Get Hitched In Phantasy Star Online

Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing to a Spong.com article discussing the wedding chapel that's being added to popular MMO Phantasy Star Online. There's also a PSOWorld article with a little more information on this special lobby, which will appear June 13th-17th and June 27th-July 1st. According to PSOWorld, "..some of you online PSO lovers or RP'ers out there might want to start wedding plans. June brides are known to be the fortunate brides, as June is the most desirable time for a marriage in Japan." As well as some kind of special in-game marriage verification, Sonic Team have even provided a new lobby soundtrack for the chapel, in the form of the Wedding March.

Comments

Wedding Night Blues

[dazmiller]

Now if only they could simulate the wedding night. Dropouts, lack of bandwidth, packet loss, no wait, that was my wedding night.

Re:Wedding Night Blues

[Txurlo]

Honey, I swear this is the first time this happens! It's the lag!

Social Skills +3!

[Thyamine]

With my tux +1 and the silver engagement rings +2 I'm all set! Bring on the women!

What? They nerfed the rings!? Rutz....

The Wrong Thing To Advocate

[th3walrus]

As a married gamer with a wife who also games, I find the idea of advocating in-game romance to be inappropriate.

It's bad enough as it is. Anyone who has either played a female character or hung out with a female in a MMORPG knows that a majority of your time is spent trying to get rid of unwanted would-be suitors. Even saying "She's really my wife out of game. Quit hitting on her, you ass" gets you nowhere with these poor desperate disrespectful kids.

It's to the point that my wife and I have both stopped playing online RPG's. You can try and report harassment, but when 90% of the male population of the game participates in the act, nothing happens about it.

Online RPG's should not be used as hook-up joints. We're there trying to play the game as was intended. Not to listen to a bunch of pathetic teenagers trying to pick up on my wife. It's not what the game is there for and I don't consider it appropriate. If you're that pathetic that you feel you have to pick up women on line try some chat room (Married and Flirting in Yahoo! Chat comes to mind for you losers that must try to pick up married women), or a love shack property in The Sims Online. Don't come disrupt our gaming with your sexed-up crap.

Re:The Wrong Thing To Advocate

[LeoDV]

Or, you could just take it with a grain of salt, and think of it as something funny. God knows if I played a MMORPG and something like this came to be I'd marry a friend just for kicks ("What? You don't allow same sex marriages? What kind of bigots are you?!"). People might do it just for fun. I think it's a nifty little gimmick. (And I'm a married gamer in case you're wondering.)

Of course there are the people who will be taking it too seriously and going overboard, but if we were to dismiss every videogame gimmick out of hand as outrageous because some will take it too seriously and go overboard, we wouldn't even have videogames anymore.

Re:The Wrong Thing To Advocate

[Baron_911]

Although I agree that the hormonially challenged seem to have a problem when anything that could be female (you can never be sure) approaches, I really enjoy meeting members of the opposite sex in MMORPGs. Some of the coolest girls in the world are girl gamers, and if you meet them in a game you like, then they probably have some common intrests, etc. It's truely a shame that a bunch of knuckleheads have to ruin a perfectly good social expieriance, which usually ends up driving women away from MMORPGs, or forces them to hide their femanine origins. I am very sorry that these folks drove you away from MMORPGs, and I whole-heartedly wish the maturity level in online games would take a giant leap for (wo)mankind.

Re:The Wrong Thing To Advocate

[th3walrus]

It's not funny when you have to spend most of your online time fending off horny guys looking to cyber. It's actually pretty disruptive.

Yeah, generally I'd think the wedding chapel and all is a pretty cute idea. But it just advocates using the game as a medium for picking up on the opposite sex. I don't go out to singles bars with my wife, and I don't want to put up with the same behavior in my gaming.

Not to mention that for a lot of these people their online relations aren't a joke to them even if it may be to the other person involved. That brings up the whole situation of cyber stalking, which I have seen some dead serious cases of in the past.

My argument is simply that online RPG's are not the place for it. Social community games like The Sims Online or Second Life are better suited for this, if that's what you want to do with your online time.

