Breakfast Topic: How do relationships in game affect relationships in real life?
by Peter Anargirou 
Jun 1st 2011 at 8:00AM
Most of the time, relationships in and out of World of Warcraft are completely separate. There are people I know in the game and people I know out of it. With the number of available realms, even the people I know in real life who play WoW are on different realms. This contributes to keeping in-game and out-of-game politics separate. But what happens when these two parts of your life come together?
At the end of Wrath, most people I knew played on different realms than me. I always wanted to play more with my friends, and we decided to do something about it. For Cataclysm, a large group of us transferred to a single realm so we could play together. We formed a guild, and suddenly my roommate was also my guild leader. In fact, that meant four major raid and guild members lived under the same roof. If any drama were to unfold in guild, surely it would spill over into my house. What if someone I liked in real life was terrible in WoW?
Unfortunately, that guild started to fall apart on me. As I thought about leaving the guild, I wondered what it would do to my relationships out of the game. Would there be hard feelings? From my experience, guild drama definitely did spill over in real life, although no friendships were hurt. In the end, I did feel it best to leave the guild, and everybody understood. I was lucky.
Do you play with people you know outside of the game? Has drama in WoW ever become drama in real life? What do you do to separate the two?
Filed under: Breakfast Topics, Guest Posts
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 3)
whitfield Jun 1st 2011 8:10AM
If you and real life friends play WoW, you all should be aware that WoW drama spilling over into real life means you're not mature enough to play WoW. I've actually had a buddy stop talking to me altogether because I left the small guild we were in to join a raiding guild even though I mentioned it before hand. Realization? He wasn't that great of a friend to start with.
shatto.a Jun 1st 2011 9:36AM
Hell, I don't even cut off contact with IN GAME friends when stuff like that happens. As long as you don't cause a shitstorm in guild on the way out, I'll keep in contact with you. We can still do randoms together, and who knows, you may be without a raid when I need a fill one day.
RedderTheEmoDK Jun 1st 2011 1:22PM
I know someone with two accounts, GM, many 346+ alts who has quit the game after a RL friend put raid progression over friendship and left his guild.
I understand. If being in a "better" guild is more important than the RL friendship, then it wasn't a friendship and you are not a good person. Even wondering if you should hurt a friend to help your WoW "career", to me, shows really bad priorities.
And yes, the other side: I knew a guild that quit raiding when the Raid Leader let the little head do the thinking as he went to join the guild his stalkee was GM of.
whitfield Jun 1st 2011 1:28PM
If the GM was the only one to leave, ok? Replace him. I'm not going to pass up opportunities to experience everything WoW has to offer because a group of friends prefer to play casually. And if they're friends at all they won't care. People getting all pissy over someone leaving a guild to join another in order to experience raid content, probably has severe control and abandonment issues in the first place, which loops back around to they're not much of a friend anyway.
MattKrotzer Jun 1st 2011 8:11AM
I've seen several marriages ruined because of in-game relationships, but that's a slightly different path than what the topic seems to be about.
I've only played WoW in-game with one RL friend, and if anything, it made us better friends, and the fact that we've been co-workers for years actually gave us great synergy as co-tanks.
It's a shame he's currently on hiatus from WoW. I could certainly use a friend like him in-game, and especially someone I can rely on as a tank.
C8 Jun 1st 2011 8:14AM
Thats the same as me. My mate got me playing wow at the end of last year and we have become better friends because of it.
Rodanju Jun 1st 2011 8:21AM
I ran a guild with a few of my buddies when WOTLK came out. We did the same as the article says and all took advantage of a free migration to a new lesser populated server. Things went great for a while then started to fall apart. It didn't really spill over into real life thank goodness. I was the type of guild leader that said if you feel like you need to leave or can do more with another guild then go ahead. I expressed how I hated to lose members but that I wasn't the person paying their $15/month subscription so I couldn't tell them what to do.
