A virtual funeral was recently held on the massively popular MMORPG World of Warcraft. The virtual memorial service was held to remember a popular guild member who had passed away in real life. I find this whole virtual funeral thingy rather absurd as players who organized the funeral is just taking the game far too seriously. The whole thing was just so bizarre with the partner of the deceased person logging into her account so that her character could appear on cyberspace one last time. It was also for the other players to pay their last respects to her. Her character stood at the edge of the hill and people lined up on the hill to pay their respects. Those people who turned up were however, ambushed by members of a rival guild. Everyone was killed and the raiding party looted all the db’s. The people who conducted the ambush actually recorded the whole thing and put it up on the net. Here’s the video. Please note that the vid is about 7 minutes long and it could take some time to load.
This incident generated lots of discussion on WoW boards (some examples here and here) with many people stating those who got killed needed to get a firm grip on reality. There were also some who said the funeral was a nice thing and condemned the actions of the ambush party. When I read that, I couldn’t really understand the fuss they were kicking up and I actually found the vid quite funny. Although it is understandable that guild members are normally very close to one another, they should have just kept the whole grieving thing among themselves. At the end of the day, WoW is just a game and games should never be taken too seriously. And if they wanted a peaceful ceremony, they would have held the funeral on a non PvP(player versus player) server. Almost every WoW players know that PvP servers are notorious and players jump at any opportunity they see. Let your guard down and your character gets killed.
So what do you guys think about this? Were the pk’s actions wrong? Online games are known to host cyber marriages but is an online funeral taking things to far ahead? When do you draw the line between reality and fantasy?
Hmm this is not the first time such a thing has happened. Being deeply rooted into the online (gaming) community myself, back then when graphical simulations were still not so widely available, there was.. Utopia.. a text-only, number crunching war game..
One of their more esteemed and established players passed away from cancer but did not tell everyone until the very end. Point being he kept up a strong appearance and all that. So basically the entire server well not everyone but in general had a period of mourning for this person and hey does it really matter whether it is online or not? The issue here is that somebody passed away and those who have been closely related to the deceased will of course express a little angst and sorrow at this loss.
Concerning the pk.. its just a typical pk mentality and behaviour.. act randomly, in a chaotic destructive loving manner.. you could even consider it as their mark of respect for the deceased for staging a final ‘fight’ on that day..
But of course the looting matter is all in all a fair’s fair. After all it is a PK server. Holding the funeral service of sorts in a non-PK server would be like.. an world record breaker riding your last bike race with helper wheels..
Online? Offline? Reality? Fantasy? This is reality. People celebrate, people mourn, people love and people hate. Be it online or offline, the Internet is just yet another medium where they can congregate and socialise and connect. Just that technology first provided the telegraph, and the phone, and widespread popularity of the written media, newspapers, magazines, television.. and now the virtual world.. the mode is the same, just in a different medium, a different guise..
See any difference?
Undoubtedly for people who’ve never played or been involved thoroughly with an online community, ultimately never belonged. If you never joined say the Bball team or the Computer Club, you would of course never know the experience of being one of ‘them’. Hence the blatant criticism that is just a proof of ignorance and the natural desire to be critical.
I hope you can look beyong the narrow point of scope defining ‘online with fantasy’ and ‘offline with reality’..
sometimes.. and most times.. people online are more honest, and truthful and hence real with themselves.. compared to reality where being pretentious is the norm and people hide behind masks all day long.. do tell me
Hi Neal,
I know that it’s human nature to mourn for someone who has passed away but there are lots of other ways to express grief. Like privately organised guild ceremony would have been much better or on a forum or even guest book for players to leave their final words. Anyways, those are just some of the things that I would do/organize if someone I was close to online passed away. Meanwhile, I would definately not consider the pk’s actions as a final ‘fight’ on that day. Online games are just ruthless.
As for the idea of people being more honest online,I’m not sure if i fully agree with you on that. The degree of closeness that people want to have with their online friends varies from each individual. While some may think that it is honest and truthful,others may be sceptical about it. People do pretend to be someone that they are not and there has been several cases of people being cheated online. A couple of years back there was this case of an American woman who pretended to be a bloke online and tricked another woman into marrying her. The victim never suspected that ‘he’ was actually a ’she’ and she only realized it after the wedding ceremony.
