MeinMMO reader alf told us in a comment about his gaming friendship in the MMORPG Lineage 2, which remains beyond death.
As part of our “Find Your Next Game: Love Edition” week, we received a comment from our reader alf under an article, who told a touching story about a gaming friendship. We don’t want to withhold this story from you.
“In my clan, there were 3 friends who also knew each other in real life”
alf tells us: I started with Lineage 2 in 2003 on a so-called “free server”. The server was called Noobwars, a Greek L2 server. There were 2 factions: Greeks and Bulgarians, a few Germans and a few Spaniards. All together maybe around 500 players.
Each side formed their own clans, and the people spread out. We ended up in a Greek clan. We could speak a little English, just enough to have conversations and piece together what the other was saying.
In my clan, there were 3 friends who also knew each other in real life. Their names were Steris, Kologeros, and Papoukas, 3 dwarves. One was a crafter, the other two were spoilers. We always made jokes about these characters because the dwarves in L2 really looked like dwarves. Short, chubby, with a huge long beard and a big red nose.
We started spending time with them and got to know these 3 Greeks better and better. After several months, we found out that Kologros and Steris were brothers, and Papoukas was a neighbor boy of the two.
After a few more weeks, we discovered that Steris was sick. He had leukemia. We weren’t sure what to do or how to behave. But we agreed that we wanted to visit him in his hospital in Greece.
“We were there for about 4 hours, then we had to leave”
So we went to Darmstadt on Friday. My sister was living in Grube Messel at the time. Then Saturday morning to the airport in Frankfurt and off to Greece. When we landed in Athens, we called Kologeros, who came to pick us up and brought us to our hotel.
From there, we went to Steris’s hospital. It was strange because it was absolutely not like in Germany. The smell was different. You know the hospital smell? That discomfort in your nose from all the sterile stuff? That was not there.
Steris was not alone in the room. He was in a “shared room” with 6 other people. I only knew it from Germany that there were always 2 or sometimes 3 in a room, but 6? That was strange.
In the middle stood a large table with chairs, there was a couch, a huge TV, a “kitchen,” if you can call it that, where they had a microwave, coffee machine, and so on. We were there for about 4 hours, then we had to leave. But we had a lot of fun there with Steris, Kolo, and Papou. Steris’s parents were also there, and we were glad that his mother could speak German. Without her, we would have been helplessly lost.
“So far, this is my best experience in gaming that I have had”
We continued to play on Noobwars and in the same guild as Kolo, Steris, and Papou. After the summer, we noticed that Steris logged in less and less. And one day not at all. His brother, Kologeros, didn’t log in either, and Papou only at night.
We asked what was wrong, but we knew what was happening. Steris died at the age of 23 from leukemia on August 16, 2004. We flew to Greece again for the funeral. Since then, we meet Kolo and Papou every 2 or 3 years in Germany.
Kologeros now lives here, and Papoukas studied at the university in Darmstadt at that time. Both bought the server on which Steris’s characters are located. They continued to run it privately for us 5. And every year on Steris’s death anniversary, we log in, sit in Giran with his characters and chat, telling each other what has happened, what we are doing and have done.
Of course, now via TeamSpeak and we don’t drink “beer” in-game anymore, but real beer. But even today we keep in touch, call each other now and then, meet, and log into the server that is in Kologeros’s basement.
Even today, almost 20 years later, we are friends, our families know each other, visit each other. 5 friends, who actually used to be 6. We are still 6.
So far, this is my best experience I have had in gaming.
We thank alf sincerely for allowing us to publish his beautiful story on our website. If you have experienced something special in-game or know someone who has, send us a message at [email protected].
This photo shows that gamers stand together – It’s about the world
