Why games and the communities matter

Community General Discussion
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“Too much gaming is bad for you”
“People you meet online are not real”

Once upon a time, a community called Starlight had a member that meant a lot to us: Ibelin /Jerome.
Sadly he passed away a few years ago, he still lives on in the memories of the community members, new members get to hear his name and that he matters. Starlight just so happens to be an Online Gaming Community, a guild in the world of Warcraft. I have been the guild leader for Starlight throughout most of my adult life now, and I can honestly say I would not have been here - in many meanings of that term, without its members.

NRK (Which is Norway’s largest radio-tv company, a bit like BBC) wanted to do a story about him, what online gaming and community meant to him. As part of that, Rumour, Chit and I were interviewed.

It is in Norwegian, but google translate and such - Journalist has asked to get a translated version up, and when/if that happens I will share it.

Now, apparently I lack the trust level to share the article, so sorry about not being able to include the link directly.
So NRK + “Først da Mats var død, forsto foreldrene verdien av gaming” should get you to the right article, would appreciate if somebody could add the link as a comment.

(Translated meaning “Not until after Mats death, did his parents understand the value of gaming”

Reddit translation - with photos from NRK article:
http://starlightguild1.com/star/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=1327&p=7416#p7416

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Thank you much appreciated

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Yw, and you can get round that trust level by entering a URL, highlighting it and then clicking on the </> button. It wont be clickable but people can copy paste ;).

It’s a really touching story :sob:

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Ahhh - I am not as active on the forums as I once used to be, back in the dark ages, back when the internet came in tubes.

I think stories like this matters - they show the value of the communities we create, the “new” ways that relationships are being built, and not least that he - Ibelin - mattered, in ways that are not easily visible for people who are not taking part in this experiences themselves.

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A good artikel :slight_smile:

And fantastic to see that your guild members are treasured :relaxed:

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A really nice article.

It shows the real value of communities in games that is often overlooked or not understood.

All the best

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Read that article this morning and it made me shed some tears. Sounds like a wonderful community to be a part of. Also glad to see the media shed some light on the positive sides of gaming. Sorry for your loss :heart:

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Not sure about you but there isnt much community left in wow it seems unless you go on forum. The guilds i join dont talk…the communities i join dont talk either…a lot of ppl in my friend list dont play anymore either

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It is harder than it used to be, to keep things happening in game (In and out of character) - What seems to work well for us, is to talk about what we expect from people, and to encourage activity - sometimes it works, other times it does not.
But there is good people out there.

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I wish they did some more merging because I think my realm has gotten pretty empty and others have also :frowning:

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-nodnod- We had to move to another realm to keep things going. New realm (AD) is much more crowded, but also harder to stand out, and of course people on a new realm have history, which have made it harder to be seen.

From a community perspective, I don´t think the cross realm “thing” really helps to make people built relationships.

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Moving to another realm isn’t an option for me…ive all classes at 110 3 of them at 120 all the professions figured out and I would hate to lose this characters name :frowning:

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I think they should offer some kind of amnesty to people stuck on low population realms. Allow everyone (who qualifies) to transfer for free for x number of months to certain servers. Get rid of all the dead realms, and make some nice busy communities again.

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That would be really nice! Doubt it will happen though :frowning:

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Reddit translation - sadly without the photos, and some of them are important, but can be found in the original article

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I looked at it this way

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BBC has now picked up the story and it can be found here

https://www.bbc.com/news/disability-47064773

I think it is amazing that such a positive story is spreading, and I hope it will keep opening eyes.

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And I just read that article a few days ago! They posted it in a swedish WoW FB group ( Swede so it’s not to difficult to read norweigan, just goes a bit slow ).

I think there surely is a gap between our generation ( typically “millenials” ) and our parents, they didn’t grow up with gaming online and don’t know the impact, myself met my boyfriend in WoW, we now live together, I will never really understand the argument behind “they’re not real”, well yes they are, it is a person behind that toon, controling it, of course the person is real.

Which also brings me to the point of the WoW community, I see so many complaining about the state of the game right now, but personally, all the problems with the game itself just fades for me when i see the toxcicity, people want me to slam my head repeatedly against the desk while the things the game lacks only brings me mild annoyances, if the community was better, the game would be so, so much better, unfortunatly that is out of Blizz control.
And this isn’t to defend Blizz or anything, but the fact that people in game have no consideration what so ever that there is a person behind a toon, maybe going through something and play WoW to cling onto some sort of positivity, and all they give is toxic bogus, not okay, whatever game you enter you should be nice, no suicide whispers or get angry for the smallest of mistakes.

I don’t even know how you could ever claim the state of the game to be the cause of their behaviour either, telling people how bad they are, should die, utterly ridiculing you for minor mistakes and so on, and all the game is, is buggy, grindy and unclear releases for the allied races, clearly one is worse then the other, the player isn’t working for Blizz even, stop being rude to the players.

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I fully agree - there is much to be said about the game and its challenges- but the community is one that the players build - we choose to be toxic or supportive to one and each other.
We choose to understand that there is a person behind the toon and how we want to engage with that person.

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