COLUMN: Online gaming relationships not so weird any more
I met my girlfriend on “World of Warcraft.”
Average college students would probably peg this at around six neck beards on a weirdness scale of one to 10. I don’t blame them.
It’s a pretty darn odd way to start a relationship, particularly when you’re both role playing as women. (There’s a mistake I’ll never make again.)
But after the giggles about misguided attempts to hook me up with other male players subsided, we had a healthy bond that has stuck around for four years and I hope to continue as long as we draw breath.
Did I get lucky? I definitely think so — and not just because she’s probably going to read this. But our case really isn’t so bizarre.
A 2006 study by Nicholas Yee, author of ‘The Psychology of MMORPGs,” indicated 15.7% of male players and 5.1% of female players had dated someone they met in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, like WoW.
Keep in mind that in 2006 WoW was only two years into its paradigm-shattering climb to the top where it now holds steady at over 12 million subscribers, just 10 percent of whom would make for over a million people in relationships started in-game.
That’s a whole lot of cyber love.
Do not be surprised if, in the next 20 years, answers to the “How did my parents meet?” question become increasingly prefaced with explanations of guild politics, player-versus-player antics and minor quibbles over treasure drops.
If we decide to have kids I will be happy to tell them the exact story. And if WoW holds out the way it is now, I’ll probably be able to show them where I was standing in Stormwind’s Cathedral Square, right next to the priest-class trainer, when I first met their mother.
I’ll probably leave out the part where I’m a girl, though.
