Via TNC, Sebastian at ObWi talks about what it is like to learn that someone you have known only through online gaming has died, and wonders if it is odd.
All I can think about is the WoW Guild that crashed an online funeral for one of their guild mates who had died:
For those of you who have no idea what you are watching, you are watching one guild slaughter another guild on a pvp server as they had gathered to hold a remembrance for a lost friend.
Zam
Oh God. I remember this. I’m pretty glad I got out of that game, it was really pissing me off when my guild leaders were getting pissed off at me for choosing school over a raid.
jeffreyw
Hell, I’ve shed tears over lost dogs that belong to people I’ve never met.
Midnight Marauder
Well, if we are posting WoW videos, then it is more than obligatory for this to be here:
LEEEEEEEEERRRROOOOOYYYYY JEEEEENNNKIIIIIIINNNNSSSS (link)
Alex S.
I played WoW for a long time… It’s not much different than mourning for famous people you have never really met in person, well, it’s probably less strange. And WoW is a game where you basically meet the same people over a several-year period on a daily basis.
donnah
I can’t speak to the gaming aspect of losing someone you’ve only known online, but I have lost online friends from chat boards, and it’s an odd, but genuine grief.
One guy I spoke to regularly online lived several states away, and we chatted about our families and daily goings-on. He posted that he hadn’t been feeling well and was going to see his doctor.
Weeks later, he sent me a PM that he had been diagnosed with liver cancer, but they thought they had caught it in time. Two months later he died.
I sent condolences to his wife, which was strange because of course she never knew me or the other members on the board. But she seemed glad to know that her husband was missed and that we had taken the time to acknowledge his importance to us.
Zifnab
When you think really hard, this was technically Obama’s fault too.
/self-parody
Zam
@Zifnab: http://www.wegame.com/view/Hymn_of_Hope_Baracks_Obama_Achievement/
Seanly
I understand the desire to gave a service for the person. But I gotta admit, I would’ve gladly joined the raid to bust it up. And I didn’t even like PvP.
Creepiest thing I’ve seen was the tale of two night elves having ‘sex’ near the tram and then getting mad at the guy who stumbled upon them.
dmsilev
It’s not weird. People you know are people you know, whether it’s face to face, pen pals, or companions on some online game.
Weird was the time that someone I knew through Usenet died in an accident. Because of the way messages propagated through Usenet, it could take several days for a given post to completely percolate through all the servers. There were a couple of days after someone posted the news of the accident in which posts from the victim were still appearing. Creepy.
-dms
Robin G.
I don’t see why it’s so strange to mourn people you’ve never met in person. WoW players talk about more than just WoW; friendships can develop. Most commenters here on BJ haven’t sat at a table together, but if one of us died, there would be sadness, yes?
Hell, I still raise a glass to Gilliard when the Yankees lose, and I never met him either.
Zam
It’s also important to note that they could have held this in an area where they couldn’t be attacked at any moment.
Just Some Fuckhead
It’s a dork eat dork world.
Derelict
@Robin G.:
I had only corresponded with Gilliard a few times, but I wept when he passed.
I also got pretty teary when Tbogg’s beloved Satchmo passed.
I don’t need to know someone directly to mourn for them or feel their pain.
TooManyJens
@Seanly:
What the fuck for?
BruinKid
Not strange at all. I’m a big UCLA fan, and on one of our main message boards, one of the regular posters was killed in the Glendale Metrolink crash when an asshole tried to commit suicide by parking his car in front of the train, chickened out at the last minute, and ran away but left the car there, causing the crash that killed 11 people on the train.
I had never met him in person, but those of us on the message board set up a memorial fund for his family that raised over $13,000. That’s how much we cared, and almost none of us had ever met him in person.
His widow wrote a message thanking us using his screen name, and I remembered how weird it felt to see his handle posting something, anything, after his death.
It’s the 21st century. We form online connections now, so I guess it’s natural to grieve over someone who’s passed away that you only knew online.
Cassidy
I couldn’t be waterboarded into playing WOW….but if I did, those are the folks I’d play with. Freakin’ hysterical!
Little Dreamer
I would be sad if you died, John… even if you do spend time in virtual communities and post videos by strange WoW players who don’t know how to spell the word “congratulations”.
That’s seven minutes of my life I’ll never get back, but I forgive you.
MikeJ
“Congradulations?” Really?
I expect better speeling in my WoW videos.
Joel
I was posting on baseball boards since the late 90s. I remember when 9/11 happened and one of the fans in residence was trapped in one of the towers. It was weird, but I couldn’t bring myself to grieve. I didn’t really know the guy.
jeff
These guys don’t hold a candle to Joe Lieberman. Some liberal said something mean to him once so tens of thousands a year must die. Griefers should bow before their king.
Blue Raven
Oh, yeah, you mourn the ones you lose and only knew online. The emotional connections are real, no matter what some people think. There’s familiarity that builds. It counts. Being on Second Life, I am very aware of this. There was a young woman with terminal cancer who elected to spend her last weeks inworld as much as possible. It helped her feel better about dying. In fact, and I admit this moment has a creepiness factor, she died while inworld. She wanted her last sights to include something beautiful and fun, not just a hospital room. And the place where she was at the moment of her passing became a memorial to her. Her parents were very happy she had so many who cared about her and that she could imagine herself dancing at the last instead of just lying there.
