True Romance in Telara – Share your story and we’ll personally plan your in-game day!

The true story of how my wife and I met:

The first phone call came on an early Saturday morning, 7:30 am PST where I was currently stationed at Fort Lewis, WA. It was my druid class lead calling me as she was caulking her bathtub. Somehow she forgot that I was 2 hours behind her time zone, but I laughed it off and talked anyways.

The second phone call was while I was out bowling and called her as they had just taken down Curator in Karazhan, and I left a voice mail and mistakenly called her “Babe” at the end. Embarrassed, I fumbled an apology to the voice mail then hung up. She laughed it off and “Babe” became our nicknames.

I had R&R the month before I was set to deploy to Iraq. Two weeks at home would have bored me senseless, so I asked the 7 members of my guild in the Huntsville, Gadsden and Birmingham area if they minded if I visited. They were thrilled to have me and I ended up staying with her for the week I spent there. We hit it off amazingly.

After Iraq we started seriously dating. I moved to Louisiana as my next post, seeing her once a month on my long weekends. We moved from WoW to try Warhammer, Aion, EVE, DDO, LotrO, Guild Wars, and eventually Rift where we’ve played since launch- our love of games and each other spanning each universe. Three years after having met, I proposed to her at a board games night and she accepted. We held an outdoor wedding on the 4th of July where we had “Illidan’s March” and “Nouvelle Rouvenor Hero” (from EVE) playing. The city even shot off fireworks for us.

I’ve since left the Army and the first 6 months of living together (after eighteen months of marriage) have been amazing and we are expecting our first son in early June.

In early spring on 2003 I met the man of my dreams; I just didn't know it at first glance. My first impression of him was ...who does this jerk think he is trying to tell me how to kill this boss on my Final Fantasy game... but it ended up being a helpful hint. (just don't tell him that I said that) We soon got to talking about our love of video games, but there was one big problem. He did not play MMO's! That was unacceptable, so I logged onto my Everquest account, sat him down, and taught him the basics. Three months later he had out leveled me and I was now the newbie in the relationship.

We got married in 2005 and still continue to play MMO's and other video games together. He is the technical person when it comes to games, and I look for graphics and stories in my games. Rift gave us both what we were looking for in a game. And even though he is gone a lot for his job in the U.S. Army, playing Rift gives us a way to see eachother even when he is away. Rift makes it possible to feel a little closer to my husband even when he is half way around the world. Thank you Rift and Trion! :heart:

Arshess and Ralgrad

I was an MMOer of 10 years. She was a knitter. I secretly loved her for 20 years, unknown to me the feeling was mutual and as long. We found this out after each of us went through rough divorces and spending many hours comforting each other.

I married Thedutchinator in December of 2008 after she lost her job and I wanted to make sure she had medical coverage (at least that's what I told her, but the truth really was I didn't want to chance losing this wonderful woman for any reason). Unfortunately I too lost my job a few months later. Despite the mounting hardships we were amassing, we were still happy, true love was ever growing. And why not? we are best friends after all!

That's when things took a near fatal turn. I had a major infection from my knee down in my left leg. Sparing you the gruesome details, I had to have emergency surgery and faced amputation, that's if I the infection didnt take my life first. She stood by me as any great woman would and gave me hope to hang on. I recovered from the surgery and didn't loose a limb but the healing process was just beginning. It would take 9 months before i was at the point to start to doing normal things for myself as i was restricted to either bed rest or sitting with my leg propped up. Thedutchinator cooked, cleaned, bathed, and took me to the hospital 3 times a week for those nine months. During that time I would MMO and she would knit in her free time.

Not getting out to the real world to see friends and family was taking a toll as well but thats when she really surprised me. I had beta tested Rift and as the pre-launch date arrived SHE bought herself a copy of Rift so we could spend more quality time together! What a GREAT surprise that was! Now we travel all over Telara together artifact hunting and completing achievements! Thank you Rift for further strengthening the bond of our love! But most of all, Thank you Thedutchinator for being everything a man can only dream of in a woman! I look forward to Marrying you again on February 14th!

Dolly

It all started the first day of grade 7. The new boy in class sat behind me. He was loud and he was a bit of a geek, but he was kind and he was friendly. In grade 9, he was my french tutor for half of the year. He was still loud, and he was a little bit more geeky, but he was still very nice, and we became friends.

