Greetings!

I recently started tutoring/working with a 12 year old kiddo that's way behind on his typing and writing skills. He's a very clever fellow and  currently plays Runescape a bit. I know from personal experience that playing WOW significantly improved my typing speed/ability over a relatively short period of time, and am thinking a MMO may be a fun activity the kid and I can do  together while simultaneously forcing him to  practice his typing (due to the necessity of communication).

He currently plays runescape, I think, and I still have a WOW account I could reopen if I so choose (though I've been waiting for 4 months for Blizzard to reply to my BBB  complaint I filed since I could never contact  Blizzard directly on the phone).

Anyone play games with their kids that could make some strong suggestions? The main things I'm trying to focus on are:

1. fun for both of us

2.  lots of typing to communicate

3. parental (time limit) controls

4. No higher than "T" rating, unless  it's very  undeserving of a higher level rating.

5. Not too incredibly violent/gory.

From what I understand, WOW has pretty good parental controls, and from personal experience, I think it is a rather communication/group oriented  game. I'm a bit tired of the grinding mechanic of WOW and lack of creativity in playing, however, so if something better/more creative and with less of an emphasis on hording gear/wealth and more of an emphasis on wits/skill  has been released, I'd love to hear about it.

I hear Wizard 101 is fun for kids and adults, looks very very childish but i heard the gameplay is nice and does involve alot of community chatting...not sure if this helps, ill keep looking

I'd actually recommend instead of playing an MMO, participating a good old fasioned quality forum rp.  MMO's have an unfortunate tendency to actually DISTANCE people from each other, much the same way people become isolated in big cities in real life.  Go out to the country, and everybody says hello.  Go into the big city and try saying "Hi" to someone without being ignored and cold-shouldered.

RP's on boards that shunned those who couldn't type well is how I learned to type.  If you're looking though specifically for an MMO, then I'd say EVE Online just 'cause it requires a lot of brainpower, lends itself to constant conversation, few people who talk in the public corp chat use bad grammar.  Other than that, it's a bit of a slow game, and very very technical.

Well if WoW is in the running then I assume Lotro would be as well. It's T for teen, has just as much communication if not maybe more then WoW. It's very non gory, I mean I don't even think characters actually die, they more of just lose morale. The player made music system actually gives a lot of creativity, and while not a main part of the game I've known RP'ers who make music their focus. Also while of course there's somewhat of a grind, there's also a story behind it. Depending on the type of child he may like the backstory involved. Also as far as community is concerned Lotro is much, much more helpful, and all around friendlier then WoW.

If the kid plays Runescape, he'll probably tell you that WoW isn't nearly grindy enough.  Well, either that or he's just too young to know any better than to play Runescape.  With you thinking WoW has too much grinding (incidentally, you're right about that, at least at the level cap), it might be hard to come up with a game you both like.

Low grinding games tend to be pretty solo-friendly, with not that much communication required.  Puzzle Pirates is the only non-grinding game that is heavy on grouping that comes to mind, but grouping doesn't take much communication, so that's probably not what you're looking for.  Some people say that EverQuest or Final Fantasy XI are pretty heavy on forced grouping, but those are a lot grindier than WoW.  City of Heroes might be better for forced grouping without heavy grinding, but I'm not really that familiar with the game to know.

If improving the kid's typing skills is the goal, I'm going to go way outside the box and say A Tale in the Desert.  There isn't "grouping", but communicating with other players via the chat is pretty much required.  Much of the chat is in guilds, but you can join as many guilds as you like, and there are also people to chat with in regional chat.  It's a really weird game, with no combat and a heavy emphasis on crafting.  Depending on why the kid is "special needs", he might find it way too hard and frustrating.

Originally posted by Auzy

I hear Wizard 101 is fun for kids and adults, looks very very childish but i heard the gameplay is nice and does involve alot of community chatting...not sure if this helps, ill keep looking

Wizard101 is kid-friendly, but allows for very little communication between players.  Beyond there not being much need for it (many people just solo), a lot of people have the chat client disabled entirely.  Even among those you could chat with, the chat system uses a whitelist, so any words not on the approved list get filtered.  There really aren't very many words on the approved list, making it frustrating to use, as you have to go fishing for synonyms a lot.

Ah yes. Puzzle pirates. A very fun/cute little game. I have an account for that somewhere, though I agree about the lack of typing as a necessity. I've never heard of "A Tale in the Desert", I'll give it a looksie. I've been reading up on Eve Online a little. That one sounds interesting, though I've heard some parental concerns about lots of really sexual/innapropriate for children player made content.

As for WoW, I could go back to playing it, I just wonder   if there's better out yet. The stereotypical MMO "formula" for grinding is so overdone from many different people I've talked to.

