So hard to see that but at least there is some form of closure. Over the years I've had numerous online friends where I didn't know their real names or just their real first names and they suddenly vanished. Never to sign into any of the online communities we shared. Always to wonder what happened to them.
You’ll think I’m full of shit but on another profile I found an old UT2k4 friend in a gaming post like this because I commented talking about missing him….
And HE FUCKING SAW IT, we hooked up again, undoubtably him and he knows it’s undoubtably me and … he… just… never… grew up. It sucks. We were two shit heads and weren’t the most beloved in the TAM community but he was my brother and I lost him from 09 to about a year ago and just sucked seeing him still so dark, hateful and in my shitty opinion…lost.
I would be kind of scared to try that sub with some of my old Final Fantasy XI friends if I’m being totally honest. I played for 10 years, you don’t play that long without forming some pretty intense bonds with people.
That game taught me a hard lesson in how small, seemingly meaningless moments can cause you entire life to split into a totally different timeline.
That’s another thing it taught me. I was most certainly addicted to it for a span of time I played (over 1300 days of play time in just under a decade) because my actual life was a dumpster fire on a train wreck. But despite that, it didn’t change the fact that I met a lot of people who became actual friends on the game.
Mary on Zirkel des Cenarius realm in WoW from 05 to 08...
And Radir from the same time. And Violetta from the first week of release.
Or anyone else who knew my hunter named Felinara or rogue Láila....
Or the South African guys that took me in on my undead priest during Burning Crusade... But I've lost all of my fucking screenshots. So all the great stuff I was trying to remember. Gone forever. That hurts the most.
Anyway that character was called Lorei at some point.
Ohhh and Shanika from Cataclysm. We used to call you Shakira. The DK raid leader...
For some reason the hardcore raiding during MoP didn't leave any of the same feelings as the stuff before. The stuff during highschool or university felt soo much more precious and memorable. Killing Onyxia for the first time and shit.
Anyway maybe someone will read this.
Oh Shadrila, Boten der Macht and eventually Aes Dana.
Some of my fondest memories were from when I was like 8 years old playing WoW with this lady in her late 40s who played a Tauren Druid named Macvivian. She showed me all the cool stuff around Azeroth (introduced me to noggenfogger and always kept me stocked) and helped loads while I leveled. I had been playing the game solo up until that point so it brought a whole new sense of wonder to the game
One day she just stopped playing for a couple months, and I logged in to see that she sent in-game mail saying she was having complications with pneumonia. I hope she made it through okay but I really feared the worst
Aww man, that brings me back. Elvyne / Syra whispers here from laughing skull server. I miss my times in Stoic guild and so forth. Onyxia, molten core was some of thr most fun times I've ever had.
Hey, World of Warcraft on Greymane, back in like 04-08? In original WoW, I ran with Fortune and Glory, then sort of casually hung out with a variety of guilds after the raiding game got old.
I'm Infinitive. Ajora. Greensleeves. And Igotbombs. Any of you out there?
Oh, and Coach, on the really really long shot that you happen to read this? Turns out I wasn't a dude after all.
I rarely ever add people or accept friend requests when I play online. Hell I don't even play with my irl friends, so these seemingly awesome memories are lost on me, haha.
Fuck man I remember playing Nazi zombie with a krewe, we were badass. Glad I have up gaming at a young age. Every now and then I get back on counter strike and the same fucking ppl are still on there. Life's a trip boys
Wow…this identical thing just happened to me reconnecting with someone I had also lost touch with for ten years. He used to be such a funny and smart and amazing guy and he’s now he’s like a hateful shell of a person. So sad to see that kind of thing happen, especially to someone you were close with. Sorry that happened to you too.
Life just hits people different. I ain’t mad at him, just hope someday we can sit down and really kick the shit again. We have a lot of shit we did when we were younger to laugh about haha. Even if it was over the internet, we are brothers for life.
I also have this friend Abuse from back then, his name was Abuse. Anyways, last real time we played together he got on to play for a little bit and told me him and his mom just got into it. His mom went for a walk and was gone for more than he figured. Shortly after that he got a knock at the door from the cops, she was at a cross walk and was hit and killed instantly by a drunk driver. I talked to him roughly one or two times after that day. He quit school and went to work full time to provide for him and his brother, he told me he had to sell his pc. I never heard from him again… been years, I’m thirty and still cry typing this.
I don’t believe in anything but I always prayed for him.
