Comment by nozzlegear

12 hours ago

I met my wife playing World of Warcraft some 16 years ago. She played a protection paladin, and I was a restoration shaman who was pretty new to doing group content. She had been looking for a healer for a heroic dungeon she and her friends were about to do, and I messaged her. We all got on really well, and three of us (myself, my wife, and one friend from that original group of five) still play WoW to this day.

It can be mind boggling to think how different my life would've been if I had been on a different server at that time; if I didn't play a healer; if I'd been an Alliance character instead of Horde; or if I hadn't been reading trade chat or just plain hadn't been online at that moment. Lots of variables had to be in place for us to meet.

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nozzlegear

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eks391  1 hour ago

My story isn't digital, but similarly required so many variables to coincide.

My friend got promoted and wanted to celebrate by going to a bar. His peer/colleague was also invited, and she had been hit by a bus only days before, totaling her car, but she wanted to come and convinced her neighbor to drive her to the bar. I came late, and sat far from my friend, as he invited several people, and the seats near him were taken. My friends colleagues neighbor was also at the end because she is shy and wasn't going to get into the main convo. She was cute, but I wasnt trying to pick her up, mostly just pity-chatted with her since she was clearly uncomfortable being there. And it turns out we really enjoyed chatting with each other. We meshed so well in fact, that we ended up marrying later. Obviously I skipped detail, but a lot happened for us to meet, and the window was tiny.

What if I or the peer had been busy, or my friend didn't get the promotion, or the peer's car hadn't been totaled? Or my wife, who didn't drink, had refused to go to the bar?

winterbloom  12 hours ago

i mean that would apply to meeting your SO in real life too, that's just how life works

  • wavemode  10 hours ago

    Well, sometimes. A lot of people just marry someone they went to school with, or worked with, or who was in their friend group or local community. It was simply a matter of deciding to pull the trigger.

    Obviously there's still the narrow margin of "living in the same place at the same time", but that margin is much wider than "be in this exact game server at this exact time of day on this exact day".

    • BobbyJo  9 hours ago

      The margin is wider but the number is smaller. You can be on a hundred different game servers at various times, but you're only born and grow up in an area once.

  • bombcar  11 hours ago

    And some are big “had to happen” (right college choice, wrong WoW faction choice, etc) and others are “the specific had to happen but would have eventually” - if you’re both playing horde on the same campus you’d eventually meet in game or IRL, for example.