Massively^™

Have you ever fallen in love online? Have you ever met that someone on an MMO that excited you to the point where the addiction of the game mixed with the addiction to discovery of this desirable stranger creates a high so strong that your heart skips just to see that special someone's name pop up on your friends list, to where you ache to hear that Ventrilo voice, to where you get turned on just by flirting while your game fueled creative mind is ready to race into realms of dream-time in a wave of delight, allure, and pleasure that the dingy world of Earth so rarely offers in this lifetime?

Um, me neither.

But, you know, should that happen, the Dungeon Curmudgeon here has some tips on how to handle your iFeelings for your iBabe or iBeaux for when you're together in the heart but not together in the flesh, accumulated from years of watching virtual romances become real or not-so-real love.

"So what's to know about playing MMOs?" you might ask. "Where else can you go to learn that life has no consequences, just future runs at drops? To endure requests from people begging you to please do complicated quests for them so that they can have red dye on the armor they'll replace tomorrow? To listen to others proudly shout out their "deep understanding" of complex political, economic, or scientific concepts they doubtless gained from mining virtual iron ore for six hours a day? To spend peaceful weekday down time telling socially inept children– some of whom are in their 30s and 40s – to STFU?"

Well, sure, there's that. And I've been playing online games since 1990, so I've seen all that aplenty. I'm what you'd call a Dungeon Curmudgeon –a guy who has been around long enough to have seen the ins and outs of many an MMO, been to the meet and greets, watched the n00bs come and go, and even remember when w00t wasn't a word. (And it still isn't as far as I am concerned -- l33tspeak is Pig Latin for the Internet -- except that the dictionary people haven't figured that out yet).

Yet looking beyond the archetype of the teen-aged moustached, pizza-faced veneer of social ineptitude, something more complex and curious is happening. You see, I think MMOs are the finishing schools of the Internet.