WSJ: To Find a Mate, Raid a Dungeon Or Speak Like an Elf

The Wall Street Journal

June 9, 2006

To Find a Mate, Raid a Dungeon Or Speak Like an Elf

Flirting in Online Games Can Lead to Offline Love; Lord Krideldek's Ploy
By DAVID KESMODEL
June 9, 2006; Page A1

Over the years, Mark Brown searched for Ms. Right in all the usual places: at parties, work functions and the occasional singles bar. He ended up meeting her inside a videogame. Mr. Brown was sitting at his computer in England, controlling a character named Mighty Thud in an online game called City of Heroes. Across the ocean in Maryland, Jody Petroff guided a figure named Molecule Witch.

The two superhero characters began chatting after each survived a brutal ambush by villains. "We seemed to work on the same wavelength," the 38-year-old Mr. Brown says of the couple's first online exchange of text messages. "There was something that first night, something about the personality behind the keyboard." Soon, the two, who both are computer programmers, were playing and chatting online every day. Three days ago, they were married.

The pair is among those who have fallen in love while playing so-called massively multiplayer online games, known as MMOGs. In them, enthusiasts spend hours killing monsters and completing quests in ever-changing virtual worlds. Several videogame publishers report that dozens of their players have tied the knot after meeting inside their games. Sometimes they take the leap after first staging an in-game wedding. Sony Online Entertainment, a unit of Sony Corp., says at least 20 couples have wed after meeting in its medieval fantasy games EverQuest and EverQuest 2. That includes the company's senior vice president of legal affairs, Andrew Zaffron, and his wife.

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Yankee Group, a Boston technology-research firm, estimates that MMOGs, which can be played simultaneously by thousands of people using the Internet, are played by 25 million to 30 million people world-wide.

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just don't do it. your eternal soul is at stake.

(for the sarcasm impaired. thats half a joke)

Everytime I think that this is a bit odd, I realize that I am an old fashioned fogey. I should remember that back in the day, you only married someone with the approval of both families, and after proper introductions. And before that, hell, women were SOLD into marriage!

So, whatever makes them happy, I guess!

They could be doing something that's a stupid waste of time.

Reading the WSJ for instance.