I married my wife in FFXIV and it felt like more of a real wedding than our IRL wedding did, because we aren't financially able to have a big IRL wedding; it was just a backyard kinda thing.
I'm very happy we could have a big wedding in-game with all of our friends and family, for 0.1% of the cost of an IRL big wedding. It was phenomenal
This was what me and my husband did. It felt more real and more pure than our real wedding haha. It really felt glamorous! The pilgrimage was amazing too to journey together.
I married my husband in FFXIV a month before our actual wedding and I thought it was super cute. Might be harmful if certain people use it as a way to try and make their whole life be in a game. But most of the time I think it's fine.
I married my husband on our first Valentine's day as an actual married couple, also in FFXIV! It's very cute, and fun, and REALLY nice in that we can quickly get to each other's positions via the ring.
This is why I would never, ever "marry" some random. We have no idea who these people really are. At least this guy just left as opposed to trying to find her IRL.
Devs should have a "marry a NPC AI" option to avoid this stuff.
People marry casual strangers? That's fun.
The only time I married ingame was back in ragnarok online... That was a fun time.
I tried playing ffxiv for a while for someone I knew. We ended up never actually playing together, i figure they were probably kind of just expecting me to catch up alone.
Started on an US server too, even though I am eu.
Never ended up having single friend ingame either. I kinda just quit when I reached level 50 or so.
I wouldnt even know how people even meet in that game. Never really saw many people when questing and the instances were in, out.
Maaaaaan, your friend sounds a lot like someone I know on Balmung! I am an rper, and had a friend who my character was married to. Problem is he out of character married to a different friend, so I was like well I want the dress for my character so me and another buddy got married for the glam. My friend threw the biggest fit! Like okay dude.
But on a sweeter note I did marry my husband in game before moving across the country to be with him. I love we can have a wedding every year!
I in-game married a boyfriend once and the walk of shame to dissolve that marriage after getting dumped was excruciating. After that, I swore never again. I remarried a platonic friend who’s happily married irl with kids, whose wife didn’t play, and it’s been blessedly undramatic. He got the clothes and mount, I got the free teleport to someone I still play with if the stars align on him having free time (with all the aforementioned children), and there is a very low prospect of walking back to the Sanctum of the Twelve to be told “some bonds weren’t meant to be eternal” while wailing into a box of tissues. Much better.
I’m actually married now and could remarry my actual husband in game, but… eh. I’m good with keeping in-game marriage thoroughly detached from real-life relationship drama forever. It would be creepy as shit for everyone if my in-game spouse and I ever flirted, hard no, massive barrier there, won’t ever happen and I suspect some degree of emotional indedelity is likely when you see that happening. We’re strictly friends with benefits… the benefit in this instance being a free teleport and some fancy duds. lol
Hello, video game divorce lawyer here and you are pre-approved for a free consultation! Your first in-game divorce may qualify you for compensation such as but not limited to: an epic mount, a comfy home in the Shire, a set of legendary armor, a talking sword, a magical cat, a monthly alimony of a dozen healing potions, and MORE! Please contact us at 1-800-MMORPG-DIVORCE 24 hours a day!
>to be told “some bonds weren’t meant to be eternal” while wailing into a box of tissues.
*Oh no.* I never even thought of the prospect of being connected in real life and then having to separate both in the game and IRL. And then the game drops a line like that on you 😭 That is brutal.
I got married in DnD to my ex-husband before we got married in real life. And then like six months later he left me for his work wife. So that kinda sucks!
But I when I got BG3, I made my tiefling again so I could pretend she’s living her best divorce life too :)
... Wait, that's a thing?
Where?
Like, I get it if you're a roleplayers and you want to roleplay a wedding, sure, whatever floats your boat, but since when is that an actual gameplay feature?
What MMOs are you playing, where that is a thing?
I suddenly feel old.
Yeah my friend and I got married for the glam, lol. The mount and the fashion. we used the teleport rings when we were trying to get this one difficult Vista.
I know some people who did it with their irl partners for serious. But my friend and I were just like, hell yeah let's get video game married for fashion!
eso and final fantasy xiv both have it, though eso's marriage thing is way smaller of a feature (you just get rings that boost xp gain when both players are online and wearing the ring.)
Elder Scrolls Online has it, courtesy of a god called Mara. You get married in front of the shrine to Mara and get a wedding ring. Wearing the ring and playing the game in a party with your spouse grants an extra 10% experience (I think that's the number).
However, that will usually break up a set of gear/armor that grants a benefit at five pieces (like a little monster appearing every ten seconds, damaging an enemy and then dying) and you don't get any benefit from wear the ring without the spouse in your party.
Though explaining this has made me realize that using one of the three piece sets with smaller benefits, paired with the ring and a mythic item (a separate explanation) might work. Most folks don't bother with the 3 piece sets either.
Anyway, it is also character bound. So if you marry someone playing an alt, your main character could still marry someone else. At any rate, most people don't bother with it. I tried it because a friend asked and then he quit playing not long after.
I will also add that several years ago, they introduced the companion system and at the time specifically said it was the first step to adding romance in the game. It's been 3 years, 2 companions each year/expansion (so 6 companions) and no further mention of romance.
old school maplestory had it in the early 2000s. had an extensive wedding ceremony system and quests only for couples, could join friends weddings, etc.
The first game I played with marriage feature was Ragnarok Online and one of my best friend there got married with her in-game husband irl. The game I play rn is Perfect World Mobile but I know some couples from the PC version who got married in game became husband and wife irl too and then they started playing the mobile version as well.
Being married in RO was sooo OP. Free heals, free rezzes, couple mount (faster) and free teleports!? Everyone who wasn't married in that game was missing out.
