Consider the following pick-up lines: “So you want to get some coffee?” “I really want to get to know you, you want to do something tonight?” “After I repair my gear and clear up my bag space, you want to go farm trolls together in Blackrock Mountain?”
Surely you recognize the first two cliché come-ons, but it’s likely you’ve never encountered the third. Speculatively, that would be a pickup line used by a person to engage another person of interest in “World of Warcraft,” a massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) played by millions of people all over the world.
As strange as it may seem, real-life romance can be found on MMORPGs. There are players who bring dates to the virtual world of Azeroth and develop real-life love while battling dragons and attaining powerful artifacts to equip their characters.
According to social norms, dating is usually expected to involve invitations extended by either gender to meet at a desirable location to seek out attractions and conversation. However, with so much of the world online, people are now finding romance through Internet entertainment. For some this means frequenting dating websites, but for others, this means cavorting through virtual worlds with one another.
This increasingly popular trend of fantasy dating dating might be in part attributable to a rise in female gamers in a genre that once catered to a mainly male audience. There is an article (aptly titled “A World of Warcraft Wedding”) on the Associated Content website that includes accounts of real couples finding each other and “marrying” in “World of Warcraft.” The article maintains that finding love in MMORPGs is no different than finding dates in online dating sites. There is also a page in the World of Warcraft Europe site with an account of a couple marrying online in one of the European servers. There is even a column from the Jive Magazine website from a girl gamer promoting girlfriends to spend time and play games with their boyfriends to connect with them.
The image of gamers as anti-social nerds with the a lack of social skills is slowly evolving into a more positive presence, despite the news media continually demonizing computer games and their players.
Once the soul terrain of boys and men, there are now numerous Myspace pages of women proudly waving their “I am a gamer” banners. No matter what the mainstream opinion may be, love is here to stay in Azeroth and Paragon City, just as it is in the real world.
Gamers are human beings, and they do find human love.