There was an interesting question posted on Wow Insider today about possible age limits in the World of Warcraft. While there was no real definitive answer in the post itself, people who responded (mostly a mature audience and some with children) had strong feelings about how this should be handled if imposed.
My feeling is that there really should be realms that are age based. I would like to see more kid friendly, teen and adult/mature realms made available. This element probably would resolve a lot of issues with regards to the disparity of people on a realm. One of my guildies commented that on our realm, Saurfang, there seems to be more mature people. I have met a few younger players, but the immaturity level feels far below that of a US realm. Another guildie agreed and shared her sentiments.
Yet I still see the usual immature posts and trolls on my realm from time-to-time too. It just occurs at a different time. My GM mentioned it occurs “when the kids come home from school.” Mostly, a ton of anal jokes and whatnot. So the issue is not exactly as US only problem.
Thus, I want to see more realms with an age barrier. Maybe they could have a free-for-all type of realm, but age based realms should be an option. Outside of the age aspect, I would have other age based features enabled like enforced language filters, toned down violence (like blood, etc.). Probably to enforce this I would have certain questions that the player answer prior to being allowed to create a toon on the realm. For instance, a person’s credit card, authenticator, date of birth and other questions to validate the person’s age.
Obviously, such a system won’t be without flaws but I imagine that the community should have some control to monitor their population. I think RP servers do perform certain levels of monitoring on their player base. Similarly, an age based server should reinforce certain standards by the community as well.
Some people may think this idea is a form of censorship. I think there’s a fine line between censorship and creating more appropriate communities. We already see labels on games with ratings. Why not something within the game? I mean, considering some of the chats that go on in trade, I feel that those aspects are not good in exposing to younger people.
At the same time, if younger people feel that they can perform maturely within a community that might be allowable. But the person should gain the trust of the community over a period of time.
Conversely among of all this is preventing something like pedophilia in the game. Naturally, if a realm is defined as a children based zone, there needs to be ways to safe guard the realm from crazy adults. With this regard, it might be slightly harder to enforce because adults might have better access to information and be more savvy in terms of locating information to fool any questions for a screening. Also, the community itself would not be able to reinforce proper behavior since the adult in question might be good at persuading those that he/she is a child. The game still runs this risk in the present form, so I think Blizzard might eventually want to consider additional measures in preventing something like child abductions, etc. from occurring by somehow enforcing a method to properly identify players and creating a safety zone for children.
At any rate, the looseness of the game at present is a major social issue. I think Blizzard has done a poor job creating social bifurcations based on age. There needs to be more done for everyone practically. While there is some level of reinforcement at the personal level, there are little to no mechanics within the game to handle this aspect. And this should be addressed some day.