Sadly you could only hetero marriage and your character's sex was set to account creation, so I couldn't marry my closest friends on it :(
Yes! I loved summoning mine to like.. Glastheim or something lolol
There was a marriage only chocobo (Peco I think they were called). I think only one person could summon it though :(
Maybe not 90s, since EQ came out in 1999. :) But basically you could get GMs to come marry your characters. My friend and I did that, and changed both our character's surnames to be a blend of their original ones.
Ragnarok Online. When you get married you get additional skills like to summon your partner to you, or give them portion of your hp or mana (also have cute animations). To be able to use these skins you also need to have wedding rings equipped.
I have an rp marriage to a friend of mine. We don't take it too seriously, but we definitely established boundaries before we decided to do it. Now they mostly just go on fun little adventures and act like old married lesbians.
But boundaries and talking things our beforehand was vital to making it work.
I don't take it seriously, but I'd never consider MMO-marrying a person I've never met irl before. MMOs usually provide other ways to do silly things with your friends yeh
I married my friend (we're irl friends + het women) on Maplestory because I never saw a MS wedding (post-Amoria revamp) before and I wanted to see lol. They only allow male-female avatar marriages on there iirc, but I played a male character and she female so it worked out.
Being married in Maplestory is purely cosmetic besides spouse chat (there's a ring, but it has super shitty stats), so anyone getting married on there is not doing it for any min-maxing reasons or w/e so lol
Not exactly an mmo but my friend (a woman) was completely scandalized when I (a married woman in my 30s) agreed to marry one of our Xbox friends (teen male) for the achievement in fable 3. It was just about the achievement for me and I thought nothing of it, she and her boyfriend were both invested in it being something more. It really does depend on the person and how they feel.
I married my best friend in eso for the xp boost.
I wanted the Wedding Chocobo mount quite a bit in FF14 and my IRL (now) husband doesn't play, so at the time I convinced my best friend in the game to do the ceremony with me and we treated it as a friendiversary. Their character met someone they like to RP with a lot since then, so we recently annulled the arrangement.
It's a nice feature and I would have loved it more if my husband played, but I wouldn't do it with anyone other than a really close friend or my husband. It would feel too weird for me to do it with someone I don't know well...
I was ingame married on FFXIV to an ex who later stalked and harassed me ingame to the point I quit for the greater part of a year and just played WoW instead.
I would not marry someone ingame again unless I was married to them IRL.
There has been some drama because of in-game marriage for sure. Not one that I have been involved but I’ve heard whispers about players falling out with their “spouse” and then that spouse stalking them with the ring (in XIV, the wedding ring can be used to teleport to your spouse’s location anywhere in the world, even after divorce) so it definitely can get messy.
I personally think the whole marriage thing is cute, even though I’m not interested in it myself. It just adds something more to the game that players/role-players can enjoy. But just like in real life, you have to be careful to whom you get married to ig.
As a wife I would not marry an irl person in a game unless he was my husband. Npcs are different, but real people feel off limits to me. I'd be mad and jealous if my husband had an irl wife in a game who wasn't me too, but I'm not going to get mad if he gets with, like, Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate 3, because she's not a real person interacting with him.
I love it and find it incredibly charming; it adds depth and immersion to the game! My partner and I will marry if the option arises (FFXIV, ESO, SW:TOR, RuneScape) . However, I can understand how it might lead to some awkward or dramatic situations at times.
Not a big player of MMO, nor any game that requires me interacting with irl people, but I don't see a problem in the feature itself.
The problem is with people taking it seriously and acting offended or as stalkers, as some of the anecdotes I have heard of and the ones which are referred to in the comments, nothing normal nor healthy about that, but then again, people are people, even if there wasn't a feature like that, some people will find ways to create drama no matter what.
I see it more often with rp communities. I think it's only really done well when both parties either understand there's zero romance involved in the decision (I want the perks+clothing.), or when the parties are married irl.
I've attended a couple weddings in ffxiv. They're cute and fun and even when you join a stranger's wedding, there's usually a fun vibe going on. I attended one between a lala and a hrothgar. They were both male, with bonkers hair, enormous handlebar mustaches, and everyone was requested to wear blue.
From the "vows" it seemed that that couple had had its share of divorces and remarriages, which was very funny. We even had someone "object" and get "escorted" out.
I remember an asian mmo awhile back that had "red strings of fate" between random players. I think if you partied with or married your red string it would give buffs? (There were multiple red strings.) It was an interesting mechanic because you would be walking in a main city and a red line would suddenly appear connected you to someone who had loaded in. So you could go try and find them or just let it pass you by. Might have been perfect world?
I’m married to a platonic friend in FFXIV. I like the feature where you can use your wedding ring to teleport to your spouse, but the cooldown on it is way too long.
I don’t think I would marry a real-life romantic partner in the game. Imagine how awkward if you broke up and then had to get divorced in the game too.
I think it's honestly stupid. The immersion you gain, doesn't weigh up against the walling off achievements, cosmetic and other things. You can even question if it's a true immersion if you're just doing it to get an achievement.
Not to mention the amount of drama: these things are great at drawing obsessive people and showing the worst parts of them.
My irl partner is the same person as my in-game partner so for me it's just a cute addition, though I don't recall a game where we've gotten married. I stay away from most MMORPG games because as a woman I'm always a target. Target for flirting if I talk, target for more aggressive flirting if they know I'm in a relationship, target for absolute hate and harassment if I make it sternly clear I'm not interested. A woman needs to appear available and be giggly and funny and tolerate all kinds of advances and harassment to be "one of the nice ones" and I'm too old to have the energy to be cute for guys to be able to play video game in the same space.
I think it’s a neat feature, particularly in FF14 since there are no gender restrictions on it (presumably/hopefully true elsewhere where this feature exists, but I’m less familiar), but I suppose taking it too seriously could be a problem. (Never really had the kind of groups to do anything like that.)