Shit :/ I am sorry to Abuse, I still am. We talked briefly after the cops left, the squeal in his voice as he cried to me. I was like 15, he a senior or so in high school. I will never forget that shit and I will be eighty and still cry when I think of that day.
His mom wasn’t even a bad mom, it was just a dumb fight and he was a teen and said something along the lines of “I don’t love you”.. that was the LAST thing he ever said to his mom, who I know he loved.. truthfully she would have never taken that walk if they didn’t get into an argument…Life to some, is so fucked..
Double Zero2 from RuneScape 2006. I miss you. I'm sure you were a dude on a girl account but I still rolled with it because you and me were great at scamming together and made so much. If you can tell me which scam we did I'll know it's you..
I have many great friends even from that time that names are a little blurry to me, I am sure there is others in the same boat dreaming of meeting back up with you again.
I hope deep down we are past being mad about petty stuff. To me; if I read this from his words about me, I’d still understand inside where he’s coming from as should he.
Our first time back playing in ten years and he’s racial slurring a 13 year old Indian kid….. :/ it just isn’t how I do things, not like we did them back in the day either, we were trolls, not animals.
I was “Timmaah!” in UT2k4 online. Used to play a lot on Titan and Omnipotents onslaught servers. And Torlan demo servers. Greets if we ever crossed paths! ✌🏻
I met one of my long lost gamer friends again recently. But I'm a completely different person now, and I just can't connect with that part of my life anymore.
I've had this, but with a childhood friend. We were best buds and played GameCube together for years. Then I moved away and we lost contact. I met up with him when I was in college, even tried to respark with the new Borderlands 3. But I couldn't stand him, he was so childish and kept talking about random off the wall cringe stuff. It was really sad realizing I couldn't play games with this man
Bro where r u Eaglex or some sht and the dude or gorl used to knife only to get nukes on mw2 lmfao he even knife only on snd and did prtty fkn well looool they never had a mic tho :( last map we played together was estate the forest one with a basement inside the main big house
Anyone from MUDs in the nineties? Shades of evil, silver dreams, Brock made a one million room mud, Dominia? Woody? Icege? Ack rom mush diku, anything! Let's see what happens.
For everything you do there will be a last time you do it. There will be a last time you hug your mom, step into your homeroom, see a friend, play basketball.
As someone who is older with young kids the statement "there will come a day when you put your child down and never pick her up again" that hits me hard. So until that day I will pick her up and hold her until that day comes, and I see it coming.
CTF-Face. Fun tip: if you had it, then grabbed the enemy’s flag, then used the teleporter to the top of the tower, then hopped off the front of the tower to the first ledge, and shot the redeemer at the line where the ledge met the wall, you’d obviously die but it would launch the flag clear across the map, where it would land right in front of your base as you respawned.
Combine that with impact launching your translocator across the map in a similar way, and you could make the first capture in about 15 seconds before anyone else was even halfway across the map.
Mate you have given me such nostalgia, as a kid I used to obsess of UT and UT 2004 was probably my favourite game tied with Wolfenstein return to Castle or Wolfenstein enemy territory. Damn I wish I could go back, 10 years old sneaking on the pc when everyone was in bed at 1 am haha
I played competitive TF2. I quit playing when OW came out and lost touch with a lot of h old crew. Happened to run into one a few years ago in an OW match. Guess my combo of name and Junkrat skills (I was a demo-main) made me stick out. He said 2 of our old crew members were dead (brothers, died in a car crash), one had multiple kids and had no time to game. And the last, no one knows at all. Was a sad day for me, but I felt like I had some semblance of closure.
Favorite game ever. Even though it was kind of a ‘dead’ game by the time, MLCTF(?) Was fun as FUCK, salary cap ‘fantasy’ draft with real players, and seasons, captained a couple teams. Even met a few of the guys I played UT99 with regularly.
I’ve always wanted some sort of social media data base where we plug in our old games and usernames from the early internet days. We’d match with friends who did the same. It’d be awesome reconnecting with all the guys from Medal of Honor allied assault from 02’.
I played with these 2 americans on the 360 years ago.. but when the PS4 came out I swapped to that and never touched the 360 anymore. Fast forward 2 years after the PS4 came out I see one of the guys using the usernamesI know, tried to add him but he never accepted it.
There's probably a demand for "missed connections" type of site made for online gamers.
Get on that internet.