Like I said, the kid is very smart and posseses a large vocabulary and pretty good reading ability, he's just 3 to  5 grade levels behind on his writing skills (spelling, grammar, legibility). Thus, the strong desire to get a typing encouraged game :)

Looks like I already have some reading up to do.

"Wizard 101" and "A Tale in the Desert".

Thanks for the suggestions/input thus far. Additional thought, comments, and suggestions greatly appreciated.

Originally posted by TheInternal

Like I said, the kid is very smart and posseses a large vocabulary and pretty good reading ability, he's just 3 to  5 grade levels behind on his writing skills (spelling, grammar, legibility). Thus, the strong desire to get a typing encouraged game :)

Typing on the Internet will teach you to type faster, but it won't teach you to type better.  You've probably noticed how few people in games use anything resembling proper capitalization and punctuation.  A Tale in the Desert will have a much higher proportion of the chat be intelligent than in most other games.  There also isn't the "I have to hurry because I'm under attack" pressure to send a message fast at the expense of coherence.  Indeed, quite a bit of communication between players is sending something in a chat channel to be read by someone who is offline at the time when he returns.

I would put a second vote in for city of heroes, or at least to check out it’s free trial. It is good old fashion superheroes (think back in the 80s before everything in comic books got super dark with heroes murdering and villains mutilating or sexually assaulting their victims)

The main advantage to City of Heroes is its simplistic nature that may appeal to a younger kid. There isn’t much gear to grind or gold to acquire, since it’s a super hero game you just level up and pick a new power. Like with any MMO though the amount you group is solely up to you as the player, you can solo the entire way to the level cap or group all the way there as well.

Also I really would like to stress what Vxxed posted earlier, MMOs overall have a tendency to isolate people. Given the age and if they have a learning disability they may miss out on lots of valuable social skills by having digital interaction and not face to face interaction.

A final thought is if the kid loves gaming why not get him into game programming. There are a ton of very simplistic scripting languages out there that make putting together a very basic game pretty easy. Programming requires typing and precision as well as complex throught while working out interactions.

I personally would recommend they steer clear of WoW, in the late phases of the game 55+ levels it starts to get to the point where you can’t do anything without setting out a block of 5-6 hours to run a instance with a group or grind enough to make a dent in your xp bar.

I agree with Guler for the most part.

I dont know if a mmo would be the best thing for something like what you want but if its what you want I would have to say try CoH / V.

It reletivly simply but if you dont pay attention you will die, you can play the game solo or in groups. Its not bad in any way other than maybe what some of the player say but that gos with any thing online. Theres not really any gear in the game just make your costume and modify as you go and want to and enhancements to improve your powers. Money in the game is just used for costume stuff and enhancements maybe guild stuff to but i havnt had one so not sure. So theres no real grinding for stuff just the grind of instances (if you call it a grind) for your missions which can get repetative at times but not as much as other MMOs in my opinion.

way to ruin a little kids life and get him hooked on mmos now, what w inner he'll turn out to be

SOE freerealms will be aiming for familys just like you, but it will be some time still before it releases (check the game statistic page here, you might be able to sign up for the beta).

I guess my vote is Wow or Guildwars otherwise since I seen few if any games aimed for kids, but those 2 do have some parts of it's population at the right age.  My friend is a schoolteacher for 12 years and she noticed that many in her class also play Wow.

But I think most MMOs will probably work as long as you stay away from AoC, few other MMOs have blood in them.

Originally posted by TheInternal

 I've been reading up on Eve Online a little. That one sounds interesting, though I've heard some parental concerns about lots of really sexual/innapropriate for children player made content.

You'll DEFINITELY have to post me up some links to that.  As far as public in-game content goes, the chat is almost purely grammatically correct.  I've never been to the forums really, so I can't say much about that.

As far as "not for kids," once you venture out of the "safe zone"  into non-secure space (where pretty much all of the REAL player battles happen, and where the real money is to be made) it is quite literally a kill or be killed universe.  If you see someone, there's a good chance that they might just kill you on the spot for your stuff.

Sexual?  I can't see how.  When you're in-game, there's no physical players.  There's just a bust photo of their character and their ship, and that's all you'll ever see until Ambulation comes out (players become actual people and can walk around in stations).  I'll put my bets on overprotective parents as far as sexual content goes.

You could also try to find a Dungeons and Dragons text-based game that runs live between players, if those exist.  That way you can grow his imagination instead of killing it, while at the same time teaching him to type out long drawn out action role-play things.  Hell, that even gives him a boost on his creative writing skills.

Nothing like a good RP.

Having played EVE online quite a bit I can honestly say I would steer the kid clear of it. The first reason is it’s a very long term MMO. When you plan something in EVE your talking months (6-8 months) to learn a skill set to do something and often younger kids don’t have that type of attention span. Heck I am 22 and I don’t have that type of attention span to wait a full month for a single skill to train, not to mention spending 15 bucks a month to wait on the skill to finish training since skills are based on real life time and not time spent in the game.

