NIDZUMI+

So for those that know me, gaming is a part of life. I have spent years inside Video Games and years more inside MMO’s. I met the love of my life online, and I lost her offline. So perhaps this article will be a bit deep, so if you are easily troubled, don’t read on.

One of the common problems we will face as online gamers, especially those immersed with Massive multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, is death. As the population of gamers ages, what happens to the accounts, what troubles will be faced? I want to detail below, one account of me dealing with someone very close, who died in a game, the problems I list are just a few… and it makes me wonder if perhaps all of this could have been avoided, if the Game Developers introduced a Will system, so that in the event that the player died, the account information was passed on to someone close, so that I could have signed in and informed everyone on the first list the player had died, and dealt with it quietly and fast.

As my first love got sick, I had dropped out of high school, I had moved cities… and perhaps I was foolish. I tried to study, and in my spare time, be with her… and as her health worsened, I found myself at her side even more often. Eventually at 12:03am, September the 8th 2006, she slipped away. I was prepared and all I could muster were silent tears. It took a few days; the memorial was out on the ocean… she, my angel… and at the time, very famous Pink Elementalist… had passed.Due to respect to her, I will not mention her user-name or the game and that’s not something for me to focus on.

There was no player more feared, called upon or respected. After accepting the loss, I found myself with a difficult task. Dealing and calling our much loved guild members and friends from the games we played to inform them of the loss, this was very difficult, and even now I am sure I never told everyone… as I didn’t have access to her account friends list.

Once the news had spread, as I had to rely on word of mouth to try let all her friends know, it did not take long for the Message Boards to become buzzing with news of the death, The Fallen Famous Pink Elementalist, she was never hard to miss. It was here though, where I encountered my first problem, Just how cruel players can be over the loss of a fellow player.

There were many messages of sympathy, of mourning, of loss. Then every now and then there would be a smart comment, or laughter, even jokes as to why and how she died, there was even one rival guild which made a very cruel comment about how she deserved it.

I guess, however in the end it was to be expected, and I think this problem I could overlook. However from this moment on, the problems became more bizarre.

About 2 weeks after her passing, I got a system administrator mail, asking for a private chat in-game. I replied and a time was set, for a while I thought this was due to being accused of something, or a bug report I had filed a few months earlier. When I arrived and chatted to them, they told me one of the problems I had never expected, problems probably most of the players had never heard of or realized.

The game at the time had a free-flowing economy, basically no auction service and people argued through chat over prices in a certain server, or through the message boards and what the Game Moderators detailed to me in a chat was a deep a dire situation on the economic stability of the game itself. My partner, being as famous as she was, was also a top trader in rare weapons and items, and according to the game moderators, her account had inside it, half of the rare items which were non-drop, meaning that the items themselves would never appear again, in the game. Making those left suddenly inflate faster than they had ever done before. They were asking me if I would allow them to transfer her items into my account, and for me to either sell them, or begin trading them. As I had the passwords to her account, if they introduced new ones, they would have to remove the original ones as to not have more in the system, than the amount set. I declined, and told them that they should remove the ones in her account, and begin trading as I would not touch her items.

The third problem I faced after her passing was again another bizarre one. Rumours that she never died, and reports on the Message Boards of people seeing her. Even today I cannot explain this one, but the accusations I received of some very detailed elaborate conspiracy for… who knows what purpose? Needless to say by this point I was tired, and at long last, I clicked the X button and never signed back in.

As I said at the start, could this have been avoided with a Will system? What happens to that lonely gamer, who knows no-one offline when they die. Would anyone ever know? Would they just drop off the earth? I have pondered a lot. Ever since this day, I personally have sealed all my login details in an envelope and written, open in the event of my death, and left it beside one of my computers with instructions of who to tell inside. Are your virtual assets worth handing down?

RIP The Famous Pink Elementalist.

-Matt Maharaj, Community Manager of Game Mold