Trimble Jun 1st 2011 8:23AM
i play with my other half at times she gets hot and bothered, to which i stop her playing and explain its only a game and that we cant argue about what happens in it. instead talk about it and come to a understanding.
i now cant finish loremaster untill she is home and cant do a few achievements also without her. but its great fun playing as a team.
DanL Jun 1st 2011 8:23AM
I acctually had my first experience of this the other night, when a friend of mine got angry with me because I said that I didn't wanna try out Rift, which is his new thing, and that I was having fun playing WoW and don't want another mmo until I feel done with this.
I'm still a bit weired out by this, can't understand what triggered this hostility.
Coopaloop Jun 1st 2011 8:26AM
who is in the picture?
Z4focus Jun 1st 2011 8:29AM
My wife and I play together and there has been moments where we have got upset at each other for something that was done in a raid. She is heals I am tank and despite the articles here about making toons to complement each other. I would suggest that a husband and wife team NOT be tank and heals. I "let" her die and that's not excusable lol.
We do enjoy playing together though. I dunno what I would do without my lovingly, gorgeous resto shammy wife.
Mortenebra Jun 1st 2011 9:35AM
Sometimes it works out and sometimes it doesn't-- it sounds obvious (well no duh, right?), but it's absolutely true. My husband is a warrior, our raid team's main tank, while my main is a hunter with all sorts of tricks up her sleeve. On our alts, however, I'm a tank/heals spec'd paladin while he's a resto/dps shaman. I find it incredibly helpful to call out which abilities I'm using to mitigate the situation-- but only to him. I'd feel really silly saying it on Vent (mostly because I'm mic shy), yet it feels completely natural just rattling things off to him. When I do get to heal on my paladin, it's usually him on one of his tanking toons (e.g. the DK) and he'll do the same for me so I know to regain mana if I need it, heal someone else, etc. If the proverbial sh!t hits the fan because we're running with a full alt group and there are people undergeared or underperforming (and that's what alt runs are for, after all, to get gear and learn the ropes), we're actually less frustrated because we were coordinating outside of the game and know we're doing alright.
All of this, oddly enough, stems from when he and I coordinated pulls as tank and CC all the way back in BC when we were still across the country from one another and not even dating yet. Out in the real world, when our daughter starts acting like a hellion (she's only 15mo but rapidly prepping for the Terrible Two's), we take the same approach of coordinating with one another and acting as a cohesive unit. If there was only a tranq shot to dispel the baby's tantrums...
Nina Katarina Jun 1st 2011 8:45AM
Our main tank and healing lead are divorcing one another. It's been quite sad for us kids. We're glad to keep our healer, but we miss our tank.
I suspect, from some things the healer has said, that for the last few months the game was the only thing they had in common. Perhaps it masked underlying problems too long, so those problems were never fully dealt with? It's impossible to know, especially from the outside of a relationship.
I would like to play with Real Life Friends, and I know that statistically speaking it's likely that some of my facebook friendslist has to be WoW players, but I'm not yet at the point where I want to out myself as a gamer to my game-negative aunts/uncles/cousins.
And, quite frankly, my guildies who I've never met in the flesh are super awesome people and I'd feel guilty abandoning them no matter how old a group of friends I left them for.
Straz Jun 1st 2011 9:09AM
I made a post on my Facebook the other day about something related to Elitist Jerks then went to work. When I came home that afternoon I had all sorts of replies and messages from friends that played WoW as well. I ended up with 12 new Real ID friends as a result. A couple of them are considering moving to my realm as theirs are dead.
I'm fortunate enough to have a lot of my good friends to play with in game. Around the end of BC, when a lot of them finally caught up to me at level 70, we used to chase World Defense channel together and had a really good time doing it. It was a lot of fun because most of the time the 7 or 8 of us were crammed into my living room, carrying on while fighting. Once we even organized a "Great Tauren Race" of level 1 Taurens from Mulgore to Orgrimmar with a total of about 60 players! Sadly I've had to move away, but I've kept in touch with them because we became such good friends. I credit that to the hours and hours of fun we had, and a lot of that was playing WoW together.