Also I found EVEs large chat rooms especially the starting guilds chat very dirty and everyone is placed in a starting guild so everyone has to see that chat. This is probably where you have heard the negative sexual side of the game since these chat areas are filled with people using rape as a casual term, talking about masturbating on other players, ect. It’s the type of thing you would expect to hear in a prison and not a MMO.

The company that runs EVE has a stance that any scamming and language is appropriate and they cannot guarantee you won’t be offended because they won’t action people using the above type of language. To be honest I finally had to close down the chat rooms while playing to not have my gaming experience ruined.

With that out of the way EVE does have some strong points, it does have the most realistic economic structure in all the MMOs I have played. It’s economy is purely supply and demand driven just like real life. Unfortunately the game is also very cut throat, as another player said it’s kill or be killed in EVE with no consequences for killing another player in low sector space. Many people who play the game say you can just stay in high sec, but doing that you only experience half the game and don’t get to face off against the stronger NPCs. I think it’s the cut throat attitude in the game that encourages so much of the anti-social behavior you see in the larger chat rooms.

As far as text based D&D being a good idea it would all depend on the kid. If the kid loves the technical side of games then it would be great for him, however if the kid loves the artistic side such as art and music they may find a text based game getting boring fast. Text based D&D type games are a great place for imagination to flourish, but I highly encourage you always make sure to play the game with them since text RP and anonymousness often lead to cybering if your in the wrong type of group. With that being said it also may be hard to find a good text based group that will allow someone with bad writing skills in since many of them can be very snobbish.

I don't know of any graphic game in which typing skills used to communicate come into play in game play.  The closest thing to that is the Mavis Beacon Teaches Typing programs.  They have mini-games as part of the teaching process.

If he also needs help reading then I suggest you play some old fashiioned SNES rpg's.  But for typing WoW is the only obvious choice I can think of.  Any other game similar with party system/guilds should do the trick.  

Thanks for all the (mostly) thoughtful suggestions and ideas.

I'm personally a burned out gamer that doesn't really game much anymore, so I'm WELL aware of the potential negatives to an MMO, such as WOW.

To those expressing concerns:

The kiddo is a VERY imaginative fellow, so I'm not too worried about "killing his imagination" with an online game. His reading skills are quite good, so that's also a rather non-issue. Frankly, I think a big issue is a lack of confidence on his fine motor skills when it comes to writing/drawing. He'd rather build something or talk rather than use his hands to write or draw, so getting him to do a task that involves communication with a written/typed medium is what I'm going for (in addition to tutoring him with his writing projects for school/discussing writing)

I just know from personal experience, that playing wow necessitated my learning to communicate and type quickly and accurately, despite the drawbacks and potential addictiveness if not done in moderation.

I think I happen to use pretty good spelling (I'm not the best speller, mind you) and good grammar in game, because I don't want to sound like an idiot (that and because taurens are smart, thank you very much :P). At least on Silver Hand server in WOW (though it's awfully lacking in RP and faction balance), most the folks I wanted to talk to at least encouraged good "proper" communication.

So, from all the comments, it sounds like WOW, LotR, GuildWars, and CoH are the more mainstream ones to look into to play with the kiddo. Eve sounds like something I'd be more interested in for personal play, but I just don't see myself getting into any MMO like I have in the past. I just don't have the energy for it. 

Additional comments/suggestions welcomed. Thank you again to all those who took the time to make a thoughtful reply.

Honestly i wouldnt go with a mmorpg. I would go with a FPS,  in rpgs you have plenty of time to type and just take your time. In an FPS without a mic, you NEED to type fast or your dead. I learned to type in Counter Strike Source, though I would pick something a bit friendler than that (although I started playing at 10 and I turned out fine). Don't go with WoW or the guilds will force him to get on vent, and use a mic, and that defeats the purpose of typeing. I'm sure you know this.

Right now I play eve online, and as others said, its not a good game for anyone under 14. Just because of its insane training times and slow paced gameplay, In PvP you will look for a fight for sometimes as long as 2 hours, and its even worse in the beginning. You need a good attention span for the game, thats why I'm the only 16 year old in my state that plays it. As for the refrences to sexual themes and such, there really is none at all, theres drug refrences but its not like really anything, just another item to sell.

Grouping likely won't make someone type much unless he's the one organizing the group--and even then it might not, if he's not very good at running a group.  In most games, most of the time that people type it's because they want to type, not because the game requires it.  Furthermore, it's mostly idle chat, not something that the game requires or even particularly encourages.

Games where typing interferes with gameplay could be said to outright discourage typing, though.  If you type you die, and if you don't type, you don't die.  You may be able to get away with typing if you're fast, but that doesn't push people to learn to type at all--and if they do try to learn to type, it usually pushes them to type badly.