How do I prevent someone from playing wow?

[zendari]

One of my cousins sent me an email, concering his 15 year old son, who plays WoW a good 12 hours a day. Now, she's become quite concerned about this behavior. The kid is smart, academically is a top student in his grade, and is reasonably computer literate.

Edit: Apparently the kid is 15, not 12. I didn't know.

This kid, whom I'll call Jim, set up windows XP so that he is the only system admin and his parents are limited accounts, which AFAIK means they cant just uninstall the program and chuck the discs. The parents have cancelled the service, but there is still 5 months remaining on the subscription.

I can't remove internet access or the computer completely because the dad needs the PC for internet. I couldn't get into the firewall to block wow without a system admin account. I couldn't uninstall wow. I couldn't get into his wow account via worldofwarcraft.com in any way.

Now this is an old PC (p4 1.6 ghz and geforce 2 mx videocard). I did turn on 4xAA in the driver options, hoping this would bog down his gaming enough that it would be unplayable. I also tried to downclock his GPU, but I couldn't install coolbits without system admin.

Any other ideas?

update:

Thanks for all your help. I strongly suggested (as is the consensus here) to reformat, but the rents refused, not wanting to reinstall his stuff again. :disgust: Anyway, I went into the router, and blocked port 3724 (the blizzard port) for all IP addresses. That should do it I assume?

I also used crispyfiends safe mode trick and put his rents back as system admins.

 

[Corbett]

Tell your cousin to grow a backbone and tell the kid he cant play any more! Sound like some great parents! :roll:

 

[Elcs]

I dont play WoW but cant you just steal his CD's? Unless WoW plays without CD.

One point, they could set a password in the BIOS to prevent the PC starting up unless the parents want it to. (until the kid realises how to reset the CMOS)

 

[Varun]

Well they can remove his rights to the computer by not allowing him to play, not a technical answer but you'd think a 12 year old kid would be able to listen to his parents.

Another option is to go into the router and block the IP of the server he connects to.

Third, make the kid change the parent account to administrator and uninstall the game.

I don't mean to sound rude but I can't believe littly Jimmy can just do whatever he wants. You should not have to do anything to the computer to make him stop playing.

 

[d2arcturus]

Originally posted by: Corbett
Tell your cousin to grow a backbone and tell the kid he cant play any more!

Jokes aside, some real parenting may do the trick. But hey it's 2005, lets blame Blizzard. SUE SUE SUE!

 

[GuileVsGuile]

he's a little brat and his parents don't know how to deal with his BS... let that've been me when I was 12 yrs old...geez

 

[ValuedCustomer]

Originally posted by: Corbett
Tell your cousin to grow a backbone and tell the kid he cant play any more! :Q

thank you! - jeebus! what is wrong w/ people these days that let their kids dictate what their kids can & can't and should & shouldn't do?? - put the kid on restriction from the damn PC and if he catches the kid messing around w/ it, give the kid a good spankin' and reformat the machine and set the kid up w/ a "restricted user" profile.. in that order. - anybody remember "discipline"??

 

[nebula]

You could give this a try, Password Editor

I've used it a couple of Win2K systems and a XP Pro system. It's a boot floppy/CD that lets you change/blank the admin password, or any other user. It looks a little daunting, but if you want to just blank the admin's password, just accept all the defaults, i.e. hit enter. There is one time I think you have to enter an asterisk, but otherwise fairly straightforward.

 

[d2arcturus]

Oh, nebula reminded me of something. Boot into the BIOS and set a password in there for every time the computer turns on.

 

[l Xes l]

Originally posted by: Corbett
Tell your cousin to grow a backbone and tell the kid he cant play any more! Sound like some great parents! :roll:

agreed... he's not even 21.. he's 12 and parents have no control over him?!...

 

[mwmorph]

Originally posted by: nebula
You could give this a try, Password Editor

I've used it a couple of Win2K systems and a XP Pro system. It's a boot floppy/CD that lets you change/blank the admin password, or any other user. It looks a little daunting, but if you want to just blank the admin's password, just accept all the defaults, i.e. hit enter. There is one time I think you have to enter an asterisk, but otherwise fairly straightforward.

excellent program. boots a compact linux command kernel. took me a lot of tires to finally get it to work but it works well.