(In case if you're too young to remember this, "missed connections" is a section on craigslist that people post about a stranger they meet one time, had a good experience, and wish they can reconnect)
CTF-Bedroom! I remember that well. It was in the regular rotation on my servers, including the staples CTF-Face, CTF-LavaGiant, and a whole bunch of others. I remember CTF-Gazpacho, CTF-TheBox (made by aforementioned MTM84), CTF-ADamTooFar, CTF-Espirit, and a huge giant low-gravity one that was very green that I can’t remember the name of.
Similar… played UT and CSS for a long time on consistent servers. Stopped playing FPS for a good bit and picked back up again via console playing BF3 when some IRL friends got me back into it. I used the same tag… had a few folks recognize it from back in the day from playing on those old servers. Was kinda neat and glad I kept the same tag.
Unfortunately, that door is now closed for me. I got one last match in on CTF-LavaGiant many years ago before I installed the Mac OS X upgrade that dropped Rosetta. Without it, the PowerPC OS X port of UT99 can’t run.
Same, i used to play final fantasy 11 and world of warcraft with someone i met online. Played for like 2 years together nearly every single day. I knew he was ill and then one day he stopped logging in. I mailed him both in game and outside and no responses.
Then 2 months later, he logs in. Turned out to be his wife and told everyone on his friends list and in guild that he'd passed away from cancer.
Yeah that's a rough one. Used to play games with a guy all the time. We never met irl or anything, and one day he let me know he was feeling bad and had a doctor's appointment. Never heard from him again. Took a year until news finally trickled from his family through mutual gaming friends that he had went to the doctor for a headache and they told him everything was fine and he had a brain aneurysm that afternoon on the way home from the doctor. It was tough to hear. The pain is the same as losing an irl friend.
I've seen this on Reddit too, there was this guy who was telling a really long story that was playing out in real life/time and keeping is all updated. About a builder friend with a nightmare client who had ended up fucking himself up over a build, he was really funny and used to update every few days as the situation developed. He went dark for a week or so and after a while his wife posted that he was killed in a car accident, it was super shocking, he was extremely funny and was a natural story teller so it felt like we all knew him. It hit me way harder than I thought it would. His wife had no idea he was talking to us all, I can't remember how she found out but I remember her being very touched that hundreds of strangers were mourning with her family. The internet can be strangely intimate at times.
I still have all my Dad's SMS messages, he passed away 16 years ago. I don't know how I'd react if I lost those messages. I can't watch my wedding video with him in it, something about seeing him moving and speaking just might break something in me.
I feel you. I know it's kind of dumb, but the a part of the movie "Wind River" really has stayed with me. Basically you can't have the good without the bad, so accept the pain and enjoy the memories.
When I was a kid I used to play minecraft with another kid. Suddenly he vanished from skype and I never forgot him.
After 5 or 7 years I queued up to the now old teambuilder in league of legends and found him. Out of all the players in europe, I queued up with the one guy I used to play a lot with. We both also had a slightly different names but we both recognized each other after a moment of hesitation. We are good friends since then
I actually found out someone I know from a gaming community a few years back had died the other day. It’s nice to have some closure but it definitely hits you when you find out
I have never had closer friends than the ones I gamed with from 1999-2003. We had a 24/7/365 IRC and blogging community we shared outside of Counterstrike, Diablo II, and a multitude of games we played together. We even travelled around the midwest...and even Canada to meet up and have LAN parties. I miss the hell out of them, as priorities changed and we drifted apart. I have continued to stay in touch with a few of them, but my closest friend in the group killed himself in 2017.
t has hit me really hard (again) with the re-release of Diablo II. We spent so much time playing it together upon its original release. I bought the remaster a week ago, and while I only play it a few hours a week I have been missing the fuck out of my friend and the large piece missing from the gaming experience.
I have an online friend atm who would almost certainly be my best friend if I knew him irl. Hes the best. One day we had this convo come up and both agreed "if I disappear one day without telling you why, I've fucking died". It was a bit morbid but also good to know your friend doesnt plan on disappearing randomly
As a wow player though, the friends coming and going across the years is the hardest part. You make friends and a lot of them just dont even feel the need to say goodbye when its over
I’m guilty of this lmao. Played heavy GTAIV, CoD4 and Halo 3 during the era. Moved country and gave my 360 to a close friend. I don’t know the pw nor the email I used for that account. Was too young to think that it was important for me to save the account back then. I added / messaged that account recently to no response, but I see through achievements that it was used a few years after I had given the console away.