In grade 11, he asked my best friend out on a date. She was too thick to realize it was a date, and suggested he call me instead, since I worked and always had money to go out to the movies. He was a lot less loud, a lot more geeky, but oh so nice. The more time we spent together, the closer we became and within two months we were inseparable.

We got married the year after we graduated from high school. I was one month shy of my 19th birthday and my parents had sign their permission for me to get married. After ten years of marriage, I had still refused to even look at a game, pen and paper, console or computer. One evening I happened to watch him playing Dungeons and Dragons Online with friends of ours. It was the first time I had ever noticed him use voice chat..... and there was magic ......and cool costumes. And he could talk to our friends, who no longer lived near us. The next day, he had downloaded the game on a second computer we had borrowed and we played until 3am. I was hooked! How was I going to tell him, without eating my foot, that I loved it? I couldn't hold back the laughter when he cautiously asked me what I thought of the game.

When he tried Rift in Beta 1, he immediately said I was going to love it. I was too busy to get in game until Beta 3, but after my first major zone event in Freemarch at level 7, I have played little else! Not only are we able to spend our evenings together in game, but after 15 years of marriage and four darling children, I am just as excited about gaming as he is. We record a podcast together every week, to talk about Rift and our experiences in game, and we have never been closer.

Sallennia & Palmazar (Chris)

My girlfriend and I both felt it would not be fair if one of us wrote this ourselves, so this is a bit from both of us. :)

Back when I played World of Warcraft, one of the more popular things to do among the higher-end players was to blog about the game - sharing theorycraft, raiding strategies, what have you. The blogging community also had a very popular and vibrant community on Tiwtter as well, and so I got into this, meeting friends and generally enjoying the broader WoW community beyond my server. One of those twitter people just happened to be the woman that is today my significant other.

Sometimes, people have to drive you crazy enough to want to figure out what makes them tick before you can figure out that they're a great person. Laz... is one of those people. We actually met on Twitter--he was a known blogger for another MMO, and I was a loudmouth that seemed to know exactly how to push his buttons and send him flying into a rage. Somehow, we got to talking. One thing lead to another, and eventually he realized my flirting was actually serious instead of just me being me.

We raided on a few various servers and guilds in WoW, and then I got into the Rift closed beta, where she followed me. Today, we're both proud members of Discordia on Faeblight, and couldn't be happier with the game, our guild, or each other. We both challenge the other's weaknesses and really bring out the best in each other. :)

We pretty much have polar opposite schedules (he works graveyard and I'm in a university program that requires a lot of early mornings and afternoons) and live about halfway across the country from one another, so spending the little bit of time we can together tends to happen over video games (most noticeably Rift). ...Just don't tell Laz's dad that we're getting married in-game, or he'll have us married off out of game too! ;-)

~Lazarith and Nyxiane

In the digital world, where romance takes the shape of vain lust, the shogun was left to slave away to the grind of games. He was a hostile guild leader, whose only aspirations were to make enemies and produce victims. She was a melancholy warrior, who was so surrounded by perfect strangers that she made a shadow of them soon. Drowned by monotony, she was left to wander with a jaded sense of love. As she entered his guild, she was met by the cool, well-practiced art of the chauvinistic dictator who has grown weary of the vicious cycle of running his legion. With subtle disdain for her overtly showcased taunts, the shogun returned every single wisecrack with relative ease. He was not about to be made a fool of, especially by such a foe as a female member of his guild with a mouth. Being a stubborn wall for the insecurities of others, she reacted with hostility towards this intellectual oppressor, and began to work charm as her ally and executioner’s axe.
The jokes, which started as witty banter soon turned into aggressive foreplay. With a grimace plastered on his face, he furiously spewed jab after jab at her, provoking an instant reaction of verbal abuse. With non-chalant disinterest, she bluffed that he was getting ahead of himself and that he should not get ideas. As the once epic shogun of trolls hurled his phone across the room, he realized he had been broken. This infuriating, gorgeous, ridiculously offensive excuse for a guild member had done what no inhabitant of the internet had accomplished. As he extended his hand to embrace hers, she accepted the gesture. From then on, the two have journeyed together as the perfect gaming duo, of what one could only consider a “bad trollmance”.

I hated my boyfriend once.