Re:The Wrong Thing To Advocate

[dazmiller]

I think this would be a good idea if there was some sort of revenge function implemented. Add the ability to have children (adopt obviously) and you have a great mechanism for revenge quests, Find the man who killed my pa, kill the raiding party that slaughtered my wife or husband, etc,etc. I knwo it wouldnt add that much to gameplay but if you look at most fantasy novels, that theme runs thru most of them. Raise an army or hire assasins or seek revenge on the man/men who killed my family. Just my two cents worth

Re:The Wrong Thing To Advocate

[th3walrus]

Thanks for your condolences (I guess that's the right word for it). I really do wish things were different online and people could be a bit more mature in their online attitudes.

Personally, I enjoy the social aspect of it too, but I enjoy meeting *people*. Men, women, gender benders... it doesn't matter to me. And it shouldn't to other people either. It's not like these people are your real life friends and companions. They're people you play a game with. Which is great and all, but not what I would consider a deep relationship.

I have actually had long-time party members completely ditch me to go do things with my wife's character because OH MY GOD! It's a real, live, breathing, girl on the other side of that character! Attack! People give tons of free stuff to my wife's characters just because she's really a girl. I'm guessing this is the new online pathetic equivalent to buying a woman a drink at a bar.

People, especially repressed gaming nerds, need to chill the hell out when it comes to women. You're just participating in another form of sexism which, the last time I looked, was a bad thing.

Re:The Wrong Thing To Advocate

[Kastagir]

It's not wrong to advocate just because you've had a few bad experiences. You enjoyment in these games is fairly directly related to who you're spending your time with. If you're always joining up with disrespectful punk kids, then you're not going to have a good time and you're going to quit, as you already did. If you're grouping with people with similar maturity levels (regardless of age), interestes, etc, you'll have more fun because you'll look forward to spending time with friends in addition to just playing the game.

Granted some games my have a higher percentage of punks than others, but you can avoid them anywhere. Stay away from them. Tell them she's a guy, unless you're using voice chat (say xbox PSO) where you could just use a voice mask to make her sound like one.

Re:The Wrong Thing To Advocate

[NexusTw1n]

Even saying "She's really my wife out of game. Quit hitting on her, you ass" gets you nowhere with these poor desperate disrespectful kids.

Isn't the point of an RPG to enjoy a role playing game ?

Weddings in RPG's are popular because people are role playing their character is in love with another character. Why spoil real roleplayer's fun, just because of your jealousy issues?
An equally valid complaint could be that MMORPG's are spoiled by people constantly speaking out of character about the fact that the elf princess is actually their real life wife, ruining the atmosphere and mood just as much as the OMG LOL 0wz0red U!!!! crowd.

Apart from spoiling the game with OOC comments, don't you think that confirming character x is really a women and not a sex starved geek male, is the cyber equivalent of walking into a biker bar and proclaiming that just because your wife is terrific in bed, doesn't mean anyone in there has the right to chat her up?

My wife gets hassled in on line games, but she and I take it with a humourous pinch of salt. The day sex starved teenage boys get me annoyed is the day I know I've lost my sense of humour for good.

Re:The Wrong Thing To Advocate

[Blackwulf]

I don't see this the same way that you see it. I've been playing MMO's for a while (and, for the record, I do NOT consider PSO as an MMOG...4 players in a game is NOT massive) and I have seen that the people I come into contact with aren't interested in any type of relationship with others outside of the game. They want their character to marry another character. In fact, I know a husband and wife who played and each person got married to someone else in-game!

For situations like yours, I'd hit the handy-dandy /ignore feature on the person. If your wife doesn't want to deal with the sexual harrassment from Random_d00d_04, /ignore them and boom, you don't have to hear them anymore. (You can mute someone in PSO to achieve the same effect.)

I've actually been proposed to by women (who were women IRL!) in games, because they knew that I had a fiancee in RL, and that I was "safe" in that respect. (They knew I wouldn't actually try to find them and take the relationship outside of what it was - two "actors" on a virtual stage.) I guess maybe I hung out with an older, more mature crowd than you did, and that was luck on my part.

I'm not saying what happens to you and your wife didn't happen, and I DEFINATELY am not saying that what people are saying to you and your wife is okay. But, there are tools that are available (/ignore, muting) that take the frustration away very, very quickly, and are at your disposal if you choose to utilize them.

