How much of your social life comes from MMOs?

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While we may be the target of mockery or quizzical expressions for mentioning our online friends, relationships in MMOs are often a significant part of a gamer's social life. After all, gamers are places where we all share a common interest, can go on uncommon adventures, and have the potential to forge bonds that transcend the game itself.

So how much of your social life comes from MMOs? Do you have a great group of friends or a guild that's there to support you, laugh with you and have fun with you? Did you ever fall in love in an MMO and perhaps find your way to the altar together? Do you log in more to hang out and be goofy with your pals than to grind your way to the level cap? Are MMOs just a small fraction of your social scene or the majority of it?

For a bonus question and a cookie, does your MMO social life mirror your social life outside of the game or is it the polar opposite? Do you have a few friends in real life but a ton online, or are you the same party animal in game that you are out on the town?

TH

I can say with no shame that personally it is alot of my social life nowadays. I have moved from Cambridge so my friends are up there, and I am down here.

I don't regret it, a conversation down the pub with the same bum, is not as good to me as someone from god knows where who has completely different things to say.

TH

Well at my age, usually, socializing inevitably comes down to personal favors and various other interests.
Lately, I've had more genuine exchanges with random strangers in the metro than with my social circle.
What's left of the real friends I have now, are remnants from my college years.

My advice to all you younger people out there, try to keep in touch with the friends you make early in your adult life, they are GOLD.

As for MMO's, nobody should regret the time spent with friends you met online, as I can concur through my limited life experience,
that they are friends well made and based on much more honest,natural and spontaneous grounds.

It seems, sometimes, that you can make real friends in the virtual world, compared to the virtual friends you make in the real world.
Although I'm not much of a facebook fan, the recent globaly enormous success of social networks cannot but further enforce the above observation!