IMO It should be a subtle gesture trying to publish things on the foruma s you pointed out is not going to work because of the plethora of idiots that inhabit the WoW forums. I think an in game small service may be appropiate if you were close to the person especially if you knew them in real life or met before. As for a permanent in game thing, I understand the desire for such a thing but keep in mind that 9 million people play WoW. With 9 million people a lot can happen and we will lose people that we may be close to in the game. But to do somethign special every time something tragic happens would be a lot on blizzard. Although maybe a memorial zone that people can go to and see a character representation of the fallen...or maybe Blizzard can possible consider making an in game monument to all the fallen...even possibly put their names on it if you right click it you can read it.

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There isnt much that can be done. Only if some of the players knew him in real life, probably show his family how the members feel. Otherwise there are those ingame funerals.

And to comment "lol wut did he drop?". Personally i think people should think more before they post in such threads, or just be quiet. Its the most stupid thing people ever can do, even tho its just a game.

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Given the shear volume of quests, NPC's and plot points in the WoW, memorializing our dead and fallen in the Virtual World is a great way to generate authentic charater names.

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I don't want to be a jerk about people dying who play WoW, but not every person needs to be memorized by an in game NPC or shrine.

IDK...

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Does anyone reading this know if this person also had a mage named Loradan? We lost a guild member around the same time and from cancer was wondering if it was the same person.

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A few months ago a group of guys from a local computer shop suffered a similar thing; they ran a horde guild on Bloodmaw which I had a few quick instances with and one of their main players whom we all got on with died from a sudden embolism aged 31.

All they do now is carry on expanding the guild to remember his name; it did knock the wind out of them for a long while though.

Unfortunately I've played a few online games in the past and have run into the opposite of this article. One Counterstrike clan's founder decided after alot of hassle to abandon the clan (basically they had a guts-full of him and booted him) and a few weeks later on the forum someone claiming to be his neighbour signed up onto their forum and left a message saying he'd died in a car crash. Alot of the clan members were impressionable teenagers and were basically crying for this guy, until one of the forum admins discovered that the poster's ip address was the same, and it was him taking the piss. Slight outrage occured.

I take it we don't realise how close we get as an online community until reality kicks us in the nether region with a serious incident, and I guess after something like this we tend to appreciate the other gamers when we log back in again.

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In my opinion, not everything from real life should be brought into the game. Most of us play this thing to have fun and get away from real life for a couple hours a day. People who die should be honored by their friends and things like they always have been. I certainly don't want to be questing and suddenly find some memorial to some stranger that was recently added.

It's also one of those open up the flood gates kind of actions they could take. I mean surely among the millions of subscribers, more than one death MAY occur each year... it just doesn't seem like a wise thing to get into.

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In my opinion, not everything from real life should be brought into the game. Most of us play this thing to have fun and get away from real life for a couple hours a day. People who die should be honored by their friends and things like they always have been. I certainly don't want to be questing and suddenly find some memorial to some stranger that was recently added.

It's also one of those open up the flood gates kind of actions they could take. I mean surely among the millions of subscribers, more than one death MAY occur each year... it just doesn't seem like a wise thing to get into.

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It's too much to imagine Blizzard coding in memorials to fallen comrades for each server, too many people, too much coding, overall. However, I can imagine it'd be possible to implement some sort of memorial tablet, owned by a guild, and store-able in the guild bank, to memorialize the fallen within a guild. Guilds are communities, and though fluid in nature, many are long-lived and composed of people who truly care about one another. It's be nice to be able to show some respect in-guild for those who have passed away.
I used to be an immortal on a MUD and we had to deal with this issue a couple of times. MUDs are much more open in their coding, fewer people playing certainly than in WoW. This made it easy to work with the tribe of the fallen person to design an in-game memorial. We had a fountain for one member who dies, and a food item for another. There were discussions at the implementor level about dead people taking over the MUD eventually, but of course, these events were few and far between. I know that memorializing these people in-game was helpful to those of us still playing. It helps to remember that no matter how dweeby, there's a real person typing behind that toon.

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Reading this couldn't help but remind me of the tragic events of a real in game funeral on the Illidan realm that was ruined by the guild Serenity Now...

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Personally, were I to die tomorrow and reports of my untimely demise were received by my guildies, I'd be disappointed if they held an in-game funeral.

Don't get me wrong, the gesture is noble, but it would be missing the point of who I was, and what I stood for.

By their nature funerals are a break from the norm. People take off from their jobs, their routines, their notions that life is predictable and come together to remember someone important to them. Logging on to WoW like you do every day and completing the "Memorialize Guild Member" quest is almost insulting. If you really want to make me smile from on high, or from down below, you're going to have to step out of your comfort zone.

If there was an in-game funeral for me, I'd honestly hope a guild like Serenity Now would come along and crash it.

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i would not mind having him on one of the islands, there are absolutely tons of em floating around...give him his memorial least blizzard can do for a paying customer whos passion was their product...if its asked for and maybe even paid for...why not...thats the real question...why NOT do it??

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Memorializing someone's death in-game may sound like a good idea, but it simply can't be done for everyone, and doing so causes the unfortunate side effect of trivializing those who've died but haven't received in-game recognition.

Keep it outside the game, in my opinion. Sure it's a loss to you and your guildmates, but it's not fair or right to make that loss the responsibility of other people to bear.

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