Another familial update

Saturday is going to be an...interesting day. Lemme 'splain.

This past Sunday I was at my cousin's engagement party, as was the rest of my family. As it often does when we're together, the conversation with my dad eventually turned to WoW. (Honestly, I don't think we've ever talked so much about a single topic together in my lifetime as much as we have about WoW over the past 14 months.)

To my surprise, he's decided to give dungeon-running a try. I honestly never thought he'd have an interest in this because when he started playing he was very intent on making sure that he could spend all his time solo. And his history has been that, even in games that have multi-player components, he's always stuck to the solo side of them.

In the 14 months he's been playing WoW, he's done a lot of research. He discovered addons on his own and installed several to help him out. He learned how to use Wowhead to give him a hand in completing trickier quests.

When he started trying to run dungeons he researched what it would take as a Warrior. He decided that he would try tanking and looked up what a tank's responsibility is in a group. He also figured out what kind of gear he could buy on his own (with gold) and what he'd need JP to buy. He read up on some of the dungeons and the basic strategies therein. He read up on how to use the LFD tool. So in that regard, I'm actually really proud of him. I've run with guildies that have done less...

But, WoW being the complex game that it is, and my dad still learning all those complexities, missed that to tank dungeons at max level (or any level above 30, really) a Warrior needs to be Prot specced. He was still running Fury, with a shield in one hand and a 2H in the other. I cringed inwardly when I heard this and tried my very best not to let it show on my face. I can only imagine the things other puggers were saying to him and my only measure of comfort was that he really doesn't pay much attention to the chat window, so he probably didn't see most of it.

Not surprisingly, he said that he hadn't completed a dungeon yet before everyone would drop or he'd get kicked. Although he got pretty close to finishing Throne of the Tides once. Apparently they got to Neptulon.

So looking ahead to Saturday...

Norfin and I agreed that if my dad wants to start running group content, it's probably time to bring him into the guild. He asked me if I could spend some time with him, in person, teaching him some of the fundamentals of group play, as well as some of the other things he just hasn't gotten a handle on yet, like the AH, professions, and dual-speccing.

So Saturday I'll be packing up my rig and heading down to spend the day there with him. I'm gonna bring him into the guild, get him on Vent, wrangle up some of the more patient members of the guild and try to run a full dungeon or two. Then I'll probably stay there after dinner for the guild's Saturday night raid so he can get a view into what insanity is at the end of the trail he's started down.