 

[zendari]

Originally posted by: d2arcturus

Originally posted by: Corbett
Tell your cousin to grow a backbone and tell the kid he cant play any more!

Jokes aside, some real parenting may do the trick. But hey it's 2005, lets blame Blizzard. SUE SUE SUE!

They actually tried that. When they called Blizzard to cancel the account she was actually screaming at the Blizzard rep for "screwing up children across the country".

I told them just to spank him a new one but they refused. Bad parents no doubt but at least they realize it.

 

[zendari]

Originally posted by: Varun
Well they can remove his rights to the computer by not allowing him to play, not a technical answer but you'd think a 12 year old kid would be able to listen to his parents.

Another option is to go into the router and block the IP of the server he connects to.

Third, make the kid change the parent account to administrator and uninstall the game.

I don't mean to sound rude but I can't believe littly Jimmy can just do whatever he wants. You should not have to do anything to the computer to make him stop playing.

That's the problem in a nutshell. They can't just "make" him change the accounts, or else they would have "made" him stop playing wow all the time.

Oh, and they aren't home all day. So this needs to be remotely enforcable.

 

[d2arcturus]

Originally posted by: zendari

Originally posted by: d2arcturus

Originally posted by: Corbett
Tell your cousin to grow a backbone and tell the kid he cant play any more!

Jokes aside, some real parenting may do the trick. But hey it's 2005, lets blame Blizzard. SUE SUE SUE!

They actually tried that. When they called Blizzard to cancel the account she was actually screaming at the Blizzard rep for "screwing up children across the country".

I told them just to spank him a new one but they refused. Bad parents no doubt but at least they realize it.

You can't be joking! I was joking! Holy sh*t what has this world come to? I think mommy and daddy need a spanking.
Haha oh geez all this talk about WoW reminds me to renew my subscription and start playing again. I've been off for a month and been having withdrawls... grrrlllg... must.. play.. WoW....

 

[suicidalpigeon]

take the internet equipments whenever you dont use the comp.

 

[w00t]

what the hell if the kid is doing a good job in school why cant she/he play wow i mean 12hours a day is bad but just limit how much she can play.

sounds like bad parents.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Wow that kid's life must be awesome. I kinda sympathize with him though cuz I remember doing the same thing with starcraft (lol blizzard is the devil!). He'll probably burn out on it soon and settle down to more reasonable playing time.

But that doesn't answer your question does it? If they don't want to fiddle with password editor they could just use an old win98/win95 boot disk (available as images on the net) to format the drive and then reinstall XP. All they have to do then is set up the user accounts as they SHOULD be, with the kid on a limited account.

 

[zendari]

Originally posted by: wafflesandsyrup
take the internet equipments whenever you dont use the comp.

They tried that as well. Pulled out the ethernet cord, not realizing he has a half dozen of the stashed around his room. :roll:

I'm trying not to disrupt their general computer usage or his non-Wow computer usage. The router idea sounds best, how do I access the WoW server he connects to and can I block it without system admin? I don't have a WoW account to attempt to login with.

 

[ryanv12]

The parents just need to show him who's boss...dah, white people. Can't understand them.

I know that these little side-stepping tricks absolutely do not work, because I found all kinds of ways around them when I was a kid. I would play Warcraft II (coincidence?) for hours on end (although I think my record was only 8 hours in one day).

Maybe the family computer can be a laptop and that goes to work everyday

 

[teddyv]

One word ...

Dailup.

 

[biostud]

If you play while not allowed your computer is off ground for a month.

 

[Mistabullet]

Dang... When I play c-s for too long my parents just give me a look of dissapointment and I get off haha.

Umm have the parents tried threats like no more such and such if you continue doing this

 

[2Xtreme21]

Erm, assuming you have no ethernet cables lying around the house, just yank it out of the back of the comp and take it with you when you go to work. Or do the same for the power cable if you don't want him on the computer at all.

If you're going to allow him to use the internet, yeah, just set a password on the router and block all outgoing traffic to the WoW ports (I think 6112-6119).

 

[mettleh3d]

LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOL, you tried to bog his sytem down. ahahhahahahaha, OCing his GPU is as bad as smashing his computer with a hammer. you do that you F uck dad's internet too. No monitor...

 

[Diademed]

Originally posted by: teddyv
One word ...

Dailup.

Dialup. Cancel teh Bradband.