James K. Polk, Esq.
Jeez, watching that makes me sad how many hours/days/weeks I wasted playing that game.
Never again, MMO, never again.
nutellaontoast
yeah. seriously. go outside, folks.
D-Chance.
Most commenters here on BJ haven’t sat at a table together, but if one of us died, there would be sadness, yes?
You don’t really want to know the answer to that question… :D
As for the video:
a) there’s nothing wrong for feeling sorrow for someone you know in a virtual world (feeling sorrow for a virtual character, now that’s different), BUT…
b) holding an on-line funeral is just fucking creepy. STILL…
c) the raiding party were pure assholes who should be given a long, if not permanent, time-out from that game.
/makes me glad that the only games I enjoy playing are maze/puzzle/single-player types of games.
ruemara
1. I play. In fact, I play, I raid and I am OP.
2. Not only did I play with real life friends, but most of the guild I joined became at least decent online friends. I would mourn their passing. We like each other and encourage each other.
3. I’ve donated to people I knew who were ill, were in serious straits and have received in kind help, like my beloved Macbook.
4. if you’re gonna hold a no weapons funeral in WOW, at least pick a lovely spot in a starting zone, if you’re doing it on a pvp server.
5. Even I would kill nelfs on the ground that some of the players are annoying.
uila
I had sort of the inverse experience of some of the people here. Must have been 1993, sitting in the university computer lab to work on an assignment, and ventured on the IRC chat boards for the first time. I basically had no idea what it was or what I was doing. Couldn’t even find a topic that I had anything to speak to, until I found the reefer room. So there’s one other guy there, and we start bullshitting about getting high. I think I made a comment about Tompkins County bud. The guy says right on, do you live in Ithaca?… yeah, me too… student?… yeah, what school?… Cornell, me too… dude, are you at the computer lab???… yeah, which one?… Upson………….
And I shit you not, there’s only one other guy in the lab, he’s sitting directly across the table from me, and the two of us lift our heads up at the same time. Talk about awkward. It would be another 15 years before I had any interest in online forums (you can thank shitty republican governance for that).
My story ends with the two of us immediately logging off and walking back to college town… forced small talk went something like this… “so, do you have any weed?”… “no”… “yeah, me neither…”
Anne Laurie
@Robin G.:
The weeks after Steve was hospitalized, as Jen & the others tried to hold the blog together if only as an informational source for the rest of Gilliard’s invisible village, were a rich resource for future sociological/anthropological theses. Modern American society doesn’t have any good standardized rituals for mourning, unless you count dumping cheap plush toys and overpriced glitter candles at the scenes of random shootings and auto accidents, which makes it hard for even an extended bio-family to agree on “appropriateness”.
Xenos
One of the first times I ever ventured to this site, back in 2004 or 2005, there was a post memorializing a lost commenter (‘Mother Bear’?) who had been around since the beginning. I found it rather touching.
matoko_chan
lol
Illidan is the top pvp realm in all the World [of Warcraft].
Its were my last few remaining bracket twinks still live.
That was a fitting tribute, a wake that became a faction battle.
i luffs it.
;)
Califlander
I play an MMORPG (massively multi-player online role playing game) called EVE Online, a game set in a future universe in which the players are starship pilots, miners, industrialists and … well, pretty much whatever they choose.
A few months ago, a player whom I had known and “flown” alongside died. We had played together for about a year, and went our separate ways in game (EVE has about a quarter-million players, of whom about 50,000 are online on the same server during peak hours) about a year an a half ago. His death was unexpected, although I’d known he had a heart condition; he was young and otherwise healthy.
About two dozen players who had known him — in game only, none of us knew him in person — gathered online at the same time, loaded up the most expensive ships we could buy, and set out for a few hours burning our way across the EVE galaxy on a one-way mission to wreak as much havoc as possible. The “memorial op” was widely applauded, even by the players we attacked; and our raiding party was eventually hunted down and annhilated with the same gusto that we put into launching it.
Ogami Itto
That was cold; the attacking guild must’ve been rampaging Republicans. It’s still pretty funny though. :-D
The Tim Channel
Win to the guy who noted it’s a dork eat dork world.
When the name of the game is WORLD OF WARCRAFT, it’s a little bit over the top to bring moral judgment on the exact recipe for slaughter.
Enjoy.
Batocchio
I heard about this incident, but thought it was pretty classless so never watched any videos on it. Of course people will get friendly or even close in online gaming, just as they will in some blogging communities. Connection is a good thing, and paying respects to someone who died surely is.
RobertB
I’m with the Eve Online player – if my guild wants to have a funeral for me, make it a proper sendoff by running into Orgrimmar and killing every toon in there for a solid hour. Give my character a proper honor guard in its digital afterlife.
Jeff
I’m with those who salute the raiders. The concept of a funeral service is nice, but jeez, grow a brain. It’s not called World of Puppy Dogs and Rainbows — the idea is to KILL other characters with as little damage to you and yours as possible. If WoW doesn’t have “safe zones” for thing like memorials (which I’m sure it must), start a wiki, a YouTube channel, whatever, but don’t expect other players to act like you’re in a safe zone when you’re not.
Maroons.