He was "that guy" in an online FPS clan I joined five years ago: the unnapproachable wallflower that everyone "knew" but didn't know, maintaining a position as an officer yet only speaking perhaps four words in just as many days. When everyone else was having an absolute riot of a time, he was silent. If things were going south, he was silent. It drove me mad, especially since he was exceptional at everything he played.

It was impossible to engage him and it soon became obvious he was intentionally disregarding me. Well, crap.

Do you remember what teachers and parents used to tell you in grade school? "Oh that boy just teases you because he likes you."

I always thought that was pretty hokey, a device used to soften the reality that some people are just mean. So, I decided to be "mean" back. I intentionally joined games he was in and fought against him until I knew exactly how to counter my "enemy".

I did it. I got better than him and in the process discovered that I enjoy competitive online experiences, that my frustrations with him were because I liked him, and it turned out he had been doing the exact same thing the whole time and he wasn't at all like how I perceived him.

He has been my boyfriend and very best friend ever since. We still enjoy trolling each other, and I don't know what I would do without him. Online games and voice servers have been absolutely vital because he lives in Canada. Through the years we have both learned much from each other and he now moving here to finish school.

He doesn't know I'm writing this because I told him I wasn't.

I LIED, FEE, LOL.

Ardescere & LWFreedom (Fee)

Few years ago funny but true, for valentines day the guild i was in other game did a RL gift exchange by mail... i have always been the explorer kind n back then two guildies used follow me n protect me from the suicidal explorations i got into. i was dating the guild master but he cheated on me, it ended n one of my daily protectors cheered me up going to hunt n for the first time going RED pvping bots on a valley, friendship started n we spent hours n hours just sitting on that valley or in town just talking... =D we started talking on phone, sending mails, changed from game together, till we decided to meet in RL, we knew each other already just needed to see the face behind the toons even if we already had pictures of eachother. we decided to meet at a hotel traveling same distance cause we lived on different states n since i had a school trip already scheduled with few activities n times for everything (i was chaperoning). bus got to hotel late n all i got to do was open his room door n said "lets go eat, its late" LOL (funny but true)... after 3 days of a crazy schedule him going with me to every single school scheduled activity we knew we had to be together... after few years seeing each other every few months i moved... we now have a baby born last year 2/25 n got married on RL so will reinforce it where it all started, on a game :P (couldnt make a 6 years story shorter)

I think it must have all started with Master Blaster with the Nintendo. Everyone makes a big deal of Mario but there was just something about running that tank around blowing things up and then hoping out to shoot things that was so satisfying. We had pages of maps on graph paper. Of course that wasn't the end but only the beginning! So many wonderful games we've shared.
When MMORPG's came out I tried to resist. I was a grown up after all with responsibilities. I knew I'd be addicted the moment I started. But my ever patient husband continued to play and offer for me to join him. So here I am gleafully runnning into the horde of mobs while casting rebuke and readying my mace while he's preparing his mage spells. Funny thing is with all the games we've played we've never been married in one. It's about time!

A long time ago in a land so very far off, there lived a Priest named Bellahdonna. This priest had fought in many of battles and through many of centuries. In a campaign called "The Burning Crusade" during one of many of this Priest’s Crusades she met a Rogue named Veladra. At first they hated one another and during great raids the Rogue and Priest used to set one another up to be murdered.
Then one day Veladra and Bellahdonna got stuck in a cave after killing a huge Ogre by the name of Gruul, they began to talk. Finding that they had a lot in common, soon after began to court. After a year of Courting Veladra invited Bellahdonna to find him in a game of hide and seek.
Bellahdonna mounted her huge dragon and looked for him and soon found him atop a huge mountain facing a waterfall. Veladra got down on one knee and asked her to marry him. Excited and happy Bellahdonna said yes and began to weep for happiness. All was well and soon they made plans for a wonderful wedding.
On the wedding day Veladra and Bellahdonna traveled together atop Veladra's huge love rocket. Suddenly a huge vortex portal sprung upon them and sucked them in. Down and down they went and through many of times and ages till they fell upon a new world and new land called Telara.
In this new world Bellahdonna was no longer a priest but a Chloromancer and Veladra a great Rogue tank! They soon fell in love with this world and defended it with much loyalty and happiness. I invite thee to join Veladra and Bellahdonna on a small sliver of this huge world called Deepwood and come to Meridian on the 14th day of February to join them in matrimony, they shall finally be married! Hoping to live happily ever after.

