MeinMMO reader alf told us in a comment about his gaming friendship that lasts after death.
As part of our Find Your Next Game: Love Edition week, we received a comment below an article from our reader alf, who shared a touching story about a gaming friendship. We don’t want to withhold this story from you.
“There were 3 friends in my clan who also knew each other in RL”
Alf tells us: I started Lineage 2 in 2003 on a so-called “free server”. The server was called Noobwars, a Greek L2 server. There were 2 camps there: Greeks and Bulgarians, a few Germans and a few Spaniards. All together maybe around 500 players.
Each side made their own clans, of course, and people spread out. We ended up in a Greek clan. We knew a little English, just enough to be able to have a conversation and piece together what the other was saying.
There were 3 friends in my clan who also knew each other in RL. Their names were Steris, Kologeros and Papoukas, 3 dwarfs. One crafter, the other two spoilers. So we used to joke about these chars because the dwarves in L2 really did look like dwarves. Small fat, and a huge long beard and a thick red nose.
So we started hanging out with them and got to know these 3 Greeks better and better. We found out after several months that Kologros and Steris were brothers and Papoukas was a boy next door to them.
Then, after a few more weeks, we found out that Steris was sick. He had leukemia. We weren’t sure what to do and how to behave. But we agreed that we wanted to visit him in Greece in his hospital.
“We were there about 4 hours then we had to leave”
So we’re going to Darmstadt on Friday. My sister was living in the Messel Pit at the time. Then Saturday morning to the airport in Frankfurt and off to Greece. When we landed in Athens, we called Kologeros, who came to pick us up and brought us to our hotel.
From there we went to Steris in the hospital. It was strange because it was absolutely not like in Germany. The smell was different. You know the hospital smell? That nasal discomfort from all that sterile stuff? It wasn’t there.
Steris wasn’t alone in the room either. He was in a “gathering room” with 6 other people. I only knew from Germany that there were always 2 or sometimes 3 in a room, but 6? That was funny.
There was a big table in the middle with chairs, there was a couch, a giant TV, a “kitchen” if you can call it that, where they had a microwave, coffee maker and so on. We were there about 4 hours then we had to leave. But we had a lot of fun there with Steris, Kolo and Papou. Steris’ parents were there too and we were glad that his mother could speak German. Without them we would have been helplessly lost.
“So far this is my best experience in gaming that I have had”
We continued to play on Noobwars and in the same guild as Kolo, Steris and Papou. After the summer, we noticed that Steris is logged in less and less. And one day not at all. Neither does his brother, Kologeros, and Papou only at night.
We asked what’s up, but we knew what’s up. Steris died of leukemia at the age of 23 on August 16, 2004. We flew back to Greece for the funeral. Since then we meet Kolo and Papou once every 2 or 3 years in Germany.
Kologeros now lives here and Papoukas was studying at the university in Darmstadt at the time. At that time both of them bought the server on which the Steris characters are sitting. They let it continue privately for the 5 of us. And every year on the anniversary of Steris’ death, we log in, sit in Giran with his characters and talk in the chat, telling us what happened, what we are doing and what we have done.
Of course now via TeamSpeak and we don’t drink ingame “beer” anymore, but real beer. But we still keep in touch today, we make phone calls from time to time, we meet, we log on to the server in Kologeros’ basement.
Even today, almost 20 years later, we are friends, our families know each other, we visit each other. 5 friends who used to be six. There are still six of us.
So far this is my best gaming experience I’ve had.
We would like to thank alf for allowing us to publish his beautiful story on our website. If you have experienced something special ingame yourself or know someone, send us a message to [email protected].
This photo shows gamers standing together – it’s going around the world