I’ve never actually played WoW so this is second hand, but I’ve always been told that City of Heroes is more casual friendly than WoW, and less grindy. You can log onto CoH for fifteen minutes and get a mission or two done.
Ha ha ha ha ha you made a funny.
Sign her up as 13 and don’t post pics. No one will care. You don’t even have to use her real name, she could sign up as mudgirl [funny last name].
CoH is more casual than WoW but WoW is still pretty casual (having come from games like Everquest or FFXI).
Yep. In WoW it can take you fifteen minutes to get to your quest. Also, it think CoH (and CoH specifically) is less violent and more “comics code” than WoW for a ten year old. CoHs is also just a simpler game - my kids could handle “press 1, press 2, press 3, press 1” from a pretty young age.
Yeah, I wouldn’t choose WoW if I didn’t want my kids playing violent games; nothing I’d steer a teenager away from, but probably not for a ten-year-old.
This is typical of WoW…the area I’m questing in now doesn’t have an inn. So when I log out, it takes an extra 2 minutes from flight point to town to get to an inn. I could skip it, if I wanted to skip getting rested XP. CoH has spots all over the place to log out safely, and while you have to get to a certain place to get your day job credits, you can easily skip those and it doesn’t really change the game or rate of xp. You get rested xp regardless of where you log out.
Have you considered Runescape? It’s a free MMORPG and has a large adolescent following. They have a lot of free content, including instanced dungeons where you can form a group of two and explore the dungeon alone together. It has a pretty large worldsize and a good number of quests. The game is pretty simple and is structured for most of the content to be unlockable by low levels with only a little of the content accessible only to the elite. My daughters play and enjoy it a fair bit. I’m getting a little tired of the grind myself, but that’s because I’m a member($5 a month) and taking it a bit more seriously than they do.
It doesn’t require expensive hardware to run on, or broadband network connections. They also have parental restrictions which can be put on an account to lock it down to quick chat only, so no free-form or inappropriate chatting can take place. They have servers which are quick chat only.
Enjoy,
Steven
If Father and Daughter are on-line at the same time, CoH is a good idea. CoH also has Leveling pacts, where two characters earn XP at the same rate, even if one is off line.
Lego also has a MMO in the works. I haven’t read any reviews yet, so I don’t know how well it would suit.
I gotsta recommend not WoW. Violence aside, it’s a place full of adults (and asshat teen boys) who act and talk like adults (and asshat teen boys). People aren’t going to go out of their way to not hurt her feelings, in fact there are plenty people who go out of their way to harass other players.
This all said with the love of a woman who has been WoWing for years–but it’s not a place for children.
Ok, in the WoW debate, seeing as how I know mudgirl rather well and play WoW (when I can afford to) I don’t think it would be too adult for her. She is very mature for her age.
Well, that she is! (Did you know she got prescription glasses today??)
What about ‘adult language’? I know that lots of people say ‘she’s going to hear that at school, anyway’. But I don’t see the point in subjecting her to it unnecessarily.
You might hear some read some bad language in chat depending on what server they play on and what faction they play but actual game content? No bad language
I’m in a long-distance relationship thingie and we play lexulous (like scrabble) and, especially, backgammon at www.pocket-monkey.com
I kick his ass at both. Don’t tell him I told you that. 
Wizard 101
It’s a MMORPG that’s a little Harry Potter (the “wizard” part) and a little Yu Gi Oh (you use creature cards to “fight”). It’s very kid friendly, free to play, and relatively interesting.
I second the suggestion of Wizard 101 its simple and child friendly and easy to play. Even me and Thread Pirate Roberts enjoy playing together.
If your looking for casual games I know I used to log on to jagex.com to play thinks like connect four, chess, and reversi. They have some decent casual games.
Yahoo! games also has a decent collection of games if you are just sitting down when you have a minute or two, and some of them you can play with others. They have things like reversi, chess, pool, connect four, I think I saw monopoly if you have a few hours.
I thought about Runescape also - but they require players be at least 13 years old. I suppose you could lie, but I’m not sure that is a good message to be sending to your kid.
Turn off the chat channels. CoH’s autofilters it, you have to turn on the naughty words or you get asterisk. And on WoW, don’t play on a PvP server, much less griefing. I’ve been “harrased” once on WoW (someone killed the NPC I was escorting - and that was years ago).