This, my friends is the true story of two lovers always meant to be! They actually do plan to marry in real life the end of this February.

In true Defiant fashion, we have proven machines and not your silly gods are responsible for fate, love and all Telar’s future.

Once there was an archaic world that had such splendors you might say WoW at the vastness that stretched before you.
There was this pitiable blue horned creature that could never quite comprehend how to heal another being. She also had flaming elemental powers that, at often times, lacked. While in her search to down some frozen dead dude in a big chair she ran across a damn sexy beast (that’s me folks). They met and frolicked all over the lands, killing, slashing, gathering herbs and collecting various body parts for the few people in the land who, for some reason never left their posts. He even protected this care bear shaman from the evil faction that was out to get them both! But after a while, merely meeting in-game would not suffice. So they decided to step back from the computers and make the drive.

He traveled 6 long hours in the finest technology of his time only to find he had been playing on low resolution and was missing just how beautiful this shaman could be.

She introduced him to the members of the COG and by the end of the weekend had him yelling "Woo Baby, It’s the Cole train" and his XBOX was purchased before he left to go back home.

As time went on their love grew (despite her urge to play healers who don't heal) and distance was reduced. Now side by side they fight to keep Telara’s and their future from falling apart so they might never learn what could separate such hearts. Plus, her dps rocks now, so it’s a win-win situation!

Oh, now seriously guys, I told her in a fight once she wasn't "marriage material" so help me REPENT and make peace with her so I won’t have to hear about that comment for the next 20 years. It’s true, we met on the other game, she got me addicted to Gears of War, Fable, and a bunch of MWs. I got her to play D&D and the rest as they say is…still in the making (patch 1.7 love increase??). In addition, win or lose props to my lady she stuck around for a year of sharing a house with my ex-wife. (That takes more than 300 words to explain!!!!)

Our toon names’ are Spiraldancer and Imlar (her original and favorite name was Yeah, but it was taken when we xferred.)

After a brief introduction of virtual worlds in a community history course in college, I found myself lost in the vast, unpredictable, and externally raunchy world of Second Life. An adventurer, after diving deep into the inner-workings of many different, diverse communities within the world, I decided to join SL Profiles, a Myspace-esque extension to the online environment. There I shared not only my avatar's likes and dislikes, but my personal interests as well. A short time after my profile was created, many interesting virtual suitors appeared at my virtual door with flowers and sweet words, but none as intriguing as Drager.

What started as a flirtatious courtship fizzled into an afterthought; after about a month of chatting, Drager seemed too busy to connect. Virtually discontent, I moved on, and within a month's time my avatar was engaged to be virtually married to another guy. After catching wind of this, Drager swooped into my virtual life and completely enraptured both me and my avatar off of the altar and onto an alt character. We dated, taking picturesque virtual balloon rides over safaris and leisurely walks on white-sand beaches before Drager popped the virtual question, to which I happily complied.

We were blissfully married for a while in Second Life with a virtual baby girl before traveling thousands of miles to make a real life connection, and have been together (and gaming) ever since. We have a real life daughter and one on the way, and secretly call our baby girl a “Second Life lovechild.”

Athaera & Hammertyme, Seastone

In January 1997 I met the lovely Kristina. I was young and in the military; full of piss and vinegar. She was younger than I and living with friends. We met at a house party thrown by my roommates. We weren't together yet and merely talked and drank but to this day she won't touch Jack Daniels... I did say I was in the military, and that meant we partied hard.

In February of that year I moved to my own place, and she helped with the move. We grew closer over the next few weeks and on February 16th, 1997, we started dating. Those first few years were a blur of mostly ups and a few downs. A lot of great memories that we still reminisce about to this very day. But, at that time, and in that place, it just wasn't meant to be.

On August 9th, 1999, she moved to New Hampshire with her father. Aside from a very brief return for more of her belongings a few weeks later, I didn't see her again... for nine years.

Nearly a decade later, and after much maturing, I found myself at work one day in the midst of a very odd conversation with my coworker, and CEO, about the inception of social networking and how easy it was to find lost loves, old high school friends, and the like. As I was about to walk away laughing at them, my boss asked me, "well don't you have an old girlfriend you'd like to find? At least to see how she's doing?"

I shrugged it off, laughing about not wanting to be called a stalker. However, I was out with my best friend that night and the more I thought about it, the more we talked about it, the more curious I became.

