Endless Online (2003)

Once upon a time I got married in an MMORPG. These are huge multiplayer games, but this was a time when hot cyber sex was limited to cam-to-cam (c2c, bb?) and Logitec speakers over some MSN or AOL chat room. You see, these kids, they’ve got it good now.

I can’t speak for you, but I don’t really miss trying to mask the screeching sound of dial-up with thick blankets and closed doors or running water. Which is why this won’t be a story that paints the past with the feels in full color. Like thinking of daytime cartoons while double-fisting those Capri Suns at 3 o’clock after school.

Nah, this will be more like me telling a bunch of people about that time I did something that other people do, but don’t talk about. Anyway.

Sword Art Online

I like video games. I grew up and now I make them, but for adults. You see, because adults like escapism as much as kids do. We just have less time for it. We also now have a better idea of what we want, but also not really, right?

I played Endless Online which makes me cringe now. Not because of the marriage, oh no, but because half the hours I spent on that were supposed to be allocated toward playing middle school football.

At the same time this meant that I had gotten my online gaming fix before starting high school so I was over the whole MMO deal by the time the better games in the genre came out.

Well, I was really, really rich in Endless Online (hereafter referred to as EO). I ran a guild — which is what the rich kids did in that game — with a whole bunch of members. It was going good! I had stayed up plenty of nights getting all these rare items with a friend (a real human I went to school with) who then suggested that I see if I could find someone to marry since he had already done so.

I was wary and already running my own game at the time which allowed me some early insight into general user behavior. So basically, I knew without a doubt that a lot of guys typically signed up to play as females in these types of games. Which I have heard justified plenty, but we won’t get into that. He pressed the idea and I eventually caved and gave it a shot.

Theodore’s girlfriend is loading - Her (2013)

First thing was first, find a real girl in EO. So I began with my “circle” where I knew some people who were pretty cool. And a better story would be that I meta female character who was actually a girl and we got married irl (in-real-life for the folks in the back) or something. That didn’t happen.

But I did marry an NPC, which was not allowed. And if you don’t know what an NPC stands for that’s a Non-Playable Character. I’m thinking, better safe than sorry right?

Here is where it gets geeky. See, I knew a bit of code. And the client and server for EO were pretty easy to manipulate, which is why so many people did hack the game which, ultimately led to its death. But that’s a story for another time.

I liked finding loopholes though and didn’t actually hack anything. What I did do was look for bad software behavior.

EO was famous for kill-stealing and glitching out during player vs player combat. The shit was a mess but honestly in the best way. Needless to say I found some the right bad behavior and worked it to my advantage. Bingo.

Long story short we never did get to have a proper ceremony. But it was funny as hell walking around with “Peasant Woman” as my partner.

After a while of course the next version came out and my glitch was patched to oblivion. My wife disappeared, but before I could become a proper widower I was left with a note from the server.

Something about being banned.

The following week I went to the bank in-game, took out all of my coins and gave most of it to my friends. After that I dropped gold in 10k increments, 30 times, all over the main town until I was flat broke. I sold my tuxedo for a top-hat and signed off forever. The moral of the story is, don’t marry anything that isn’t human unless it’s a goat.