In this month's (April 2005) issue of Computer Games Magazine there is an article I've written about my 8 year old son, Alex. It's about his adventures as a Night Elf as part of our guild ("MythInc") on the Uther server in the game World of Warcraft. 

World of Warcraft isn't perfect, I know I have a long list of issues with the game. But it is, overall, a fantastic game. And for my son, it's a real thrill.  Him and his younger brother (Ryan, 4) will pretend to be playing the game even outside of World of Warcraft.  Ryan will run around with a plastic axe tucked in under his shrt behind his back. When he gets killed, he pretends he's a ghost and runs in that trademark World of Warcraft character running style back to his body.

That's the ironic thing about World of Warcraft, it actually works well as a game for all ages. It's not particularly gory. The most significant moral qualm is that many of the quests are essentially about going out to the countrside and butchering sentient creatures and taking their stuff so that you can get better at going out and butchering other sentient creatures to take their stuff and so forth. But that's not how my son is playing it anyway. For him, it's about fishing, hunting deer, cooking food, exploring the world, helping other people.  Not that he doesn't kill his share fo gnolls and bandits, but overall, he's getting a much fuller experience than the typical player is I suspect.