That night, after many frothy adult beverages, I checked one of the most popular social networking sites of the day and searched for an old nickname she'd been quite fond of. Lo' and behold, there she was. Full of liquid courage and devoid of fear I sent her a message. The date was August 9th, 2008. The eeriness of that coincidence didn't dawn on us until much later.

By September she'd already visited from over five hundred miles away. And we began to use another MMO to stay in touch day to day, outside of daily phone calls until the wee hours. The Thanksgiving I visited her in her home and met her son. I then proposed to her and was nearly tackled as she screamed, "yes!"

On New Year's eve I traveled to her again and helped her move to join me. On February 16th, 2009, we married.

Since then we've had a son together and built a rather happy family and a nice home. And being the parents of young children, we often found ourselves stuck at home with nothing much to do but read a book or watch TV while the kids slept.

As a result, we returned to MMOs to entertain ourselves. First, to the rather large competitor which I'm sure you all know quite well, but eventually we found our way into Rift.

When we heard Trion was adding weddings the first thing we did was smile and confirm we'd marry in game too. Our original plan was to marry on February 16th as the ONE THING we did online for our third anniversary. However, we also like participating in odd contests and events online. So we will be wedding in game on the evening of February 14th to participate in the Guinness Record attempt. It would be rather awesome to see Elrar again... after all, I've not really lived up to my shiny Stalker title I earned during the Extra Life event.

I began my MMORPGing in high school and lead a perfectly nerdy life on Long Island, NY. Then I met Thomas: a spectacular frost Mage from Canada. He had transferred to my little server and joined my guild with some of his friends. Being the friendly Canadian he is we started talking in our guild and began playing together. As we casually quested together we became closer and closer. Thomas was much more into raiding than I was and was always invited to join raid groups, but nobody wanted my Shaman who couldn't heal and didn't have any crowd control abilities. And when he turned them down to keep doing dungeons and quests with me I knew there was something special.

We began scrounging up extra cash to buy calling cards to talk on the phone. On his birthday we fell in love. After his roommate ditched him, we spent his entire birthday together and by that night Thomas had something to tell me that I will never forget, "Ya know I love how much we play together...and how much we talk...and you."

A month later we met for the first time-and it was the greatest weekend I've ever had. My favorite memory has to be riding the Wonder Wheel on Coney Island. Every time the passenger cars slid and swung we kissed and all I could feel was my heart beat and the wind blowing.

Over the past 4 years we have worked to move closer to the U.S./Canadian border and have gone from a 2 day drive away to a mere 40 minutes. Nevertheless, we can only be together for 6 months of a calendar year. We are currently working on gaining my sponsorship to live in Canada once I finish nursing school. We use Rift for fun, cheap dates and can't wait to use it for a practice wedding on Valentine's Day :redface3:.

I've sat here and laughed and cried through post after post of stories of true love and how it can overcome anything and I get to share the laughter with and have my tears wiped away by my own special someone.

Married to an abusive pill-popper I worked hard to maintain a sense of normalcy for my daughter and my nephew that I was raising. The times when the kids were gone were bad because I allowed myself to wallow in self-pity. My brother introduced me to WoW and I was soon absorbed in the fantasy world, it became my escape. One of the officer's in the guild that I belonged to and I had mutual friends but we didn't really talk much until one of our friend's was injured in real life. Since we were trying for epic flying, he and I decided to farm gold to give her when she recovered so that she wouldn't be left out. Mining became just an excuse to spend hours in vent with the most wonderful man I've ever met, he let me cry out my frustrations, made me laugh until my sides hurt, convinced me to be brave and make the move to get out of my bad situation.

I knew I was in love with him but I was working to get my life together and I'm also older than he is so I kept it to myself until he told me that he loved me. While a few of our friends were happy for us, some actually turned their backs on us saying it wasn't real and it wouldn't last. That was over 2 1/2 years ago. This Valentine's Day is going to be extra special for us since it's going to be the first one we get to share in person, I'm from the U.S. and he's from Canada. Shortly after Rift was released my brother convinced us to try it and we both fell in love all over again, this time with a new game. We play to spend time together whether we're together or apart. He's already asked me to share his life but we're not getting married until we work out all of the legalities of me moving to Canada to be with him so getting to marry in game, when our toons are such a big part of our lives, would be amazing.

I love you Suniki,
Poyzonivee