Don’t you hate that feeling when you’re playing games, and your other half is watching tv?

You’re in one half of the house, they’re in the other, you’re not talking, and you feel like you should be?

I hate it, and some of you probably have partners who constantly nag at you or make you feel bad for playing games without them.

If you do, you might try what I did, and recruit your girlfriend to play with you.

How are you going to do that? Since your girl probably “hates” (thats too strong a word I’m sure) WoW, and thinks computer games are for nerds?

Here’s my slightly tongue in cheek step by step program for getting your girlfriend (or boyfriend for you lasses out there) into WoW:

Step 1: Lets set a debuff of sorts in play before we do anything. This “debuff” is spending a little more time with that person to start with. Stop playing 24 hours a day and spend some more time with them. This way they’ll be happier with you, and less hostile towards the game. Its probably plain good sense to do this anyway, right?

Step 2: Do your share of the house work, and WHATEVER you do, don’t play games while your other half cleans the house or does something else boring. This is common sense, but us WoW addicts are really good at seeing through common sense ideas.

Step 3: Here’s where you really start. Ask your other half’s opinion on a new character you’re thinking of starting. If you have a girlfriend, tell them you’re toying with the idea of starting a female class just for something different/or because you’re tired of looking at a man’s ass all day while you play.

Make sure if you’re Horde, you’re looking at Blood Elf females. Nothing else. I know my girlfriend thinks Troll females, Orc females and Tauren females just aren’t pretty enough… and I’d wager its the same with a lot of the girls out there.

If you’re Alliance, you’re probably best off with Humans, Night elves or Draenei.

Step 4: Step through a few random combinations, and ask them what they think looks good. Go through all the hair combos, face changes, etc and see if you’re getting a good reaction. If your other half seems to be reacting well and likes the idea of creating a virtual ass-kicking vixen, just ask them right on the spot if they wanna start a character of their own… but lets put a spin on it. Its a truthful spin, by the way.

Step 5: Here’s the spin. You don’t just go, “hey why don’t you start a character, it’d be fun”. See if you can sell your partner on the fact that you can enjoy the game together. You’d start a new character, she’d create a new character, and you’d explore the world together.

It might sound a little demeaning or wrong to say this, but chicks like finding pretty new outfits for their toons, and us guys like finding outfits that make us look ugly, bad ass, and makes us stomp our competition. This is a gross simplification, but you might find if you can just get your other half to have a go with you, then they’d enjoy this aspect of the game.

Step 6: Tell them it’ll be free, too. You can use the recruit a friend program (just go to worldofwarcraft.com) and play together for 10 days for free, and he or she can see if they’ll like it. Tell them again that it’ll be fun to have a bit of light hearted gaming time together, you know a friend that plays with his girlfriend, and they have a great time sharing something in common (its true, you know me! .

Step 7: Other selling points you can use include, IF they like it, its only 15 odd dollars a month. That’s the price of a movie with about 100 times more entertainment and play time attached. 2 hours vs… what? 30 hours? It gets you away from all the negativity on the television. News and current affairs shows are just all horrid news these days, right? Even a year ago when things were rosy, it was still hideous to watch. These days its just unbearable. Despite the together time you get, your other half might actually really, REALLY enjoy it! They might put aside any preconceptions and negative feelings they have, give it ago and get hooked and love it. You never know.

Step 8: Do other things together too, otherwise all your hard work will be wasted.

Go outside, go for walks, go to movies now and again, and see friends.

If you just play WoW together and nothing else, you’ll probably end up losing your WoWing partner who recognises easier than you that you’ve become semi-recluses!

Good luck and if you’ve got any success stories of getting your game on with your other half, I’d love to hear it!

Dave “Dugi” Farrel from Ultimate WoW Guide has done something no one else has been able to do — create a daily quest guide that automatically updates depending on what daily quests you’re doing at the time.

Dave tells me this project was easier said than done thanks to WoW dailies being a bit more complicated than your usual step-by-step leveling guide.

Dugi’s major obstacle was that some daily quests are randomly selected by the server so a simple step-by-step guide was not viable.

Dave managed to find his way around it though which is great, and after weeks of testing he has got the daily quest guide to a stage where he can complete 25 daily quests in 1 and a half hours (and he’s got proof on his daily quest guide page).

If you’re interested Dave has some free info to get you started, as well as a paid in-game addon which is really nice. Just go to Dave’s daily quest guide, if you’d like to check it out.

Dave also has a bunch of videos that offer you free tips on how to better complete some of the existing daily quests, and he says you’ll be able to get plenty of useful and usable info out of them.

It’s totally worth your while to check out all the videos. Even if you’ve done some of these dailies before you might learn something new on how to complete them faster.

Want more info? Check out Dave’s Dailies and Events Guide.

I hear it all the time – “My boyfriend never spends time with me, he’s always stuck in front of the computer. Playing GAMES. UGH!”

I’ll be honest with you, I’ve heard it more times than I care to remember too… crap like, “Haven’t you played that enough today? Why don’t you spend that much time with me?” And other such nonsense. Isn’t it funny how playing hours worth of video games seem to get our girlfriends and boyfriends angry with us, but its perfectly normal in our society to sit in front of the television (aka the idiot box) for 6 hours a night!

I’m so sick of it I could almost… Read the rest of this entry