Going back to the issue of ‘offline vs ‘reality’ don’t you think it’s unhealthy when players are unable to separate ‘virtuality’ and ‘reality’ and when it crosses over too much? Like this incident where this guy got killed in real life by his friend just because he sold off a rare item his friend loaned to him in an online game.
If it’s a big issue, or someone widely respected, doing a small scale funeral / memorial does the person no respect. In that sense.. you might not realise it but a strongly knit community is like a living organism… one part dies the others will be able to feel it strongly and react with equal tenacity.
Well, honesty and deceit are two sides of the coin that is life. Definitely as say a noble idea such as communism is viewed as helpful to some people initially, there are other people who would misuse and abuse it for their own ends. Like the gun issue, is the tool at fault or the end user? A gun can be used for protection from say rabid animals or be used to commit crime. The same with the Internet. It allows some people who aren’t as open or truthful to themselves to loosen up and know more of their true self. Whereas simultaneously we have opportunists or people just looking for fun or those who love to cause trouble and mischief being deceitful in your sense and portray a totally different self. In a sordid point of view, is it not right to say that these deceitful people are actually being themselves? That it is part of their true nature to have fun pretending and playacting or deceiving? Just like how we have actors in real life, conmen and compulsive liars? Honest not in the sense of saying the truth, honest to themselves..
What is virtuality? What is reality? If your friend sold off your house without you knowing, or lets say a car, or a prized possession that you gladly loaned to him/her wouldn’t you be equally furious? Most people won’t of course go all the way to kill, but there are all kinds of people, violent or pacifistic and things like this just happen.
Mankind has always depended on virtuality.. the facility of imagination in every person. In our very heads.. aren’t our dreams and imagination a virtuality by itself? We try to construct our reality, to shape by force if not naturally to create an ideal reality. And the ideas all come from our virtual side. The unplucked idea becomes a useful real tool when processed.
Instead of fighting or interacting on the physical level.. we’re now able to do that on a higher sub-existence level. We are taking our civilization onto the virtual world. It is part of reality as well, because we made it, and what happens in the virtual world affects everyone as well so how can it not be real? Online trading, stock markets all over the world.. monitoring and weather reports.. online shops and auction sites.. so online games are just another sector in the world we shifted to the Internet. Our physical world is so cramped up with not enough room for the vast possibilities that the Internet allows us…
I beg to differ once more.. but this would get too lengthy if I continued ..
p/s as a useful comparison I would use rape and harassment and abuse as the mode of argument.
What constitutes as rape? A forced aggression on an unwilling recipient/victim. This can be done physically through sexual means, also forcing a victim to perform any other physical acts unwillingly or being abused with cigarette butts or through other means; Mental rape, through brainwashing, repeated suggestions and such, for example indoctrination, interrogation/torture, advertisements and marketing; Verbal rape/abuse, continuous verbal abuse can severely damage the mental and/or emotional condition of a person, commonly faced by spouses male or female, also children being victimised by peers, teachers, elders and especially parents.
Now, physical rape can definitely not (or maybe possible) be conveyed through the online / virtual world. But mental, emotional and verbal rape / abuse can be done virtually. The insubstantial / indirect forms of offensive communication can be carried out as per usual IRREGARDLESS of the medium of communication ie using one’s voice in real life towards a listening recipient (ear), newspapers, televisions, billboards, the telephone, by letter (hate mail anyone? blackmail or coercive contracts/documents being forcibly signed).
So why not the Internet? Point being it is just another medium of communication. Period. Virtual reality is just being fancy about it.
Well said, Neal.I agree with you that alof of the things that happen online now come from the physical world.
[...] There are others who question how far the virtual can translate to real – in her earlier entry on gaming community, Pui Li found it absurb that a virtual memorial service was held to commemorate the passing of a popular guild member. [...]
[...] A virtual funeral was held for a real person’s death in WoW. Pui Li discusses it. I think that if this was a meaningful memorial for the mourners, there’s nothing wrong with it, but they certainly did it at their own risk, as you will see. [...]