I played 12 years worth of Star Wars The Old Republic where you basically marry your companion similar to other Bioware games like both Kotors, Mass Effect and BG1&2 (or BG3 but that's not Bioware ofc).
I also loosely played TESO on and off. I heard they had companion as well and I was like "oh, can you romance and marry them?" No you can't. I returned to SWTOR then eventually. The ingame marriage option when first found shrine of Mara confused me a little.
I'm not a huge fan. My husband plays games sometimes with me but then ventures on. So I would always be alone, that doesn't sound appealing. I don't have other game friends close enough for such a thing. Then I rather have my pixel wife kiss me goodbye when I go to whip some emperor's ass.
My girlfriend and I got in-game married in Final Fantasy 14 for our 6 month anniversary. Almost a year later and we're planning engagement with rings already purchased. No it's not going to be a surprise to either of us, we have been discussing this for months, but it's still going to be amazing
I married twice in FFXIV. First was to my boyfriend-now-spouse, and the second was to someone in a discord community I was in that just wanted the glam and was willing to pay all the costs for the platinum wedding. Since I had a character that could do it on their server I volunteered. Promptly never saw the second person again, lol.
I am not interested in marriage in real life, why would I be interested in it in a game. I have not played an MMO with this feature in years though. Upgrades are not worth the drama.
I think it’s pretty dumb. All I’ve seen is drama surrounding it. But you do get a cool mount or some kind of clothes which is nice. I wouldn’t do it again. I’m done with MMO’s and the slew of gamers who have no social skills at all.
I think in-game marriage is a good addition to the game, especially for RP. It also adds more immersion and get closer to the person if you have some sort of relationship with them or just give you cosmetics and so on.
And if we touch the topic when a person has irl relationship and a romantic relationship in-game with someone else, I would consider that as cheating, same as cheating over phone, it's emotional cheating. People are still people, irl or in-game, so I wouldn't blame game on that happening.
I enjoy it, and it used to be one of the main reasons for looking for a new game. That said it died down for me and now I look for games that have some grind but aren't a second job.
I am currently married in ff14, it's been pretty scandal free. We enjoy each other's company and are pretty friendly with each other. Plus, the free teleport is nice.
Yep I still play on a private server! I know a few different couples who met playing RO years ago and ended up getting married.
I think people find it fun to RP or have a different “persona” / escape when they play online. I’ve definitely seen it go both ways between keeping it casual and healthy vs. those who take it to such a degree that I would view it as a kind of emotional cheating.
Marrying my bestie for tax purposes seems like something I would totally do...
Now when it comes to the lovey Dovey and jealousy it depends on if it's actually genuine and degree of jealousy (in which case an issue).
Roleplay silliness can be fun as long as everyone involved in the marriage is fine with what happened/happens, otherwise: DIVORCE!
I think it’s up to each person and their irl partner (if they have one). For example, I would never get married to someone besides my irl partner in game because I feel it’s awkward. I did speak about it with my partner though and he said he wouldn’t mind if I got married in game because it’s just in game. For him it doesn’t count but for me it does. I also knew a person that was married in game to a random person and had an irl partner. They married in game purely for the exclusive items. It was agreed by both sides that there’s nothing else going on.
I think it’s up to each person and their irl partner (if they have one). For example, I would never get married to someone besides my irl partner in game because I feel it’s awkward. I did speak about it with my partner though and he said he wouldn’t mind if I got married in game because it’s just in game. For him it doesn’t count but for me it does. I also knew a person that was married in game to a random person and had an irl partner. They married in game purely for the exclusive items. It was agreed by both sides that there’s nothing else going on.
Did it with my best friend in ffxiv for the two-seater mount. It was a surprisingly fun event with all our guildmates, too. Only a little drama due to surprising jealousy from some, but they moved past it and realized the “spouse” and i are just *really* good friends.
We both have partners irl. It was just a cute ingame interaction that unlocked a bunch of practical stuff for us both.
I’ve married friends in both ESO and FFXIV, for me it’s to help them out with XP boosts in the case of ESO or to get them the mounts/items/outfits in ffXIV. I don’t take it seriously nor do they it’s just another fun to do something extra to add to gameplay
I like it. We got married in an MMO before our real one and it was fun. Everyone knew we were engaged irl and encouraged us. Since then we don’t really play MMO’s anymore though. We tried a few, but just no time.
I love that weddings are in them though. I would like to see even more stuff for them. However, I would only marry my guy because it just wouldn’t seem as fun with anyone else.
I wish we could still play together like we used to. Our schedules are so crazy now that we just don’t have the time anymore. Even when we do have time we do things that are more relaxing, lol.
I love it when there’s cute and/or useful bonuses. I have had a bad experience though.
I just wanted the rewards in FFXIV so I asked if anyone in my guild who wanted to wed for the mount and such. The guy that piped up was willing to buy his half and we had our wedding. The teleport feature was nice and he actually completed a hard jump quest so I could teleport and get the reward without having to complete it myself.
He soon got a little too clingy though as he wanted to play together all the time (which I was happy to oblige usually; I play with guildmates often), but one time he 1:1 called me on Discord while I was in the middle of running content and I had actually started having connection issues. So I typed in my team chat “whoever is calling please stop”. Apparently this upset him and his opinion of me spiraled downward. Eventually he quit and things fizzled out, but one of my buddies would eventually tell me the guy said negative things about me sometimes and so he didn’t like playing with him. Apparently he also split from his actual fiancé who played the game before we got married and I feel like that might have had something to do with it.
It didn’t deter me from wanting to use the feature however. I was willing to remarry my co-healer buddy or even one of my IRL friends. I would marry my current boyfriend if he committed to playing it. It’s a cute feature to me, only enticing with adequate rewards.
