Fun for the whole family!

[Forerunner]

My friends 4 year old brother plays Gears of War, this is like Viva Pinata compared.

PH, Best. Dad. Ever.

[Zantetsuken]

I have a friend who has a friend who has a kid playing...

[Gemma]

My husband and I play together, but I'm also trying to get my older brother and his wife to play with us. We all use to play xi together. Actually, my brother was the one who got me to play xi and that's how he met his wife, and xi is how I met my husband lol. Then we got our oldest sister to play and I joked with her that now she was going to meet her future husband on xi lol (she didnt, she quit when we did cause she had "no one to play with" lol)

I think they will be playing when ps3 launches. They both tried it on our pc's when we went to visit them and they liked it, so that will be fun. Just hope it releases on ps3 before they lose interest or get tired of waiting >.< lol. Would be awesome for us four to play together again. Older sister is lame, she wont play it cause she doesnt want to buy a pc or a ps3, her loss! XD

[CrystalObsidian]

Indeed, if your exposed to something at a earlier age, it is easy for you to comprehend it later on. Ex: My cousin would play FFVII when I was really young (1~2) then later (3~4) the game was not difficult at all for me. (Granted it took me awhile to learn that Cure heals my enemies and Heal cures status ailments but blah you get the point)

True that!

It was the same for me and my cousins, we all played FF at a very young age just because one of their dad's happened to have some of the games. (we started at 8 though, not 7 XD). But we learned all the tips and tricks without any outside help

[Ryyu]

My kids got new computers for xmas, they're 8 and 9, as well as controllers, big 23" hp led monitors, and bluetooth headphones. And Final Fantasy XIV.

They've never played anything like it before, but they've seen me play, and keep asking to play. We set up and I got them to the character creation screens, where they could customize their characters race and appearance. They had great fun with that and spent nearly 30min on that part alone. Then we got to the names and selected world/starting cities. I had them do the intro on their own, with minimal help, follow the tutorial, etc.

The most difficult thing for them I must say is the dual analog for camera and movement at the same time. Then switching to the d-pad for targetting in a group of monsters. They're getting the hang of it though.

I took them through the xmas event, then put them in a party together, both as marauders, and put them outside limsa by the sheep, showed htem how to go between active and passive mode, and kill sheep. In about 1.5hr, they hit level 7, I moved them to chigoe's, and they worked on them, while I sat and cured them when needed. They got the hang of it fairly well though.

I sent them back to limsa and let them roam for a while, they hit probably every pc and npc that they came across with a snowball or two, which they greatly enjoyed. I figured I'd let them play with emotes and run around to get the hang of the dual analogs.

Then they were level 10, and I took them to kill dodo's. When they hit 11 I switched to archer and joined them, with specific instructions for one to attack a monster, then the other to attack the link, and I'd just dps, with my mule out of party healing us.

At level 13, I switched my mule to conjuror, and the 4 of us were in a party together and we just murdered dodo's. We were getting 2-3 links, and they were able to target in the middle of the mess, not very well at first, but better with time.

They've picked up on the game rather quickly, and we can party together, and htey can have hours of fun doing nothing more than running around exploring. One got killed by a roseling once, and now they're both afraid to go near them, but you can't really blame them for that.

Anyone else have their kids playing?

well my parents bought me FFXIV for christmas last year + a computer I am 12 and I have got 50 PUG,50 LNC, and a 50 CON I LOVE this game! its sooo much fun. just liking to say ^^

[Ryyu]

The joy of showing kids a genre of gaming unlike any other in a setting that's constantly evolving in real-time far outweighs the risk of coming across the occasional (filtered!) swear word.

IMO, the kids at school are a much worse negative influence than the kids in MMOs.

And in FFXIV? What's the worst that could happen? They learn to swear? In Japanese, no less - pretty cool in my book!

i think so too hehe

[nasomi]

My friends 4 year old brother plays Gears of War, this is like Viva Pinata compared.

PH, Best. Dad. Ever.

Haha, thanks! You'll probably see them around, they always seem to find me randomly and heave snowballs at me. They're about out of anima now, so that will severely limit their mobility until they get the habit of alternate forms of travel. When ps3 launches I'll have to find a disk as there's 3 ps3's in the house, then even more can play.

btw where have you been? i saw you idle a few times and poked you but you never came back..

[Forerunner]

Haha, thanks! You'll probably see them around, they always seem to find me randomly and heave snowballs at me. They're about out of anima now, so that will severely limit their mobility until they get the habit of alternate forms of travel. When ps3 launches I'll have to find a disk as there's 3 ps3's in the house, then even more can play.

btw where have you been? i saw you idle a few times and poked you but you never came back..

I get around. I keep seeing you idle as well.

The 'benefits' of differing timezones. Why can't everyone live by GMT? I'll have to party up with the Family Hockey one time soon.

[Rowyne]

OMG! How good it was to finally see a post worth responding to! I play with my entire household LOL. That includes my husband, my twins and our 14 year old. We have a lot of fun doing things together and it really brought us all closer, spending so much time together playing. It is a LOT more fun playing with people you know.

I have to say the FFXI was the game they broke me in on. Before that I never played video games much, much less an MMO. I pretty much stuck with Tetris or Jewels. And like most wives, gf's, etc.... I hated video games like MMO's because everyone spent so much time on them and not with me or together as a family. But out of boredom (I had major surgery and was laid up for 5 weeks) my two oldest started me on FFXI because I liked watching them play. Once I got the hang of it I was off! I even leveled ahead of them and was helping THEM out ingame LOL. I can honestly say that "If you can't beat them, join them" works. No fighting, bad feelings or forcing them not to play in order to have time together. Instead of board games or movie night, we just added in video game night.

Now we have all moved on to 14 and included our 14yr old and things are great! Sure we still have busy RL things to do... but instead of hundreds of dollars on movie night or grumblings over board games... we just gather together on the latest and greatest MMO's ^^.

LOL, kind of sounds like me. I was a gamer growing up, and played lots of console RPGs, but never had any interest in MMOs. My husband was hooked on EQOA back in the day, and it drove me nuts how addicted he was to it (always raiding Plane of Sky into the wee hours). So, when FFXI came out and most of his Hodstock friends were leaving to go play, he convinced me to try it with him so we could play together. I was a HUGE Final Fantasy fan and couldn't resist. I was instantly hooked!

We played FFXI for about a year together, until he got sucked into WoW. I refused to leave FFXI because of my friends and the memories I had made, despite how many times he tried to get me to come to Azeroth. But after a couple years of us sitting in the same room yet worlds apart, I just couldn't hold out any longer. And ever since, we play all our MMOs together, designating one character each that we only play with each other (he's an alt junkie and he's always got 3-4 characters he's playing at once, so it doesn't slow us down except in Final Fantasy MMOs where you play all classes on one character). We duo all the way to level cap, do all our quests, all our dungeons, all our firsts together. It's MUCH more fun that way!

Just like you said, we could be doing other things like watching TV, playing cards, going to the movies. Instead, we adventure together.

It really is true, the family that plays together stays together.

[Rowyne]

I grew up playing Atari since I was 3...
My Grand mother, grand father (dead), uncle, mother, father, sister, brother, wife, son (4yr old) all play video games...

Wow, this just brought back some great memories! My family got an Atari in 1982, when I was 8 years old. Me, my mom and dad, and grandma and grandpa used to gather in our living room and play Bowling. Fun times!!!