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Over 75 Percent Of MapleStory Marriages End In Divorce
One of the strangest outgrowths of the popularity of massively multiplayer online games is the phenomenon of online marriages between players. Sadly, as in the real world, many of these virtual unions end up in divorce.
According to Nexon, the developer of the popular MMORPG MapleStory, over 75 percent of the marriages conducted in the game last year went bust. Nexon charges a fee of $25 to perform an online wedding between players. A total of 26,982 weddings occurred in MapleStory in 2010 -- of which 20,344 have since, according to Nexon, been "annulled at the players' request."
Nexon asked the community to comment on some of these failed marriages, and received some interesting, and often sad, feedback. One player, named only as Tyler, 20, of Vancouver, B.C., detailed the disintegration of his marriage:
“I was young, naive, and thought I had met ‘the one.’ She asked me what I wanted in MapleStory for my birthday, and I told her that the only thing I could ever want was for her to marry me," said Tyler.
However, the relationship soon soured. "“She started saying that I wasn't the person she fell in love with. That I had changed, and that I didn't seem to care about her anymore," recalls Tyler. Soon, his online "wife" was purposefully dropping important items out of Tyler's inventory -- which quickly led to the decision to annul their union.
That's cold. It looks like finding love online is just as hard as it is in the real world. This one goes out to you, Tyler.
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