Forget "Facebook official" make it "MMO official"

Due to February approaching I thought it would be interesting to post on the subject of Valentine's day, well closely related to it anyway, that and the recent articles popping up about the subject in online games.  Now before I get ahead of myself I am posting this neither to encourage nor discourage, rather inform about the subject.  

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I am talking about marriage in online games and the recent trend for newer/recently popular MMORPG's (massive multiplayer online role playing games).   The popular fantasy mmo RIFT announced in an article, on the games forum community.riftgame.com, that they will attempt to break the world record for most in-game marriages on Valentine's Day.  While RIFT is a more recent mmo, it is just following suit with many others such as World of Warcraft, Lineage II, and Runes of Magic that have all introduced couple or marriage systems in the past.  Like these mmo's, a virtual community called Second Life gives users the opportunity to marry and even designate other players as family members and children.  

Some people may find this aspect a bit out of the ordinary but once you look at relationships of today you can see that many people are looking to the Internet and these online dating/compatibility sites to help find that type of connection.  Individuals on sites like eHarmony or Cupid.com can interact and chat with their matches but the differentiating factor is that online games can present the users with actual activities and events the can interact in together.  Obviously this is still not real life contact or actual events; however, the feelings and memories associated with them are equally real.

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I also found an older article, CNN.com, from 2008 about individuals that started relationships on Second Life and ended up meeting and marrying in real life.  The article goes into more detail, but the main points are the couple met and talked through the use of the virtual community where they bonded through interactions and virtual entertainment.  They then video chatted and decided to meet face-to-face where they then grew even closer in reality.

In an upcoming update 1.7, for the mmo RIFT, the new marriage system will be implemented which will give players the ability to hold in-game wedding ceremonies and be counted in the total for the world record.  The full article about the couple meeting on and offline through Second Life can be found here.

Having heard about events like this in the past I never really thought about it much, but now that it has been brought to my attention again I don't know what I think.  Is this showing us how our society can grow to become?  Will this use of digital media change how we interact with those around us or will it completely change the way we create and maintain relationships?  Like all new digital media concepts this one may seem strange now but in the near future, who knows, it could be a more prominent way of interacting.