I was reading WoW Insider one morning and ran into an interesting Breakfast Topic: Should the girlfriend play WoW?

295 comments later, it was clear people didn’t agree on one answer (of course). And that no one seemed to have the same experience as I did. Rather than adding comment 296 which no one would read, I figured I’d make a post out of it.

Why?

The opinions most prevalent through the comments were:
1. (Men) No, you’ll have to hold her hand and give her money all the time;
2. (Men) No, you need your own space;
3. (Women) Yes, I play and I give my boyfriend money;
4. (Men) Yes, she’ll understand you better, but have her create a char on another server;
5. (All) Yes, playing with your partner is fun!

I won’t rant and rave about the misconception that girl = won’t be able to play = a burden, because it seemed like the people who said this hadn’t actually tried to play with the girlfriend.

People I know

So far, all the girls I know who play with their boyfriends/husbands do perfectly well on their own. Ok, it might be because I’m in a raiding guild, so I only get to meet those girlfriends who have proved they can play, but they are girls and they do play with their partners, so they meet the definition. And they range from college students to mothers who go AFK during raids because the baby is crying to mothers who also have children in the guild, so it’s a pretty diverse group.

My story

I started playing because my boyfriend (then just friend) bought me the game and bugged me to install it. “It’s just like chatting on Yahoo Messenger, only with a character in front of you.” Seeing as I spend ages chatting online and love meeting new people, this was a good argument.

And yet I hated the game in the beginning. Too many buttons, too confusing, how should I know what I’m supposed to do etc. (I’m not much of a gamer, and my last RPG was Diablo 2.) So he made an alt and played with me until level 40 (with the occasional boost). I’m sure I was pretty annoying at start, because I’m impatient when learning something new, but aren’t all noobs?

The rest is history, as they say: followed him into a lovely guild at level 60, been there ever since, met a lot of helpful people and turned into a half-decent player at a point in time. Thanks to several guildies, not him, because his knowledge of warriors is about what mine is about moonkins, i.e. not much.

The money thing

I don’t recall ever asking for money, but I had 1500 g forced on me when I reached level 70 because “epic flying is so cool, get it NOW, don’t wait until you grind the rest of the money”. We argued, but he won, I took the money and flew away into the sunset.

As for the rest: I don’t need my hand held (except when I get lost in an instance, but I do that IRL too so it’s nothing new), I make my own money, I’m going to pay for my second epic mount as soon as my mage gets to 77, and I only take advantage of him when it comes to health pots. Hey, it’s not my fault that he’s an alchemist and my warrior is a squishy plate wearer who thinks she can tank and takes on more than she should… I usually pester him about boosts, but it almost never works… thank God for bored guildies.

Raiding

Another seldom-mentioned problem was raiding. One advice on Wow Insider was to make sure you didn’t share tier tokens. I had no idea what tokens were when I rolled my warrior, but I happily shared the token with my druid boyfriend and we never had a problem. If he has more DKP than me, he should get it, what does the relationship have to do with it?

As for favoritism… pfff. Right. People assume that because he’s the raid leader I get preferential treatment. Nothing could be more wrong: I get scolded during the raid with all the rest when we do something stupid, and I get extra bitching IRL too. My only priviledges are being able to choose when I raid without bothering to unsign off our raid planner and getting priority in case someone doesn’t show up… but seeing as I’m not that crazy about raiding every night, I don’t use those priviledges too often.

So?

The key point here: don’t generalize. Don’t expect people to change just because they’re in a game. A clingy person will be clingy IRL too, an independent person will want to keep being independent in-game. If she starts playing, of course she’ll be a noob – weren’t you? It’s the personality that will decide what happens next, not the sex.