat monsters – they’ll start of fighting ghosts) and occasionally a character will die if they get far enough through the storyline, but that’s about it.

Chat obviously varies depending on who is on but the language filter should help a lot and as discussed you can turn channels off. Plus you’ll be there to supervise.

As for what to play I’d recommend avoiding elementalists and engineers because they’re more complicated – you really need to be using all your skills and profession mechanics and have good timing to get it right. Warrior is very simple and the ranger can be too (plus they get cool pets to fight with them). Guardian might also be a good choice because they have very good defensive capabilities.

But if they really want to play something else I’d say let them. It’s roaming around not having a clue what I was doing or what any of my spells and abilities actually did that got me hooked on RPGs as a kid. I didn’t care that I couldn’t get past the first area, I enjoyed throwing around spells I didn’t understand and watching what happened.

This reminds of when I was 8ish, and wante to play GTA because everyone else was doing it…

“Ok, I’ll buy it for you, but if you get violent, you’re not allowed to play anymore :o”, my mum said.

I played for a few hours and I got bored. While some kids dont, I definitely did know the difference between reality and a game :P. I just dont like it when people get hurt, and I still dont. I didnt mind shooting people in a game, though.

When I firsted tried an mmo on my 12th, the chat definitely did impact me. People are trolling and badmouthing at you wherever I go, I took it personal and became depressed all the time. I guess it’s just an experience you have to… Experience. When doing something for the first time online, most people expect to find real people, but trolls are just the negative parts of personalities whom hide behind anonymity on the iternet :/. I wouldn’t want to unlearn what I learnt the .

Anyway, yea, let them play warrior.

There is an astounding amount of unsolicited parenting advice in this thread. OP asked a question about class choice, not about the suitability of the game for young children.

That said, my seven and nine-year-old kids have characters on my account (for PvE). I supervise them, turn off chat, and there has never been a problem. They both seem to really enjoy Ranger and, to a lesser extent, Warrior.

Edit: I have to also add in that my eldest, like all his friends, plays a fair bit of Minecraft as well. Between the two games, I think that GW2 has the better community and is more suitable for children.

My grandkids both love playing ranger, and really love the asura race. The animations are so over the top that it makes playing more fun for them

FWIW, my son (5) loves engineer the best.

We have the GW2 Official Strategy Guide book, and he likes to go through and read the skill descriptions literally for an hour at a time. (He’s weird, what can I say.) Anyway, it was given to me as a gift when it came out, and rather pricey at the time, but you might be able to find one for cheaper now that it’s been out a while.

Really, letting them play is just fine! It gives them early veins to become a great player! But really high armor classes is the most facerolly and perfect for kids Just turn off the chat Whatever you do do not give him a thief/engineer/ele as they’re the most active classes. Btw look up bogotter at youtube, he get he’s childs at same age as you to play the game just fine

Pipra.7580:

There is an astounding amount of unsolicited parenting advice in this thread. OP asked a question about class choice, not about the suitability of the game for young children.

Agreed. My father in law always says, “Advice is really just an opinion. We all know what opinions are like and none of them smell like cupcakes.”

If this was the original Guild Wars I would have agreed on letting 10 years old kids play ( that’s exactly the age I started playing GW ) but…

…eerrrrr the community is a lot more selfish here and the game is more action oriented even with the easiest class, but I suppose that a Warrior or Guardian should be optimal I guess?

Guardian on PVT gear is practically invincible in PvE and Warrior can destroy pretty much everything before getting killed.

Then again you can take into account the “fun factor” of some classes, maybe your child could like some magic and so a mesmer could be fun, or maybe he likes collecting pets and adventuring so even a Ranger could be optimal.

mercury ranique.2170:

First off all, be aware that your technically breaking the user agreement. Account sharing is not allowed. Children are not an exception for this. However if it is not done structurally, I dont think Anet minds too much.

Also consider that the game is rated 12 years and older. These ratings are there for a reason. Even a mechanic like death can be overwhelming for kids. Often I heard lines like ‘my kid can handle it, he/she is so though’, but you never know what triggers a fear in a childs head and a kids sense of reality when experiencing fantasy is a lot less (so it’s much more real to them).