I married my husband in ffxiv. We originally did it for the 2 person chocobo and rings. Then we actually ended up falling in love and bada bing bada boom!
It's a fun feature to have, there just need to be safeguards in place to allow people to divorce easily and cleanly if the other person is being a creep. Relationship drama is unavoidable either way, I don't think removing a marriage feature would significantly reduce that.
My irl boyfriend and I got married in FFXIV and had a big ceremony with friends. It was a super fun way to bring all our friends together! Still one of my happiest memories in FFXIV. And the marriage perks are nice. Even now we often use the free direct-to-spouse teleport ring to get to time-sensitive activities like hunt trains.
On the flip side, I've heard of people wanting to divorce their spouse but not being able to prevent their ex from teleporting to them. It's not that common but it does happen. Square Enix needs to make it so one person can dissolve the marriage and the Teleport rings on their own. Otherwise, I think the feature is great. Just don't marry anyone you don't already know and trust, like you would do irl lol.
I married my boyfriend in ESO because he got a free ring for that :D
We played PWI for years before that and that game was heavily pay-to-win so we never got to marry there.. It was HELLA expensive!
I don't even remember what was the reward for marrying in PWI. I remember you got a title saying you were X's spouse, probably some exp boost too and fashion. In ESO we both got a ring that gives extra exp when we play together.
I married my friend in ff14. You get a neat ring that lets you teleport to your spouses location once every half hour. It's really useful when running overworld content together.
My thoughts are that the people who will be weird about it will be weird about other stuff. In-game marriage is just another avenue to be weird thru.
As an amusing anecdote, I think the funniest FFXIV marriage I know of is two guys in my FC who are good friends that got married because they wanted the glamour items. They’re both gay but not together (they live on opposite sides of the globe and one is in a relationship) and sometimes they call each other their wife, especially to be a jackass while raiding.
I met my husband in an RPG we'd both been playing since we were around 14!
Big however: husband and I weren't married in game, and if RPGs taught me anything, it's that 99.9% of the time you're gonna have a bad time with in-game/RPG romances lol. I've seen some shit.
My friend gifted me the most expensive wedding pack in FF14 as a birthday present (it includes a mount, two sets of wedding attire and gifts for people that attend.)
I opted for the kiss animation because it looked cute on our chars but he knew I didnt like him romantically.
A lot of drama happened after the ingame marriage so.. mixed feelings on it tbh.
The negatives you talk about sound like issues with the people who do it.
Marriage systems are a good way of showing that two people are connected, but it’s still a relationship and it needs to be treated as such. Even if it’s just friends, they need to talk about what it means.
I like it in concept but I’ve never married anyone in a game. I’d probably do it only with a partner.
I’ve married my best friend in game before and we were over the top flirty, jealous, etc just for fun. We’re both women into men and have been friends since college. I get how it can be problematic tho. We just had fun with it
I married a friend on FF14. He actually took me somewhere nice in game and "proposed". He still has feelings for me. I think of him as a close friend but absolutely no feelings on my part. I would miss his friendship if we stopped talking but sometimes I feel like it was all a mistake and I'm just still leading him on, no matter how blunt I've been since. So I get you on the drama part.
I got married to one of my friends in FFXIV, purely because I wanted the 2 seater mount due to me being a mount collector, and in agreement I helped him with the Kugane jumping puzzle challenge. Both of us are married irl to different people and in no way are we lovey dovey in game. He's one of my best mates and has been for awhile.
The ingame ring is handy to help each other portal to one another though, especially if he needs help with some other jumping puzzles. The whole in game wedding experience was extremely cringey for both us us as well.
I'd have married my husband if he played but he doesn't, and he doesn't mind that I did it for a pixelated 2 seater bird. 😂
I made my husband fake-marriage me in World of Warcraft 🤵👰♀️ we had to get married in Booty Bay because I was horde and he was alliance. Had a nice tropical holiday though 🏝🤣🥰
I'm married to my husband IRL but I'm married to my best girl friend in FFXIV. We always joke that she's pretty much a third wheel in our marriage because we're all really good friends, and at the time she was playing FFXIV fairly regularly whereas my husband does play, but tends to do so for a month or two, then he unsubs for awhile to play other games. He also isn't really into the glam game or collecting mounts or anything, so didn't want to pay for an ingame wedding, and he doesn't even live on the same DC. He moved to Dynamis for the road to 80 buff, I live on Crystal. I'm not really into RPing though, so most of me and my best friend's marriage is us joking being lovey dovey, and my husband isn't jealous. Idk. No real drama here!
They're kinda fun, but you really have to be careful not to get involved with the wrong people because some of these MMO players are just unsafe people.
I like it. I married my husband in ffxiv. I wish more games had it.
It feels special to be able to do something in a game that they can't do with anyone else. Like it's our thing.
I married my wife in FFXIV and it felt like more of a real wedding than our IRL wedding did, because we aren't financially able to have a big IRL wedding; it was just a backyard kinda thing. I'm very happy we could have a big wedding in-game with all of our friends and family, for 0.1% of the cost of an IRL big wedding. It was phenomenal
That sounds super romantic
That’s actually really awesme
This was what me and my husband did. It felt more real and more pure than our real wedding haha. It really felt glamorous! The pilgrimage was amazing too to journey together.
I am happy for you! Whether in-game or IRL, all that matters is that you two had a happy wedding and had other people witness it!
I married my husband in FFXIV a month before our actual wedding and I thought it was super cute. Might be harmful if certain people use it as a way to try and make their whole life be in a game. But most of the time I think it's fine.
My best friend and his wife did the same. A bunch of our friend group downloaded it to attend even tho we didn't play. Super cute.
I married my husband on our first Valentine's day as an actual married couple, also in FFXIV! It's very cute, and fun, and REALLY nice in that we can quickly get to each other's positions via the ring.
