In the MMO shooter Planetside 2, there was a moving moment last weekend. Many attended a memorial event to honor the player Ezrason, who passed away on July 22.
Who is it about? The player Ezrason was a big fan of Planetside 2. His older brother, who organized the memorial event, reported that they had been looking for new games together but ultimately always ended up sticking with Planetside.
Ezrason died in a hit-and-run accident. He suffered a skull fracture, and the injuries were so severe that he succumbed to them. He had married young and left behind two children.
How did the players react? Although Ezrason was not a well-known figure in the game, the story reached many players. A thread in the subreddit received 872 upvotes, which is quite a lot for Planetside standards.
Additionally, there was a memorial event attended by many players from all factions of the shooter, which was published in a recording on YouTube.
Moving Words and Special Mourning March
How Planetside 2 mourns Ezrason: According to the organizers, so many players attended the memorial event on July 25 that 4 instances of the lobby “Sanctuary” were created. In the video recorded in lobby 2, about 70 players can be seen.
During the gathering, SticksInStilts, the older brother, spoke about the deceased. Afterwards, the players marched together and silently through the lobby.
At the end of the event, some players met on a map to depart from there in vehicles of all kinds in memory of Ezrason. This created a unique mourning image that probably only exists in Planetside 2:
Memorial events like in Planetside 2 occur more frequently in the gaming community:
- Thus, hundreds of people also mourned for a community member in Final Fantasy XIV, who passed away due to the coronavirus.
- In Tibia Online, a mourning event even led to a server record.
- In WoW, the parents of a player only understood after his death how happy he was in the MMORPG.
As sad as the reasons for such memorial events are, they show that in games where one fights in different factions, clans, or battles, there are still people behind the screens.