These two things combined I think specially for your oldest its ok to let him/her play when supervised by you, and only short periods. If he/she likes it you can get an account for him/her in lets say a year.

Actually, according to the EULA, you’re not supposed to even show the [in]game to children the age of or under 13 even with express parental permission.

But I don’t think ANet is going to hunt you down for it.

I’d recommend Warrior or Ranger. Complexity definitely exists for these classes, but you can get away without them.

For example, when you create the Ranger make sure you equip two tanky pets (like bear and drake), so you will never have to worry about micromanaging them. Then purchase a Longbow as their main weapon. From there you can gradually explore different options as the character and player grow.

Esplen.3940:

mercury ranique.2170:

First off all, be aware that your technically breaking the user agreement. Account sharing is not allowed. Children are not an exception for this. However if it is not done structurally, I dont think Anet minds too much.

Also consider that the game is rated 12 years and older. These ratings are there for a reason. Even a mechanic like death can be overwhelming for kids. Often I heard lines like ‘my kid can handle it, he/she is so though’, but you never know what triggers a fear in a childs head and a kids sense of reality when experiencing fantasy is a lot less (so it’s much more real to them).

These two things combined I think specially for your oldest its ok to let him/her play when supervised by you, and only short periods. If he/she likes it you can get an account for him/her in lets say a year.

Actually, according to the EULA, you’re not supposed to even show the [in]game to children the age of or under 13 even with express parental permission.

But I don’t think ANet is going to hunt you down for it.

Actually if it required parental consent it wouldn’t be a problem here because the OP is the parent of the children in question. The User Agreement actually says you cannot show the game to any child under 12/13 at all.

EU version: 9.iii _"You acknowledge that the Game is not intended for minors under age 12, and You will not allow access to the Game, or the viewing of any display thereof, by any minor under age 12."
https://www.guildwars2.com/en-gb/legal/guild-wars-2-user-agreement/

Non-EU version: 9.d “You acknowledge that the Game is not intended for minors under age 13, and You will not allow access to the Game, or the viewing of any display thereof, by any minor under age 13.”
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/guild-wars-2-user-agreement/

I’m not quite sure how that works if there are areas outside of the EU where the game is rated 12+, but then I’m also not sure if that happens.

But like Esplen said I doubt Anet are going to go out of their way to enforce that. Likewise the rule about only one person being allowed to use an account. Several people on this forum have mentioned sharing accounts and as far as I’m aware they haven’t gotten banned for it.

It just means if at any time they decide to crack down on it, or ban you personally, you can’t dispute it because it was right there in the rules which you accepted when you created your account. (It also means in places where video game ratings can be legally enforced you would be held responsible and not Anet or NCSoft, which is the really important bit for them.)

Well forgetting all rules and User’s agreement for a second.

Your kids would do well on a warrior (easy to play, have passive healing so they die less often) or ranger for the pet because kids tend to like pets. those pets don’t really die, their health drops to 0 and they come walking back to you. This is also pretty child friendly.

Thanks for the input guys. They made a warrior and a guardian. I turned off as much of the chat as I could. Honestly they never even looked at it. They spent 90% of their 15 minutes getting stuck in a corner because they are horrible keyboard turners. Honestly I think they enjoyed making their characters more than playing them. I think they will get frustrated with the complexity fast and burn out on it after they play it a few times which I’m ok with. Thanks for everyones feedback

Hah! I remember when I first played EverQuest, and got stuck in a couple of rooms because I couldn’t figure out how to open a door to the rest of the city.

MMOs are a little complex for their age, but at least you had some fun making characters with them.

Haha, yeah I think everyone who plays games as a kid goes through that at least once.

I remember once me and my brother and sister started playing a new point and click game called Kyrandia and for the first 1/2 hour or so we couldn’t even work out how to get out of the room you started in because there was no door on screen. We were trying to throw rocks at the window and all sorts.

(That was actually my dads fault, he told us to skip the introduction because it was boring, but it turned out it actually introduced the story and showed you some of the controls, like clicking on the border at the edge of the screen to walk off-screen in that direction.)

If you want to help them out a bit maybe you could introduce them to moving by holding both mouse buttons down.

Or leave them to it and laugh quietly when they get stuck.