Guild Wars is a very flexible game. There are a lot of ways to have fun in it, some of which don't involve fighting. Guild Wars is built to make a lot of the "griefing" (for example,loot stealing) that can happen in older games like Diablo II less likely. It's possible to play the whole game using computer-controlled henchmen, but it's more fun to play with others that you know, and the game supports "Guilds" to let you stay in touch with your friends and help you play together. The online chat is configurable so you can shut off various aspects of it (for example, you can set it up to only show the player "guild chat"). If a parent were to link the child's guild wars account to the parent's email account and got the child into a family friendly guild, the game would be pretty safe as far as Massively Multiplayer Online games go. Having no monthly fee is a bonus if you think your child may lose interest in the game.