Star Trek Online plans to erect an official, standing in-game memorial next week to Leonard Nimoy, the actor who portrayed Spock for nearly 50 years and who died yesterday at age 83.

The memorial will appear following the sci-fi MMO's regularly scheduled maintenance on March 5, according to executive producer Steve Ricossa. "In this way, we hope to keep his memory as alive in our game as he is in all of our hearts," he wrote. "LLAP."

That's shorthand for "live long and prosper," the valediction Nimoy gave in performing one of pop culture's most iconic roles. Nimoy's death touched off a wave of public mourning, not limited to just fans of Star Trek or science fiction, in social media, comments to news posts, and also video games.

In Star Trek Online yesterday evening, at least 1,000 players spontaneously traveled to the in-game world of Vulcan to pay their respects. Though the figure isn't as large as some ceremonies seen in other MMOs, Star Trek Online's population is comparatively a lot smaller. (In January, the game counted 2.5 million unique accounts, and 3.8 million characters played by them.)

Reddit user MrMorlonelycat snapped the image above. User barnacle999 counted about 1,000 players when he logged in (broken up into instances of 15 or 20, which why all thousand do not appear in this crowd shot.)

Nimoy voiced Spock in Star Trek Online, and also provided other narration for the MMO, which turned five in January. (A trailer promoting his work is below.) In August 2008, he appeared in an event introducing the game at the Star Trek Convention in Las Vegas .