Breakfast topic: How close are you to your friends in-game?
It always amazes me when people treat WoW as if it were a single-player game with a lot of benevolent NPCs. Comments such as "I never talk about my real life with anyone in-game" and "my guild is strictly business" often show up on the forums, and it kind of makes me sad. WoW is a good way to talk to people that you wouldn't normally meet in your everyday life, and friendships that stem from WoW are as real as friendships that come from any other kind of hobby or social club.
My guildmates are a pretty open crew, and while we don't usually discuss feelings and relationships and stuff in guild chat, I generally know who they are and what they do. I've gotten to know a few people, both guildmates and non-guildies, a little closer and can talk with them about regular life stuff. There's even a very few players who I've met, mostly ones who lived by me. I've been to a pig pickin' with my former guild master while on a job interview, run from the cops with a mage I met in a AQ20 pug, taught a tank's stepdaughter how to do the Robot, and talked my current raid leader out of going cow tipping after we both moved to the same area. ("No, it's really not as fun as it looks.")
How close are you to your guildmates and in-game friends? Do you only discuss WoW-related matters with them, or have you gotten to know them as people? Ever met any WoW friends in real life?