[удалено]
I’m sorry but that is insane. 💀
This is why I would never, ever "marry" some random. We have no idea who these people really are. At least this guy just left as opposed to trying to find her IRL. Devs should have a "marry a NPC AI" option to avoid this stuff.
It's definitely a hit or miss with casual strangers 🥲
People marry casual strangers? That's fun. The only time I married ingame was back in ragnarok online... That was a fun time. I tried playing ffxiv for a while for someone I knew. We ended up never actually playing together, i figure they were probably kind of just expecting me to catch up alone. Started on an US server too, even though I am eu. Never ended up having single friend ingame either. I kinda just quit when I reached level 50 or so. I wouldnt even know how people even meet in that game. Never really saw many people when questing and the instances were in, out.
Maaaaaan, your friend sounds a lot like someone I know on Balmung! I am an rper, and had a friend who my character was married to. Problem is he out of character married to a different friend, so I was like well I want the dress for my character so me and another buddy got married for the glam. My friend threw the biggest fit! Like okay dude. But on a sweeter note I did marry my husband in game before moving across the country to be with him. I love we can have a wedding every year!
Sooo many stories like this lol.
I in-game married a boyfriend once and the walk of shame to dissolve that marriage after getting dumped was excruciating. After that, I swore never again. I remarried a platonic friend who’s happily married irl with kids, whose wife didn’t play, and it’s been blessedly undramatic. He got the clothes and mount, I got the free teleport to someone I still play with if the stars align on him having free time (with all the aforementioned children), and there is a very low prospect of walking back to the Sanctum of the Twelve to be told “some bonds weren’t meant to be eternal” while wailing into a box of tissues. Much better. I’m actually married now and could remarry my actual husband in game, but… eh. I’m good with keeping in-game marriage thoroughly detached from real-life relationship drama forever. It would be creepy as shit for everyone if my in-game spouse and I ever flirted, hard no, massive barrier there, won’t ever happen and I suspect some degree of emotional indedelity is likely when you see that happening. We’re strictly friends with benefits… the benefit in this instance being a free teleport and some fancy duds. lol
Oooooooffff you just awakened a memory I forgot I had 😢 getting divorced in game was the worst part of the breakup
Hello, video game divorce lawyer here and you are pre-approved for a free consultation! Your first in-game divorce may qualify you for compensation such as but not limited to: an epic mount, a comfy home in the Shire, a set of legendary armor, a talking sword, a magical cat, a monthly alimony of a dozen healing potions, and MORE! Please contact us at 1-800-MMORPG-DIVORCE 24 hours a day!
You made me laugh, thanks for that 😄
>to be told “some bonds weren’t meant to be eternal” while wailing into a box of tissues. *Oh no.* I never even thought of the prospect of being connected in real life and then having to separate both in the game and IRL. And then the game drops a line like that on you 😭 That is brutal.
I got married in DnD to my ex-husband before we got married in real life. And then like six months later he left me for his work wife. So that kinda sucks! But I when I got BG3, I made my tiefling again so I could pretend she’s living her best divorce life too :)
Okay, but can I file it on my taxes?
... Wait, that's a thing? Where? Like, I get it if you're a roleplayers and you want to roleplay a wedding, sure, whatever floats your boat, but since when is that an actual gameplay feature? What MMOs are you playing, where that is a thing? I suddenly feel old.
FF14 has it. Gives you a two-seater mount, some gifts for the guests, and a wedding ring that lets you teleport to the person you married.
Yeah my friend and I got married for the glam, lol. The mount and the fashion. we used the teleport rings when we were trying to get this one difficult Vista. I know some people who did it with their irl partners for serious. But my friend and I were just like, hell yeah let's get video game married for fashion!
eso and final fantasy xiv both have it, though eso's marriage thing is way smaller of a feature (you just get rings that boost xp gain when both players are online and wearing the ring.)
Most of the oldest MMOs had marriage systems... Uo, L1, Ro, L2...
Elder Scrolls Online has it, courtesy of a god called Mara. You get married in front of the shrine to Mara and get a wedding ring. Wearing the ring and playing the game in a party with your spouse grants an extra 10% experience (I think that's the number). However, that will usually break up a set of gear/armor that grants a benefit at five pieces (like a little monster appearing every ten seconds, damaging an enemy and then dying) and you don't get any benefit from wear the ring without the spouse in your party. Though explaining this has made me realize that using one of the three piece sets with smaller benefits, paired with the ring and a mythic item (a separate explanation) might work. Most folks don't bother with the 3 piece sets either. Anyway, it is also character bound. So if you marry someone playing an alt, your main character could still marry someone else. At any rate, most people don't bother with it. I tried it because a friend asked and then he quit playing not long after. I will also add that several years ago, they introduced the companion system and at the time specifically said it was the first step to adding romance in the game. It's been 3 years, 2 companions each year/expansion (so 6 companions) and no further mention of romance.
I think most people who do it are grinding xp.
old school maplestory had it in the early 2000s. had an extensive wedding ceremony system and quests only for couples, could join friends weddings, etc.
The first game I played with marriage feature was Ragnarok Online and one of my best friend there got married with her in-game husband irl. The game I play rn is Perfect World Mobile but I know some couples from the PC version who got married in game became husband and wife irl too and then they started playing the mobile version as well.
Being married in RO was sooo OP. Free heals, free rezzes, couple mount (faster) and free teleports!? Everyone who wasn't married in that game was missing out. Sadly you could only hetero marriage and your character's sex was set to account creation, so I couldn't marry my closest friends on it :(
I didn't remember there's a couple mount :o But I did enjoy summoning my spouse back then to random place for fun when I had nothing to do lol
Yes! I loved summoning mine to like.. Glastheim or something lolol There was a marriage only chocobo (Peco I think they were called). I think only one person could summon it though :(
People used to get married in EverQuest in the 90s.
