Weak relationships?

The friends I made in WoW are real friends just like all other friends. That I can't afford to meet them face to face makes them no less friends. In fact, I quite take offense to my friendships with them being in any way called 'less'. And I know I am by far not the only one.

Playing a (potentially) international video game together with millions of other people gives us something that makes any relationship extremely strong: choice. We cannot chose who lives near by in our city, we cannot chose who we are related to. If none of these people are true friend 'material' we are out of luck and have to 'make do' . I know quite a number of people who suffer from that.
We can, however, chose who we guild with, party with, chat with, and thus we can chose those as our friends that we truly relate to, without the boundaries of location, blood or culture.

I argue that relationships on such a multimillion video game are exactly as strong as the people who make and have them want them to be. Not a smitten less.

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