Warcraft Funeral

So, in warcraft, on a PvP server, someone died in real life. The people in their guild wanted to have a funeral for him in the game, because that is the only way they had even known the person. Another guild decided to attack and kill all the people at the funeral. There is some discussion around the net, in various places.

It seems I am somewhat on an extreme end of one opinion. Maybe it is due to my background using the net for so long, in many social contexts. I spent a huge amount of time in irc, from when I was in junior high through college. I came out to people on irc before anyone at school or anywhere else, way before. I spent a lot of time on metafilter, and metafilter irc, on wikipedia, and wikipedia irc (right now in fact). There are a lot of people I have known in my life that I have never met in person. Friends, acquaintances, people I have had fun with, and people I have worked on things with. My best friend now I have never met, he lives in New York, and we met through metafilter. I talk to him on the phone a lot, and instant messenger. I have played warcraft, and I understand the social situation in that game, so I am not commenting ignorantly on this.

The phrase “real-life” is inaccurate is its use. Is it not real life when I talked for hours about very personal issues with friends? Or working together on a project in wikipedia, is that not real simply because the people in the discussion aren’t within 10 meters of each other? Is the output of those non-real discussions real?

There is no moral difference between ruining this funeral and ruining one at your local cemetery. The people are real, the friendships are real, and the loss is very real. That is all that matters.

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Published:: 04.15.06 / 4pm

Tags:: games, morality, religion, warcraft

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Hello, my name is Judson.

I live in Houston, TX and work in healthcare/IT. I am a liberal-libertarian, a progressive, a technophile, and a web-addict. I like Apple, am gay, and I like movies a lot. I am also fairly active on the english wikipedia as cohesion, and am an administrator there (think custodian). Also, I ramble. The easiest way to get to know me is by reading this and looking at the categories I write about.

I have a claimID page here

Palladian 04.17.06 / 2pm

I think you’re right about this; I heard about this somewhere the other day and found it disturbing. The only thing that makes it a little more difficult is that it occurred in the Warcraft universe which is a combination of “real life” morals and ethics and relationships, and game-related ethics and practices on the other. In “real life” you wouldn’t kill animals expecting magical rewards or attack other people without consequences, or have zombie enemies, yet these are things I presume are indeed normal in the game world. You’re also simultaneously operating with “real life” social values and interactions that are very different from these game standards. What is the proper balance, and when does one standard have to give way to the other? Would it be within the standards of various groups to behave in this way toward opponents in other circumstances? Since I never played World of Warcraft, I don’t know the answer to any of these questions but I’m curious. I absolutely agree, however, that this in-game funeral was as real as any “real world” memorial service, and that violating the sanctity of such an event, whatever its ethical ramifications are in the game universe, is a real violation of normal human ethics.

I have friends that do not really understand the internet, at least in terms of the social aspect of it, who are unable to comprehend that a primarily online friendship is as much a friendship as any other. They think it odd when I speak of you as my closest friend. I’m sort of reminded of the pianist Glenn Gould’s response to people who, after his early and complete retirement from giving live concerts, would ask him if he missed the direct connection with audiences that came with concertizing. He replied that he felt much, much closer to his audience now that his sole medium of performing and communication was through recording and other electronic media than he ever did giving live concerts. I wish he could have lived to see the internet, he would have loved it.

Judson 04.18.06 / 10am

“Would it be within the standards of various groups to behave in this way toward opponents in other circumstances?”

Hard to say, because what these people were doing was non-standard. They had their funeral in a very secluded area in the game that would otherwise never normally have any large grouping of people like that. It is also generally accepted that the other guild knew a funeral was occurring and wanted to disrupt it because they thought the idea was dumb. It’s most likely just a group of immature people attacking their own mortality rather than anything else, but it has gotten people to talk about virtual reality ethics which I think is good.

Palladian 04.18.06 / 6pm

Yes, it’s a strange situation. It’s not like IRC or other kinds of online communities because it has a simulated physical space and players are embodied in a visible character in a way that members of text-based communities aren’t. There’s a sense of “we’re here, together in this space” that probably strengthens the emotional impact of a gathering.

Warcraft Funeral

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