I play on a non-PvP server. I am part of a large guild that I have been with for almost a year. It’s large, but in guild chat we talk a lot and I have gotten to know a number of people quite well. Most recently I was online and we were talking in guild about some topic, maybe it was the war. I got a tell from one of the players about something I said, and boom ... we ended up talking for 8 hours straight. I have always respected this person and thought he was an intelligent, sensitive man, but after this night, I realized the depth of his personality. Well, as I’m sure you can imagine, we talked again the night after and after and after ... after 2 weeks we met and hit it off in RL ... really well. We are dating now, and he means a lot to me. It was weird, I was talking to a friend about it ... We got to know each other from 'the inside out' … meaning I got to know him on a deep personal level first without letting anything like physical appearance, etc get in the way. [EQ, F, 29]

We were in the same guild and about the same level and began hunting together regularly becoming friends in the process. Gradually we began talking about RL things and getting to know each other better and began talking outside the game using instant messengers. Getting to know him in game over a period of a couple years made transitioning to talking in RL so much easier, and we always had a lot to talk about. When I left that game for another and he stayed, we continued talking in RL and eventually added phone calls to the instant messengers. We live on opposite coasts so meeting took some planning but we did finally meet about 3 years or so after we met in game and had a great weekend becoming friends in person as well as online. We plan to meet again in a couple months for the second time. Meeting in person added a whole separate level to the friendship, it was a nervous time though, because we both worried that we would not click the way we had online. Meeting online first helps in several ways but creates its own problems as well. You may have much more to talk about with shared experiences from the game and such, but pictures and phone calls cannot substitute for seeing each others eyes and watching them smile when they see you. Meeting online was very different from say meeting someone at work or the mall. We were already friends, had much in common and had spent hours and hours talking about everything under the sun. We knew the person behind the pixels and liked them, Meeting face to face just opened another level to the relationship. It was very hard however to not have expectations for the first meeting, but I believe that is true for any 'first' such as a first date no matter how you meet. I suppose the biggest difference between this online beginning and other relationships is that we took our time, becoming good friends first and talking about everything. Learning to like and trust each other in game/online before actually meeting, in my mind, made everything much easier when we did finally meet face to face. This relationship has lasted almost 4 years now, who knows where it will end... that’s half the fun of life. Maybe 25 years from now I will be saying ' yes honey I really did meet your Grandpa fighting giants!' [DAOC, F, 43]