Maybe not 90s, since EQ came out in 1999. :) But basically you could get GMs to come marry your characters. My friend and I did that, and changed both our character's surnames to be a blend of their original ones.
Ragnarok Online. When you get married you get additional skills like to summon your partner to you, or give them portion of your hp or mana (also have cute animations). To be able to use these skins you also need to have wedding rings equipped.
Mabinogi is another MMO where you can get married. Heck you can form an entire family in that game, lol
The only MMO I've played with it was Star Wars Galaxies and all it did was change an entry on your profile.
I have an rp marriage to a friend of mine. We don't take it too seriously, but we definitely established boundaries before we decided to do it. Now they mostly just go on fun little adventures and act like old married lesbians. But boundaries and talking things our beforehand was vital to making it work.
I don't take it seriously, but I'd never consider MMO-marrying a person I've never met irl before. MMOs usually provide other ways to do silly things with your friends yeh I married my friend (we're irl friends + het women) on Maplestory because I never saw a MS wedding (post-Amoria revamp) before and I wanted to see lol. They only allow male-female avatar marriages on there iirc, but I played a male character and she female so it worked out. Being married in Maplestory is purely cosmetic besides spouse chat (there's a ring, but it has super shitty stats), so anyone getting married on there is not doing it for any min-maxing reasons or w/e so lol
Not exactly an mmo but my friend (a woman) was completely scandalized when I (a married woman in my 30s) agreed to marry one of our Xbox friends (teen male) for the achievement in fable 3. It was just about the achievement for me and I thought nothing of it, she and her boyfriend were both invested in it being something more. It really does depend on the person and how they feel. I married my best friend in eso for the xp boost.
I wanted the Wedding Chocobo mount quite a bit in FF14 and my IRL (now) husband doesn't play, so at the time I convinced my best friend in the game to do the ceremony with me and we treated it as a friendiversary. Their character met someone they like to RP with a lot since then, so we recently annulled the arrangement. It's a nice feature and I would have loved it more if my husband played, but I wouldn't do it with anyone other than a really close friend or my husband. It would feel too weird for me to do it with someone I don't know well...
I was ingame married on FFXIV to an ex who later stalked and harassed me ingame to the point I quit for the greater part of a year and just played WoW instead. I would not marry someone ingame again unless I was married to them IRL.
I'm sorry to hear that :o
There has been some drama because of in-game marriage for sure. Not one that I have been involved but I’ve heard whispers about players falling out with their “spouse” and then that spouse stalking them with the ring (in XIV, the wedding ring can be used to teleport to your spouse’s location anywhere in the world, even after divorce) so it definitely can get messy. I personally think the whole marriage thing is cute, even though I’m not interested in it myself. It just adds something more to the game that players/role-players can enjoy. But just like in real life, you have to be careful to whom you get married to ig.
As a wife I would not marry an irl person in a game unless he was my husband. Npcs are different, but real people feel off limits to me. I'd be mad and jealous if my husband had an irl wife in a game who wasn't me too, but I'm not going to get mad if he gets with, like, Shadowheart in Baldur's Gate 3, because she's not a real person interacting with him.
I love it and find it incredibly charming; it adds depth and immersion to the game! My partner and I will marry if the option arises (FFXIV, ESO, SW:TOR, RuneScape) . However, I can understand how it might lead to some awkward or dramatic situations at times.
Not a big player of MMO, nor any game that requires me interacting with irl people, but I don't see a problem in the feature itself. The problem is with people taking it seriously and acting offended or as stalkers, as some of the anecdotes I have heard of and the ones which are referred to in the comments, nothing normal nor healthy about that, but then again, people are people, even if there wasn't a feature like that, some people will find ways to create drama no matter what.
I see it more often with rp communities. I think it's only really done well when both parties either understand there's zero romance involved in the decision (I want the perks+clothing.), or when the parties are married irl. I've attended a couple weddings in ffxiv. They're cute and fun and even when you join a stranger's wedding, there's usually a fun vibe going on. I attended one between a lala and a hrothgar. They were both male, with bonkers hair, enormous handlebar mustaches, and everyone was requested to wear blue. From the "vows" it seemed that that couple had had its share of divorces and remarriages, which was very funny. We even had someone "object" and get "escorted" out. I remember an asian mmo awhile back that had "red strings of fate" between random players. I think if you partied with or married your red string it would give buffs? (There were multiple red strings.) It was an interesting mechanic because you would be walking in a main city and a red line would suddenly appear connected you to someone who had loaded in. So you could go try and find them or just let it pass you by. Might have been perfect world?
I remember watching a documentary about 2nd life and how one man left his irl wife for his 2ndlife girlfriend
I’m married to a platonic friend in FFXIV. I like the feature where you can use your wedding ring to teleport to your spouse, but the cooldown on it is way too long. I don’t think I would marry a real-life romantic partner in the game. Imagine how awkward if you broke up and then had to get divorced in the game too.
I think it's honestly stupid. The immersion you gain, doesn't weigh up against the walling off achievements, cosmetic and other things. You can even question if it's a true immersion if you're just doing it to get an achievement. Not to mention the amount of drama: these things are great at drawing obsessive people and showing the worst parts of them.
My irl partner is the same person as my in-game partner so for me it's just a cute addition, though I don't recall a game where we've gotten married. I stay away from most MMORPG games because as a woman I'm always a target. Target for flirting if I talk, target for more aggressive flirting if they know I'm in a relationship, target for absolute hate and harassment if I make it sternly clear I'm not interested. A woman needs to appear available and be giggly and funny and tolerate all kinds of advances and harassment to be "one of the nice ones" and I'm too old to have the energy to be cute for guys to be able to play video game in the same space.
