Eh, the way I solve this is, every single member of my guild is also a friend that I have a connection to in real life without the use of the internet at all. So, they're the same set of people. We do not recruit strangers, and I believe we never will. If you don't have a "Bacon number" of at *most* two or three to me, well, you can join our guild ally channel, but you're not going to be a guildmate.

Reply

I try for the best of both worlds...Elune was down recently for 48hrs, so I called up two guildies that live within an hour of me and we went out for sushi and hung out playing WoW TCG for the night. It was a wonderful break from the game and didn't leave me at home thinking about how it sucked the server was down. If the distance can be overcome real friends = virtual friends.

Reply

Real friends?

Reply

if you talk to your friends via an electronic device....is it a real person?

must you see a person to make 'it' real?
does talking to someone on an electronic communication device make you feel less 'real'?

make way for the future, old ways of thinking and sayings must oblidge to the new.

now when marriage and birth comes in the picture, then we have a cause to worry about.

Reply

It is difficult for me. My best friend/Boss plays WoW, so i am either working with him, over at his house, or playing WoW.

The balance has to be between WoW and the wife. I have never been able to get the wife interested in the game at all (like most of us). That is mainly why i dont raid too much. maybe once a week at best. Since the wife doesnt like it much when i sit at the computer for 4 hours at a time. Lately, I have taken to simply leveling a character to the top and then starting another one. I like leveling better than raiding.

Reply

totally agree with #3 - are people in your guild not real friends because you haven't seen them face-to-face? How is that different than a pen-pal? Surely you talk in vent with your guildmates...how is that different from talking on the phone with your friends?

I haven't met anyone in my guild, but I consider them my friends. When my grandmother passed away recently, my guildmates were just as supportive (if not more) than my out of game friends.

Let's face it, WoW and other successful MMOs are more than just video games. They're social environments were people interact in different ways. But just because it's different doesn't make it any less real.

Reply

This isn't really about RL vs. WoW, it's about learning to balance separate but equally important groups of friends.

Reply

I see the people that I've met in WoW as friends. I used to be in a guild that is mainly all people I've never met. That guild has been disbanded for over a year, and I still talk with many of the people of the guild (I even maintain a forum so we can still all talk).

Then my current guild consists of people that only know one another (you must be a RL friend of someone in the guild to even be invited). It's really nice to be able to do a raid event of some kind, then talk about it face-to-face at a weekly guild lunch. So there is social interactions both in game and in RL.

I've been given grief from my RL friends for choosing WoW over some RL event, but it's just something I deal with. It's a matter of balancing the 2, and I always try to plan most things I'm doing so I don't get in trouble with either group.

Reply

I have neither real nor WoW friends. The only other person in my guild is my wife.

If the dog played WoW we'd be set.

Reply

You've just got to work on integrating the two!
I've got my girlfriend to play, and I count at least 12 other "real life" friends (including my sister and 2 other people's girlfriends omgladies!?!) who play wow and we're all in the same guild. I have also met a handfull of other friends from the guild who have driven upwards of 20 hours to come hang out with the group of us here.
Granted the few non-wowers who hang out with us sometimes get frustrated when we lapse into "wowtalk" at a party or bbq they've come to accept it (mostly, I think) as a given.

Reply

I just keep a calendar -- I schedule time with RL friends and I put instance runs on the calendar so I don't schedule over them.

Reply

if u choose to do a raid over real life friends you have problems...

Reply

I just do whatever I am more in the mood for!

Reply

A wow friend called me in real life and told me to login.. Is that a real friend or virtual?

Reply

quote - 12. if u choose to do a raid over real life friends you have problems...



responce....if you choose non virtual friends over virtual friends....your raids got problems...
j/k

Reply

Hanging out with RL friends doesn't get me epix!

Reply

I have zero real life friends in WoW. My real life friends and I will hunt, fish, shoot trap, build an ice shack, hang tree stands, help track and gut each others deer, etc...

I just don't see myself with my arms soaked in blood to the elbows in the middle of a woods turning to my friend and saying, "Hey. When we get back tonight how bout we jump on our computers and run around in a fictional world as an elf and a really big cow."

While they might not be mutually exclusive in my case its tough to find a friend that enjoys the same RL activies as well as the "virtual" activities in the same way I do.

Reply

wow, you sure like to kill things

Reply

Tell the real life people you have a softball league night. If they cared enough to make a commitment, they could join that softball team and play with you.

When you put raid time in perspective this way, its easy.

Reply

its rural wisconsin.

you don't just kill things. you kill them and then eat them. big difference.

Reply