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Most of us have friends and family we don't get to see very often due to time constraints or distance. Keeping in contact can be hard with life getting in the way at times. My family though happens to be a WoW family. My mother, father and sister and her husband, aunt and two of my cousins all have twow accounts. We each have characters on the same realm and get in touch with each other through the game.

Many people look at WoW as a nerdy diversion or just a game, but for me, it has allowed me to stay in contact with friends and family I would not otherwise get in touch with nearly as often. My aunt lives on the other side of the state, about two and a half hours away; my cousin is in the Air Force stationed in Europe. We use email, phone calls and occasional visits, but WoW is how we primarily contact each other. I hop on my tank, my cousin has his rogue, and my aunt plays her mage, and we run instances or quest together or occasionally level alts all while catching up. We have actually ran randoms with five different family members talking and joking over Vent, catching up on current events in each others' lives.

Do you have family who plays also? Do you use it as a way to keep in touch with them? If so, is it just joking, or do you pass real important news back and forth over the game?