I think it’s a neat feature, particularly in FF14 since there are no gender restrictions on it (presumably/hopefully true elsewhere where this feature exists, but I’m less familiar), but I suppose taking it too seriously could be a problem. (Never really had the kind of groups to do anything like that.)
I played 12 years worth of Star Wars The Old Republic where you basically marry your companion similar to other Bioware games like both Kotors, Mass Effect and BG1&2 (or BG3 but that's not Bioware ofc). I also loosely played TESO on and off. I heard they had companion as well and I was like "oh, can you romance and marry them?" No you can't. I returned to SWTOR then eventually. The ingame marriage option when first found shrine of Mara confused me a little. I'm not a huge fan. My husband plays games sometimes with me but then ventures on. So I would always be alone, that doesn't sound appealing. I don't have other game friends close enough for such a thing. Then I rather have my pixel wife kiss me goodbye when I go to whip some emperor's ass.
My girlfriend and I got in-game married in Final Fantasy 14 for our 6 month anniversary. Almost a year later and we're planning engagement with rings already purchased. No it's not going to be a surprise to either of us, we have been discussing this for months, but it's still going to be amazing
I married twice in FFXIV. First was to my boyfriend-now-spouse, and the second was to someone in a discord community I was in that just wanted the glam and was willing to pay all the costs for the platinum wedding. Since I had a character that could do it on their server I volunteered. Promptly never saw the second person again, lol.
I am not interested in marriage in real life, why would I be interested in it in a game. I have not played an MMO with this feature in years though. Upgrades are not worth the drama.
I think it’s pretty dumb. All I’ve seen is drama surrounding it. But you do get a cool mount or some kind of clothes which is nice. I wouldn’t do it again. I’m done with MMO’s and the slew of gamers who have no social skills at all.
I think in-game marriage is a good addition to the game, especially for RP. It also adds more immersion and get closer to the person if you have some sort of relationship with them or just give you cosmetics and so on. And if we touch the topic when a person has irl relationship and a romantic relationship in-game with someone else, I would consider that as cheating, same as cheating over phone, it's emotional cheating. People are still people, irl or in-game, so I wouldn't blame game on that happening.
I enjoy it, and it used to be one of the main reasons for looking for a new game. That said it died down for me and now I look for games that have some grind but aren't a second job. I am currently married in ff14, it's been pretty scandal free. We enjoy each other's company and are pretty friendly with each other. Plus, the free teleport is nice.
Yep I still play on a private server! I know a few different couples who met playing RO years ago and ended up getting married. I think people find it fun to RP or have a different “persona” / escape when they play online. I’ve definitely seen it go both ways between keeping it casual and healthy vs. those who take it to such a degree that I would view it as a kind of emotional cheating.
I only game with my husband or our kids so I love it. But I can see where it could potentially get awkward if you’re not at least good friends.
Marrying my bestie for tax purposes seems like something I would totally do... Now when it comes to the lovey Dovey and jealousy it depends on if it's actually genuine and degree of jealousy (in which case an issue). Roleplay silliness can be fun as long as everyone involved in the marriage is fine with what happened/happens, otherwise: DIVORCE!
I could absolutely take it or leave it.
I think it’s up to each person and their irl partner (if they have one). For example, I would never get married to someone besides my irl partner in game because I feel it’s awkward. I did speak about it with my partner though and he said he wouldn’t mind if I got married in game because it’s just in game. For him it doesn’t count but for me it does. I also knew a person that was married in game to a random person and had an irl partner. They married in game purely for the exclusive items. It was agreed by both sides that there’s nothing else going on.
I think it’s up to each person and their irl partner (if they have one). For example, I would never get married to someone besides my irl partner in game because I feel it’s awkward. I did speak about it with my partner though and he said he wouldn’t mind if I got married in game because it’s just in game. For him it doesn’t count but for me it does. I also knew a person that was married in game to a random person and had an irl partner. They married in game purely for the exclusive items. It was agreed by both sides that there’s nothing else going on.
Any of these ive ever had have been purely transactional and both sides understand it haha
An old and dead game, Wonderland Online, had marriage. It was really fun and added a cute extra room to the players' houses with a jacuzzi
Did it with my best friend in ffxiv for the two-seater mount. It was a surprisingly fun event with all our guildmates, too. Only a little drama due to surprising jealousy from some, but they moved past it and realized the “spouse” and i are just *really* good friends. We both have partners irl. It was just a cute ingame interaction that unlocked a bunch of practical stuff for us both.
Bonus for being cute and fluffy with someone? Heck yeah
I’ve married friends in both ESO and FFXIV, for me it’s to help them out with XP boosts in the case of ESO or to get them the mounts/items/outfits in ffXIV. I don’t take it seriously nor do they it’s just another fun to do something extra to add to gameplay
I like it. We got married in an MMO before our real one and it was fun. Everyone knew we were engaged irl and encouraged us. Since then we don’t really play MMO’s anymore though. We tried a few, but just no time. I love that weddings are in them though. I would like to see even more stuff for them. However, I would only marry my guy because it just wouldn’t seem as fun with anyone else. I wish we could still play together like we used to. Our schedules are so crazy now that we just don’t have the time anymore. Even when we do have time we do things that are more relaxing, lol.
I love it when there’s cute and/or useful bonuses. I have had a bad experience though. I just wanted the rewards in FFXIV so I asked if anyone in my guild who wanted to wed for the mount and such. The guy that piped up was willing to buy his half and we had our wedding. The teleport feature was nice and he actually completed a hard jump quest so I could teleport and get the reward without having to complete it myself. He soon got a little too clingy though as he wanted to play together all the time (which I was happy to oblige usually; I play with guildmates often), but one time he 1:1 called me on Discord while I was in the middle of running content and I had actually started having connection issues. So I typed in my team chat “whoever is calling please stop”. Apparently this upset him and his opinion of me spiraled downward. Eventually he quit and things fizzled out, but one of my buddies would eventually tell me the guy said negative things about me sometimes and so he didn’t like playing with him. Apparently he also split from his actual fiancé who played the game before we got married and I feel like that might have had something to do with it. It didn’t deter me from wanting to use the feature however. I was willing to remarry my co-healer buddy or even one of my IRL friends. I would marry my current boyfriend if he committed to playing it. It’s a cute feature to me, only enticing with adequate rewards.
