A very WoW wedding (or at least full of WoW folk)
A few weeks ago, Chris, Peter, Jared gyvyr and I went out to Pittsburgh for one of those modern Internet events: A big social gathering with people we don't really "know" that well. In this case, it was the wedding of David and Amanda. As is also very typical for such events, half the time you had to think to call David by his given name rather than then name we've called him for much of the last three years: Tips.
You see, David's the current guild master of our World of Warcraft guild.
WoW has been very nice in several respects. As a game, it's remained interesting enough between the not-quite-frequent-enough introductions for new content that we've stayed interested in playing. But the main thing that's kept me on has been over the years actually meeting people online that we've enjoyed our general time together where the game is just the reason to be there.
Think the Cheers bar, just with elves, orcs, trolls, undead and very large cows.
Over the past several years we've had several opportunities to hang out in real life with various people from the game that we didn't know from other contexts already. We've had movie nights and gone to Christmas parties and BBQs with guys we know in Ann Arbor, Jim and Paul. We met Mike from Pittsburgh - our former guildmaster - at similar parties. And two years ago when the tiki party was last in Monroe, we had David and his fiance up as well.
You know these sort of events work out well when people get together and while there's geeking about your mutual interest, people have fun and talk about other stuff too. At the tiki party, Amanda was clearly in that half fearful state where she thought she was going to be surrounded by "those game people" for an entire evening. Instead I think she found a wide variety of interesting people. Colleen, Mike's other half, also had a few similar moments. I think Colleen had more of that effect on our group since she and Mike are "those NASCAR kind of people". *alien-point-and-shriek*
So, when David and Amanda invited a good chunk of people to their wedding and the guildies made up about five percent of the attendees, we had hoped that we were going to have a similarly pleasant get together. We were adding a few bodies we hadn't previously met for folk outside of the local region. But add to this that it's a wedding - one of those always awkward events for people. Most of the time if you're vaguely lucky, you'll be at the event with enough of a crowd so that you're not drowning in a sea of relatives. And even if you're relatives, sometimes its drowning in a sea of people you see maybe once every five years.
And we were lucky again. We met a bunch of other people who were until then just other characters in the game, text on a screen and voices over Ventrilo. And we were pretty much comfy with each other from the get-go. It's always nice when things go that smoothly. Much of the initial get together was at the hotel many of the wedding guests were staying at, a few dinners out and hanging out at David and Amanda's place the evening before the wedding. Yeah, there was a lot of game geeking, but again, it was the usual Cheers feeling.
I'll probably post some pictures from the wedding shortly. There's a chance we'll see some of the people again soon at the upcoming tiki party. The full set of photos will probably wait until Chris has completed his cleanup project, the album being part of his gift to the bride and groom.
Probably the only disconcerting bit throughout the wedding itself beyond the heat within the church was the moments where the minister (? - Presbyterian) almost seemed to boom Man And Woman throughout the ceremony. I was torn between recognizing this as one of the normal forms of the ceremony and wondering if he was making political comment.
You see, David's the current guild master of our World of Warcraft guild.
WoW has been very nice in several respects. As a game, it's remained interesting enough between the not-quite-frequent-enough introductions for new content that we've stayed interested in playing. But the main thing that's kept me on has been over the years actually meeting people online that we've enjoyed our general time together where the game is just the reason to be there.
Think the Cheers bar, just with elves, orcs, trolls, undead and very large cows.
Over the past several years we've had several opportunities to hang out in real life with various people from the game that we didn't know from other contexts already. We've had movie nights and gone to Christmas parties and BBQs with guys we know in Ann Arbor, Jim and Paul. We met Mike from Pittsburgh - our former guildmaster - at similar parties. And two years ago when the tiki party was last in Monroe, we had David and his fiance up as well.
You know these sort of events work out well when people get together and while there's geeking about your mutual interest, people have fun and talk about other stuff too. At the tiki party, Amanda was clearly in that half fearful state where she thought she was going to be surrounded by "those game people" for an entire evening. Instead I think she found a wide variety of interesting people. Colleen, Mike's other half, also had a few similar moments. I think Colleen had more of that effect on our group since she and Mike are "those NASCAR kind of people". *alien-point-and-shriek*
So, when David and Amanda invited a good chunk of people to their wedding and the guildies made up about five percent of the attendees, we had hoped that we were going to have a similarly pleasant get together. We were adding a few bodies we hadn't previously met for folk outside of the local region. But add to this that it's a wedding - one of those always awkward events for people. Most of the time if you're vaguely lucky, you'll be at the event with enough of a crowd so that you're not drowning in a sea of relatives. And even if you're relatives, sometimes its drowning in a sea of people you see maybe once every five years.
And we were lucky again. We met a bunch of other people who were until then just other characters in the game, text on a screen and voices over Ventrilo. And we were pretty much comfy with each other from the get-go. It's always nice when things go that smoothly. Much of the initial get together was at the hotel many of the wedding guests were staying at, a few dinners out and hanging out at David and Amanda's place the evening before the wedding. Yeah, there was a lot of game geeking, but again, it was the usual Cheers feeling.
I'll probably post some pictures from the wedding shortly. There's a chance we'll see some of the people again soon at the upcoming tiki party. The full set of photos will probably wait until Chris has completed his cleanup project, the album being part of his gift to the bride and groom.
Probably the only disconcerting bit throughout the wedding itself beyond the heat within the church was the moments where the minister (? - Presbyterian) almost seemed to boom Man And Woman throughout the ceremony. I was torn between recognizing this as one of the normal forms of the ceremony and wondering if he was making political comment.