The closing of an online virtual game may sound trivial to anyone who has never used or visited one, but to the people who spent a chunk of their formative years forging relationships inside their virtual walls, the loss can be huge.
For players of massively multiplayer online games (called MMOs or MMOGs) an online game can feel like a richly populated parallel universe with a distinct culture and set of social groups.
"When a virtual world closes, its users lose many things all at once," said Nick Yee, a researcher who has been studying virtual worlds for 14 years. "A living, breathing community with its own unique culture, slang, and lore; an accessible and familiar hangout with regulars and familiar faces; an online identity and persona that they're emotionally invested in and cultivated over time; and a social network of friends who have shared many experiences together."
MMOs can be a place to try on different identities. You get to choose how you are presented and make connections without worrying about looks or other snap judgments.
"This game is a home to us, a place where we can be who we are, where we can just be normal without discrimination and judgment," said longtime "Toontown" member Denise Tan.
In a large online survey of players from games such as "World of Warcraft," Yee found 24% of players had confided personal issues or secrets to online friends that they had not told their real life friends. The online communities can feel just as real as their in-person worlds -- 41% said the friends they'd made online were comparable or better friends than the ones they had in real life.
Other massively multiplayer online games have shut down after multiyear runs. After eight years, the "Star Wars Galaxies" game was given the Alderaan treatment and destroyed in 2011. Many of those players migrated to "Star Wars: The Old Republic." After "URU: Ages Beyond Myst" closed for the first time in 2004, 10,000 players were virtual "refugees" who moved on to other virtual worlds like "Second Life," according to Celia Pearce who studied the displaced URU players as part of her Ph.D. thesis.