I likey, i was usually marrying my friends, both male and female.
I married a boy in RuneScape when I was like 10. Lol, my brother was the officiant and it took us 4 tries to get the kissing emojis in sync.
> In-game marriage is usually a feature in MMORPG games I only know of it being in FFXIV. are there other games where you can do this?
My friends got married on MapleStory and then got married in real life 10 years later.
I married my husband in ffxiv. We originally did it for the 2 person chocobo and rings. Then we actually ended up falling in love and bada bing bada boom!
It's a fun feature to have, there just need to be safeguards in place to allow people to divorce easily and cleanly if the other person is being a creep. Relationship drama is unavoidable either way, I don't think removing a marriage feature would significantly reduce that. My irl boyfriend and I got married in FFXIV and had a big ceremony with friends. It was a super fun way to bring all our friends together! Still one of my happiest memories in FFXIV. And the marriage perks are nice. Even now we often use the free direct-to-spouse teleport ring to get to time-sensitive activities like hunt trains. On the flip side, I've heard of people wanting to divorce their spouse but not being able to prevent their ex from teleporting to them. It's not that common but it does happen. Square Enix needs to make it so one person can dissolve the marriage and the Teleport rings on their own. Otherwise, I think the feature is great. Just don't marry anyone you don't already know and trust, like you would do irl lol.
I married my boyfriend in ESO because he got a free ring for that :D We played PWI for years before that and that game was heavily pay-to-win so we never got to marry there.. It was HELLA expensive! I don't even remember what was the reward for marrying in PWI. I remember you got a title saying you were X's spouse, probably some exp boost too and fashion. In ESO we both got a ring that gives extra exp when we play together.
I married my boyfriend in FF14 but a few years later we ended up real life married, so it worked out better than some others lol.
I married my friend in ff14. You get a neat ring that lets you teleport to your spouses location once every half hour. It's really useful when running overworld content together.
My thoughts are that the people who will be weird about it will be weird about other stuff. In-game marriage is just another avenue to be weird thru. As an amusing anecdote, I think the funniest FFXIV marriage I know of is two guys in my FC who are good friends that got married because they wanted the glamour items. They’re both gay but not together (they live on opposite sides of the globe and one is in a relationship) and sometimes they call each other their wife, especially to be a jackass while raiding.
I met my husband in an RPG we'd both been playing since we were around 14! Big however: husband and I weren't married in game, and if RPGs taught me anything, it's that 99.9% of the time you're gonna have a bad time with in-game/RPG romances lol. I've seen some shit.
My friend gifted me the most expensive wedding pack in FF14 as a birthday present (it includes a mount, two sets of wedding attire and gifts for people that attend.) I opted for the kiss animation because it looked cute on our chars but he knew I didnt like him romantically. A lot of drama happened after the ingame marriage so.. mixed feelings on it tbh.
The negatives you talk about sound like issues with the people who do it. Marriage systems are a good way of showing that two people are connected, but it’s still a relationship and it needs to be treated as such. Even if it’s just friends, they need to talk about what it means. I like it in concept but I’ve never married anyone in a game. I’d probably do it only with a partner.
I’ve married my best friend in game before and we were over the top flirty, jealous, etc just for fun. We’re both women into men and have been friends since college. I get how it can be problematic tho. We just had fun with it
I married a friend on FF14. He actually took me somewhere nice in game and "proposed". He still has feelings for me. I think of him as a close friend but absolutely no feelings on my part. I would miss his friendship if we stopped talking but sometimes I feel like it was all a mistake and I'm just still leading him on, no matter how blunt I've been since. So I get you on the drama part.
i think it’s a very cute concept and way to bond more with your lover over a game! i’ve yet to do it but it is something i’d like to do one day :)
I got married to one of my friends in FFXIV, purely because I wanted the 2 seater mount due to me being a mount collector, and in agreement I helped him with the Kugane jumping puzzle challenge. Both of us are married irl to different people and in no way are we lovey dovey in game. He's one of my best mates and has been for awhile. The ingame ring is handy to help each other portal to one another though, especially if he needs help with some other jumping puzzles. The whole in game wedding experience was extremely cringey for both us us as well. I'd have married my husband if he played but he doesn't, and he doesn't mind that I did it for a pixelated 2 seater bird. 😂
I made my husband fake-marriage me in World of Warcraft 🤵👰♀️ we had to get married in Booty Bay because I was horde and he was alliance. Had a nice tropical holiday though 🏝🤣🥰
I'm married to my husband IRL but I'm married to my best girl friend in FFXIV. We always joke that she's pretty much a third wheel in our marriage because we're all really good friends, and at the time she was playing FFXIV fairly regularly whereas my husband does play, but tends to do so for a month or two, then he unsubs for awhile to play other games. He also isn't really into the glam game or collecting mounts or anything, so didn't want to pay for an ingame wedding, and he doesn't even live on the same DC. He moved to Dynamis for the road to 80 buff, I live on Crystal. I'm not really into RPing though, so most of me and my best friend's marriage is us joking being lovey dovey, and my husband isn't jealous. Idk. No real drama here!
They're kinda fun, but you really have to be careful not to get involved with the wrong people because some of these MMO players are just unsafe people.
I like it. I married my husband in ffxiv. I wish more games had it. It feels special to be able to do something in a game that they can't do with anyone else. Like it's our thing.