Elementium Jun 1st 2011 12:16PM
I have been aware of several relationships/marriages falling apart due to in-game realtionships as well. As far as friendships go, I have made new out of game friends due to wow and we talk daily even though we live on seperate coasts. I am grateful for the new friendships I have made. My hubby and I play wow together and yes sometimes we yell at each other for stupid mistakes we have made or what not, but we do have a ton of fun together and if definitely increases the competition and makes us better players when we rag on eachother! And yes, he plays a healer in raid as well and he always (hehe) lets me die!! j/k
Gendou Jun 1st 2011 9:07AM
No, but that's because my only real-life relationships that cross over into WOW are my wife and my best friend.
Litchee Jun 1st 2011 11:37AM
(Kinda) same here.
Formed a guild when BC came out with my boyfriend, my best friend and one another friend (we'll call him X).
After a while X left the guild to pursue a more serious raiding path. We kept talking in-game in a channel we created. Later, things got bad between him and us and we stopped talking. But that friendship died for reasons completely unrelated to WoW - in fact, as I said, we weren't even playing together anymore.
In parallel, my boyfriend's brother joined, and later my own sister, as well as other real-life friends. All these RL people mingled with the awesome people we'd met IG, who in turn had brought RL friends to the guild, etc.
With time, "RL" and "IG" are becoming blurry notions, as pretty much everyone is friends with everyone and people who met IG started seeing each other outside of the game.
The guild is casual, we raid once or twice a week without pressure (we're 4/12, a result which probably makes us happier than it should :D).
Overall, if you can believe it, we're one big happy family.
Us "founding members" are officers, as well as the family members we brought in, but so are two guys we met IG and one RL friend who joined later.
My boyfriend is guild leader, but he never abuses that power - and although he sometimes takes final decisions when a problem arises, we always discuss matters freely and honestly amongst ourselves. We have disagreements, sometimes even a little drama, but none that can set us apart and really affect our bonds.
I think because our relationships were already so strong, the game only made them stronger. That's probably the basis on which you can build a healthy guild.
If your RL friends are people you love and trust, the game won't create serious bad blood between you ; whatever drama comes up, either it is something you can deal with (like we did a few times), or your relationship already has troubles that have little to do with the game (like it happened for us with X).
Other people might share different stories, but that's mine, so if you've thought about founding or joining an "RL-based guild", I'm inclined to say : if it's based on strong, honest relationships, do it.
The bliss of playing with people you love (especially if you don't see as often as you'd like because they don't live nearby), of introducing them to other people you love, and of meeting their own friends, is completely worth it.
NinjaClarinet Jun 1st 2011 9:16AM
I tank, she heals, not sure what the 8 other people running around are for.
Tricia Jun 1st 2011 9:24AM
My husband and I both play WoW. It makes finding help for quests or dungeon runs easy, since we have high level or maxed toons on Horde and Alliance. I can't say it's ever crossed from game to real life other then conversations about topics or changes or upcoming patches. For us, WoW is an activity we can do together for minimal cost that doesn't require finding a safe, reliable babysitter. :) Besides which, our oldest son also plays and our younger son is looking forward to the time we feel he is old enough and prepared enough to make his own WoW character.
We do have a number of real life friends who play the game but drama doesn't really come about in game or flow out into real life. Maybe we're lucky :)
Mortenebra Jun 1st 2011 9:44AM
"For us, WoW is an activity we can do together for minimal cost that doesn't require finding a safe, reliable babysitter."
Thank you. Thank you for saying this. It's incredibly difficult trying to explain this exact sentiment to our relatives of precisely why we still play the game despite having a baby. And, on top of that, if the baby decides to throw a fit, we just have to tell our guildies, "AFK a few minutes," and they'd happily understand. It sure beats having dozens of pairs of eyes turning to gape at you while you carry a screaming baby out of the restaurant.