Meanwhile, those of us who are mature and understand that it's just a game will welcome this addition. :>

Re:The Wrong Thing To Advocate

[Dammerung]

Damn, I was playing E&B with this one Girl once, doing Trading Runs when a couple people decided to join in. We figured ok, because we get more experience, but they turned out to be horny kids and started hitting on her. She removed them from the party, and we continued on like normal, but not everyone can just brush it aside like she did. We were both pretty discusted with it, and it's not just MMORPGs. I hear most kids on mechassault, when they so much as hear a female voice they start harassing her. I wish gamers(young or old, doesn't matter) could gain a sense of maturity.

Re:The Wrong Thing To Advocate

[1gor]

So why don't you take your virtual sword and cut the the annoying bastards in half? What do you do in real life in such circumstances?

Re:The Wrong Thing To Advocate (P.S.)

[LeoDV]

I can certainly understand why it can be extremely annoying to have pathetic people constantly hitting on your wife while you're trying to play, isn't the whole point of MMORPG's to be a social experience? And doesn't that include the obnoxious bastards who hit on your girl?

Um, Wedding March ain't gonna cut it

[jeblucas]

Sonic Team have even provided a new lobby soundtrack for the chapel, in the form of the Wedding March.

No Hora? Or Hava Nagila? What kind of wedding is this? Given this is an old-school RPG, shouldn't folks at least be able to Chocobo Dance?

Sprong and unconventional marriage

[henrygb]

Misreading the intro made me think this was something to do with ultra-liberal Bishop John Shelby Spong who provoked Christian conservatives with his views on lesbian, gay, and non-marital straight relationships.

Given a sufficiently large sample of people....

[OwnerOfWhinyCat]

...you will always have some roaming bands of jerks. These jerks will exemplify the people on the undesirable end of the bell curve (however it is plotted) and they will become a nuisance.

Most of the people reading this site don't surf at -1. Which brings me to my point.

Every system needs methods for moderation.

In the real world anybody coming on to my girlfriend after she has expressed her disinterest will come up against her acid wit, and if public humiliation weren't enough, any weightlifter types in earshot will take this as their cue to help a damsel in distress (she's cute), thereby gaining a good story to tell other women on dates

Thus far this has proven 100% effective.

If there were ever a time where it weren't, men would soon arrive with their +3 sticks of moderation and solve the problem.

A good analog in the RPG world would be quite helpful.

It would be especially easy in a pay-to-play game as then the âoeinfinite number of 1st level jerksâ strategy would be unavailable. The rule of the game could be that you can only have 2 âoeactiveâ characters at a given time. When a character is feeling harassed, s/he puts in a âoecall to the baron.â Only a small percentage of these calls get answered, so it is by no means a guarantee. The âoebaronâ can read through the logs of interaction with another character, and finding it inappropriate can drop a piece of parchment in the purse of the offending character that explains what was found in appropriate. That character can then find themselves significantly poorer and in the middle of a maze that will take two hours worth of gameplay to escape, if they can stay out of reach of the Minotaur.

Not just Japan

[lowtekneq]

as June is the most desirable time for a marriage in Japan.

Geeks also regarded this as the time for marrige, as do many other westerners to this day, if i remember correctly most marriges are held durring this month. Juno being the goddess of new beginings or something like that.

Re:Not just Japan

[lowtekneq]

Doh! I meant to say greeks

Re:Not just Japan

[NonSequor]

The explanation I read was that it was said to be unlucky to marry in May. So June took on all of the postponed weddings from May. Over time the extra weddings made June a month associated with getting married.

Not original

[s0rbix]

You can already do this in Anarchy Online... check the link here.

Hmm + Other problems at Sonicteam...

[YOU LIKEWISE FAIL IT]

A lot of Muds have had stuff like this for a few years now ( and the attendant headaches when someone implements them buggily and priest characters wander around marrying people to npc dogs and rats... ) - I think it will be a nice addition! I wonder if the Wedding March they use will be the same one from Sonicteams other great game, "Samba de Amigo".

I put in a ( poorly written ) submission earlier today about some other problems Sonicteam are having with their PSO franchise atm - seems someone stole a bunch of their preproduction character models / designs from their PSO Card Battle booth at e3. Weird! ( Link )

YLFI,
Mysterious Burning Ranger.