MMO Friendships That Changed Your Life: Share Your Stories

Have you ever met someone in an MMO who ended up changing your life? That's the question PC Gamer's Terminally Online column is throwing out to readers this week, and it's hitting a lot closer to home than your average gaming debate.

The column, which runs every other week, is all about MMO culture, interviews, and the mechanics we usually take for granted. This time, the writer got nostalgic while playing WoW: Forever, which has them missing that older style of MMO—a lived-in world you actually spend time in, rather than a theme park of daily tasks. Nothing wrong with theme parks, they admit. Roller coasters are fun. But a slower pace has them grouping up with strangers more often, partly for convenience and partly because they're less obsessed with rushing to the next thing.

That mindset brought up The Remarkable Life of Ibelin, the documentary about Mats Steen, a WoW player who died in 2014 from Duchenne muscular dystrophy. His closest online friends traveled from around the world to attend his funeral—a reminder of how deep these bonds can go.

The writer isn't claiming that kind of impact, but after 16 years of playing and roleplaying in MMOs, they've met plenty of people who changed their life. That includes their first girlfriend, plus friends who became just as important as any "real world" pals.

One friendship stands out. For the better half of a decade, they've known someone mostly through voice chat—for reasons they can't share—and that person has been a constant force of good in their life, and vice versa. They've pulled each other out of some real mental swamps. They've hopped between City of Heroes: Homecoming and Final Fantasy 14 together, telling countless stories along the way. They've even met that friend's sister in the real world by sheer accident. It all happened in the tiny, cozy window of Discord, and yes, they'd call this person one of their best friends.

For the writer, that's the real point: friendships are what make these games special, beyond any design trick, art asset, raid, or loot system. So this week's column is an open invitation—share your own stories in the comments below.

What do you think? Has an MMO friend ever changed your life for the better?