Remembering DAoC’s Teletha memorial (video)

Probably only fellow gamers will fully appreciate this video, but I found it today after many years of not seeing it, and I’m posting it so I won’t lose track of it again. Graphics have improved a lot since those good ol’ days (2002-ish), but the feeling is still the same.

This event occurred in Dark Age of Camelot, an online computer game that is years past its heyday but was and is thought by many, including yours truly, to have been the best ever MMORPG (massively multi-player online role-playing game). For non-gamers, think something like World of Warcraft.

This video is a prime example of why I love these games and why they can mean so much to the players; I was in-game at this memorial for a friend. To those who played DAoC, this is a classic.

The video is a memorial to a player named Teletha, a character much loved by everyone who knew and played with her (or fought against her). She was a young woman in real life, only 23, so it was all the more tragic when we learned in-game from her boyfriend, also a player, that she had died of cancer. A memorial service was organized and players from all three warring kingdoms in the game came together in peace to honor her. Almost everyone dyed their armor black, as you can see. Many players took her name, Teletha, as a surname to remember and honor her. “For Teletha!” became a rallying cry for her Midgard countrymen. And, as I recall, game developers were petitioned and a particular hill, site of many epic battles, was named in-game in her memory.

I cried as much during that in-game event as I would have at any funeral, and the video still makes me cry.

Perhaps, if you’re a non-gamer, you now better understand the appeal. These aren’t just games. They are communities of very real people, of very real friends.