In Real Life-Meeting Other Players

[damonlee]

Hey All,

I'm totally new to WOW and was wondering what would be a good way to actally meet other players in real life (not during game play)

I live in Orlando, Florida. Can anyone direct me to some type of user groupe that meets up? :wave:

Thanks guys
Damon

[Soulslaver]

Possibly try asking around at your local internet cafes as they may well know of WoW groups in your area.Also it's a safe way to potentially meet up with like-minded gamers.Many ppl are very wary of meeting up with other online gamers as to be honest you are only able to judge them by what they tell you.

Anyway good luck and have fun :)

[damonlee]

Possibly try asking around at your local internet cafes as they may well know of WoW groups in your area.Also it's a safe way to potentially meet up with like-minded gamers.Many ppl are very wary of meeting up with other online gamers as to be honest you are only able to judge them by what they tell you.

Anyway good luck and have fun :)

Thanks for the advice. I don't feel it's a safety issue if I'm meeting up with other gamers in a public place.

I did find a user group here in Orlando that is meeting up soon. I havn't read the rules, so i'm not sure if I can say what website they are from...if it is ok to post, I'll reply with the URL.

[Soulslaver]

"Thanks for the advice. I don't feel it's a safety issue if I'm meeting up with other gamers in a public place."

That's why I suggested asking around in yr local internet cafes as a source,it's safe for all involved.I know the media tends to blow things way out of proportion when summat nasty happens but even so nowt wrong in playing safe with ppl you've never met in real life.

I've met with several ppl I got to know first in-game but it generally took a while until both sides were comfortable enough to exchange personal info,which in my opinion at least is the best way to go about things.

If you can find a WoW "club" where ppl regularly meet up ofc that would be great,if not you'll most likely find some like-minded players as you're leveling and may get the chance to meet up if you're geographically in similiar areas.

I may of course just be getting paranoid in my old age:P Though it does take some time I've had the privilege of meeting up with some really great online friends over the years.

PS:re the URL thing.You'd need to talk to a mod here as I don't know anything about that side of things sorry

[damonlee]

Well, it might kinda of a grey area to post the link, so I'm not going to just to play it safe.

If you google "meet Orlando WoW players" it will be the first link to show up...

[Renata]

I played MMOs for ... let's see ... seven years before I ever met a single gamer in person.

I sometimes wonder if this is a generational thing. I was discussing the issue of Internet privacy with a cousin of mine who is a Ph.D. in computer science and senior lecturer at a college down south; I'm in my early forties, she's older than I am, and we've both noticed that people in the generation behind us are much less concerned with the whole issue of privacy. This is probably because when we grew up, we didn't encounter such things as email and bulletin boards until college or later, didn't own cell phones until later than that (I remember my mother owning a "bag phone" back in the early 80s that came with its own fairly large tote bag; she was a visiting nurse), and the idea of meeting people in person who you'd met on the Internet was just much more of a foreign idea.

When I played EQ, most of my guild lived across the country from me, so it didn't come up much, but I hesitated even talking on the telephone with some of them. This was before the days when Teamspeak and Ventrilo were in any kind of widespread use (most people lacked the bandwidth to run both EQ and a voice program).

I've only met a very few people in person from my guild, partly because I'm still not totally comfortable with the idea of doing that, but partly because they live in closer proximity to me. With the first two people we met, a married couple, it turned out that the guy and I had grown up ten miles from one another and were related by marriage, with his uncle being married to my brother-in-law's aunt (very, very weird coincidence, but we're talking small towns in dairy country here). With the second couple, I had become exceptionally good friends with the woman, as we extended our friendship to regular AIM contact, since we both work from home and can easily chat during the day. In another funny coincidence, in two hours I am leaving to make the six-hour drive to their house to spend the next four days with them, my second in-person visit.

Perhaps, not encountering the Internet until college (graphic Web interfaces weren't even available until I was in graduate school, and most were still using text-based browsers such as Lynx), I approached it with a little more suspicion and caution than someone who doesn't even remember life before the Internet.

But then again, I'm not likely to share personal details with someone I first meet in the real world, either.

...Ren

[rgirty]

I have participated in multiple real life guild meetings. We had people who traveled from the new york/north east area to attend the meeting that was in the south.

We had a really good time, and some strange results came from the meeting but it was a very good time indeed.

We have visited multiple times and expect to visit again. The last time we had 15ish guild members with 10 or so of them being officers.

[fallenwiccan]

I haven't been playing WoW very long so I don't have any experience from this point of view but I have met many of my closest friends from the internet over the years. The main person though is my boyfriend of 4 and a half years, we met via a Buffy message board (I miss linear message boards and ctrl+F to find conversations you were involved in) and were friends online for a long time before we started to meet up (he lives only 13 miles from me), me and him (and 4 friends we met via a Firefly board) are all heading to San Diego Comic Con this year so I say go for it and meet people, you never know how important they could be.

As a generation perspective though I'm 22, I never met anyone from online until I was 17 and could drive to somewhere public to do it, I did do the mistake of not telling my parents though but I was lucky.