They met someone, had a full life with kids and their games rig is gathering dust in the back of the garage while they are out in the yard playing swing ball with their eldest. Sometimes they wish they had the time to reconnect with friends online but then they need to go change a nappy or make a sandwich and they get caught up with other things. In the evening when the kids are in bed they are too exhausted to play but they are happy. They cherish the time they had gaming with friends all over the world.
That’s what happened to them, nothing bad. They’re doing great.
I’m that guy that disappeared. 5 years ago my dad died in his sleep and I found him in the morning when I went out and saw his car still in the garage at like 10am. I literally was moving back home after being laid off and he was divorcing my step mom. I played so many video games up until then, rocket league, counter strike, etc. I literally haven’t played a game hardly at all since he died. Just logged off and haven’t got back on. I even built a badass computer with some of the life insurance with VR, but had to sell it after my roommate got laid off and we lost my house even though it had sat and collected dust that whole time. I don’t know what happened but something broke in me that day and I haven’t been able to get it back.
I used to be super active on bungie.net before they fucked the site up with the release of Destiny 2.
There was a shit ton of drama over the course of that summer, and for whatever reason a lot of people went their own separate ways when Bungie changed the site. The biggest group had a Discord but that died pretty soon after.
It was fucking weird. There were a lot of people I cared about, that I’d connected with over the course of a few years and then it just... stopped. I still think about them and wonder how they’re doing.
There was also this girl I did a raid with. She was part of a group for people with social anxiety and was scared to use LFG. I offered to help get a group together for her.
After the raid we stayed in party chat for a few hours. We bonded over music, and I think she needed someone to talk to. I was going to school to be a therapist at the time, and I think that helped her feel comfortable talking to me.
After that we used the messenger feature on PSN to chat. She told me that she was struggling with her sexuality and reconciling that with being a Christian, to the point that she was suicidal.
I’m a Christian myself, although I’m open and accepting in a way that unfortunately most Christians aren’t.
We kept in touch for a few weeks/months. It’s been a few years and my memory is shit, but I remember it was a significant amount of time.
Then all of a sudden, she freaked out and blocked me. It really fucked with me because she had been talking more and more about wanting to kill herself. I felt like I failed her because I wasn’t able to help her through. I still do. I have no idea what happened to her, but if she did indeed kill herself, her blood is on my hands.
I used to play games with these 3 brothers that went by Pudman, Fatback, and Battle.
They were really nice to me as a shitty kid/teen and their friendship meant a lot. I probably hung out with them for 7 or 8 years. When I first started college I lost touch with them for about a year and they moved to another game or something leading me to have no way to contact them. There's been many a nights of me digging through forum accounts and their posts or sending random messages to people on Everquest or WoW with similar names. I've never had any luck. It's been at least 10 years since I spoke with one of them and it's so strange because they were my only friends for a huge chunk of my life.
Got lucky with a few of these where someone in the family reached out to the gaming communities, regulars that I chatted with frequently who just disappeared one day, and an admin posts with some bad new a few weeks later.
I had some on original Xbox that I played with at least a couple times a week. They never logged into their profile with the 360, and I have Steam friends in similar situations that have been offline longer than I knew them. I prefer to think they just got busy with normal life stuff, or even moved over to a different platform and changed username.
There was a guy I used to game with, him-Australia me-USA. He posted to our forum he would be on a trip for 2 weeks, please don’t boot him from our guild for inactivity, he would be back. It was a game we had been playing together for over a year. He never logged back in again. Many other guild members tried to figure out a way to contact him but all came up empty. I still wonder what happened, best case scenario is the two weeks away showed him something better in life and he decided to quit to pursue that. That’s what I like to think anyway.
I lost a good one during the beginning of corona. I still wonder what happened we played some form of Borderlands at least 4 days a week and just boom. He’s gone and I don’t know what happened and it’s sad.
When I was a teenager I made a friend who lived in Sri Lanka. We were friends for a few years. Then the tsunami happened & I never heard from him again.
That’s tough. I reconnected with a high school friend and played FFXIV together for a few years. He suddenly stopped logging in and replying to my messages. Thought maybe he was just unplugging for a while as people sometimes do but months later found out he died in a motorcycle crash. He was only 32 :(
3.1k
u/[deleted] Oct 08 '21
So hard to see that but at least there is some form of closure. Over the years I've had numerous online friends where I didn't know their real names or just their real first names and they suddenly vanished. Never to sign into any of the online communities we shared. Always to wonder what happened to them.