Is there ever such thing as finding a TRUE friend in an online game? You meet people, you befriend them, you game with them all day-everyday for months and sometimes years on end. You become close, as if you could read their minds, and you think they KNOW you by now, know how you are emotionally inside and out. But then one day you have a really really bad day, whether its at home or work or in game, but you have a bad day and many things come out, especially real life issues, and you snap. You do drastic things like 'quit the guild' or 'delete your character', etc. And then your "friends" blow up at you, get "angry" at you, saying things they shouldn't say. And all those months of "friendship" are gone in an instant. All because of miscommunication?

Is this how we perceive friendship in todays day and age of internet and wired relationships? Had someone "snapped" in real life, face to face, would we deliver the most hatred words and assume things that really are not true only because they are defined by the words you typed on the screen, yet never confronted in real life?

Is "friendship" really something you can find online or does a TRUE friendship need to be developed physically (not sexually) through hugs and face to face laughter?

Personally, I would have to say you can find a friend online, but never a complete TRUE friend until you are with each other in person, to share what life has to deliever in REAL LIFE, not just through a game, because even if you FEEL you know someone or they know you, you don't react certain ways in REAL LIFE as you would in a game when things happen. Why? Miscommunication.

I have yet to find a friend who has stuck by me in a game even if I am a fair game player or a loving person. I can go out of my way to do EVERYTHING I possibily can do to show I am a friend IN GAME (listening on ventrilo, sending ecards for emotional support, wishing birthday greetings, laughing and sharing stories, supporting someone, etc) and yet if I do something one day that seems odd, I am condemned, shunned, hated, and mistrusted. Things are said to me that, through all the months of gaming together and thinking you are friends, you think "how could my friends think I'm like that? Did they NOT know me??" Had it been a friendship in "REAL LIFE", a TRUE FRIEND would have called to ask if I was alright, stopped by to find out why I did what I did, and certainly TALKED TO ME! But no, in game friendships are easy to disban because there is always that internet distance that seperates us and it is too easy to walk away when things get bad and too easy to miscommunicate and not TRY to talk to the people you "love". It's too easy to say "keep in touch" and reroll a new character or move to a different game and change your email address and delete your Yahoo profiles. It's too easy to say "goodbye". To me, an online friendship can rarely be true because "friendship" is more than "assuming" you know the person, it is literally one big giant hug that can never be delivered through the wires.

Your thoughts?