Get him the Warcraft 3 mod "defence of the ancients" or short dota.

It's with heroes and spells, can be played with friends, etc. The games last from 30 minutes to 1.5 hours at the most and are not continuous. Everytime you start out with the same basic premise, but it's very complex (e.g. there are 90 heroes you can choose from at the start of every game, buy them different items, play different strategies).

And it has not this "If I don't play I let the others down"-thing going on, that WoW has.

If you decide on it, you need Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos and the add-on Warcraft III: The frozen throne. It's pretty old by now, so it's super cheap to buy.
Then just download the mod at www.getdota.com.

ya, i dont encourage it. ideally u play sports, or are in some after school clubs or something.

though... when you are young, social interaction is more important that when you are old imo. internet poker lifestyle def encourages isolation. @ the same time, that poker lifestyle has given me stuff most ppl my age don't experience.

its got pros and cons.

studying after school all day is pretty isolating too, not just gaming.
u gotta find a healthy balance.

OP, if your kid HAS to play video games, maybe encourage him to do it w/ his friends or something. Like I'd play at my friends house, then we'd ride bikes, or play basketball etc...

Toon Town is a MMORPG just like WOW, only difference is you kill bad guys with sharp things instead of pies.

The solution to this is a skill-based game that involves heavy online competition. Like an RTS (e.g. Starcraft) or a fighting game (e.g. Street Fighter 4).

Basketball + hoop. I'm a little sad cause I thought this thread was about gambling for ten year olds

Get him the Zelda games they usually last a long time or Final Fantasy games they can last months to beat.

This was my first though as well.

Not trying to be argumentative. I actually agree with you that people, especially kids, should be well rounded and get to experience different things.

I'm just saying, if someone likes to do something like playing a video game for awhile, and he's not hurting anyone (or himself), let him. Obviously steps should be taken to ensure that it's not the ONLY thing he's doing, but the OP seems to have a pretty good handle on the parenting thing.

No. This is so wrong. Doing ANYTHING with your life is better than WoW.

If you want to develop a depressed, loner, type kid, then by all means teach him to play WoW. If you want to raise a kid who can actually take care of himself, teach him how to do real things and how to interact with people in real life.

This is coming from an ex-wow player that realizes every minute of time that I played in that game (and several other MMORPG's) was a complete waste of my life.

Unless you experience it, it is hard to describe. But there is no such thing as playing these games casually. There are only 2 types of people: Those who realize MMORPG's are a waste of time, and those who have yet to realize it.

Teach your kid while he still has a good shot at life. I wish my parents weren't so lenient on me.

This.

I doubt a 10 year old would really get hooked on WoW, but honestly, there's a small chance, and WoW is a gaping black hole of anti-social, loner, nerd-dom that is awful. Get him some console games that he can play with friends like Super Smash Bros, Madden, Halo etc.

fwiw being brutally honest I had 120+ days played of WoW in probably 3 years and I had little social life in high school because of it, I started out playing casually and it just took over to the point of me wasting all of my free time playing.

man when I was 10 I played basketball, baseball, football, hockey, pretty much any sport with a bunch of other kids on my street. Have your kid do that, video games are the devil imo.

instead of letting him play WOW why dont you just stick a sign on his back that says dont have sex with me

this will save him time and trouble in the future

there are so many times i thank my parents for not having the internet when i was a child, but my parents were not capable of monitoring something like that either. i think gambleAB made the best posts itt. at first i was all set to agree with when he said cod4, but that will prob not interest a 10 yr old mmorpg player.

just for more emphasis, don't let him get anywhere near WoW, it's a life killer

QFT

Now seems like a good time to introduce him to online poker. Start making him grind low limits and give you all his winnings.

I prob shouldn't admit this.......but I let him have $5 on FTP and said he's only allowed to play $1 SNG. He ran it up to $40 playing a few on weekends (no play on school nights). Then he took it all and sat at a cash game and lost it all in .01/.02 NL He didn't realize he was losing and was confused because I had the autoreload on and he was only going to play with $2. He cried for hours over it, so I said no poker for you. Didn't follow the rule and he was too upset over the loss. I took him out and bought him the new bike he was trying to build his BR up for btw after that happened, and he's never asked to play poker since.

Hahaha.....I grew up in north IA, sounds like my childhood. But we now live in the AZ desert, and it's too hot to go outside 6 months a year....alhtough we go boating and swimming every weekend. In the winter he never touches his computer. He plays baseball on the team I coach, rides bikes, builds forts.

So around here, summer activities during the week include (I work from home) inviting over his friends and they play indoors.....video games of course.

Lots of good info here for me to work with and I thank you for the suggestions. I def will not be letting him on WOW based on comments though.

Wow I would have reloaded him if he turned $5 into $40...Then lost it because you had auto reload on. J/K

As a former avid gamer, games such as Starcraft, Diablo 2, and Warcraft 3 have very great replayability. You can interact with the game to a lesser extent than WoW, and it's not addicting. It's something your child can spend time on during his leisure. Other games I suggest are games created by Valve. Counter-strike Source, Half-life 2, and Team Fortress 2 are very great and fun games to play. For his age, I would highly recommend Starcraft, Diablo2, or Team Fortress 2. If he/she were my child, I would much spend alot of time with him/her teaching the game of poker (not gambling wise, just theory wise).

Personally, I enjoyed the Age Of Empires games alot.

When I was 10 I was playing NBA Jam with my friends when we couldn't go outside. Maybe try and get him into a little retro gaming? It would be something that makes his place a unique place to hang out and the games don't last very long.

^^^^kids these days have no interest at all in 8 or 16bit games.

Stay away from WoW and get him Team Fortress 2. Don't listen to GambleAB: WoW is significantly different than having 7000 posts on a message board.

going through the same maps over and over again is great replayability amrite

that game consumed me between the ages of 13-17 though so it must have done something right.

I recommend team fortress 2. easy to play and quite fun.

Yea, me too, D2 was nuts. Insanely time consuming, but every time I started over it was fun. I would take a break for few months then get right back into it seamlessly.

Before my life was consumed by computers, this is pretty much all I had/did.

Games I'm going to look into so far based on replys....

Starcraft
Diablo
Fortress 2

Are these all multiplayer interactive games he can play online?

The first is a RTS (can be played online, but he'll get crushed by people who have been playing it for 10+ years), second is a RPG I don't know much about but old/very popular in its time, TF2 is a shooter you play online.

Does he like shooters? Those can be great for more "casual" online play. The problem with MMORPG (what you're describing, games like WoW in which you play a fictional character interacting with a huge world) is that they tend to be either boring, or when they're not they're super addictive and you play a ton until you get bored with it (at least that's what it was for me when I was in those ages). Real-Time Strategy (RTS) games are a great choice IMO since they make you think a lot.

If you go the MMORPG route, might as well go w/ WoW since it's by far the best right now.

In shooters, Battlefield 2, Counter-Strike (old, but classic), Quake Live (free) and TF2 are good choices imo.

Warcraft 3 is probably the best RTS for the online aspect you wanted.