I’m not a big gamer, so Meg Stivison was kind enough to guest post about a new site helping single online gamers connect. Sites like DateCraft and GuildCafe are part of a continuing trend to offer services targeting online gamers, a red-hot market which appears under-served when it comes to communities and the needs of the players.
With over 9 million World of WarCraft accounts, some of those players have to be single and looking for love. The new World Of DateCraft will help online gamers meet other WoW-playing singles.
Registration is free, and unattached WarCrafters share their character’s level, race, faction, professions and guild on their profile. There’s another page for age, location, job and the rest of the usual out-of-game bio.
DateCraft went live on Monday, so many features are still in beta or coming soon. It’s primarily for matchmaking, but with a lot of social networking functions, like a WarCraft Facebook, with live chat, a WoW news and humor blog, and forums for both gaming and dating topics. One feature (in testing like everything else, but a great plan) allows users to flag other accounts they think are fraudulent or otherwise undateable. If only we could boot people from the offline dating pool as well.
While other online dating sites have their share of forgot-to-mention-I’m-married members or impecunious Nigerian royalty, DateCraft has its own brand of scam. Some profiles offered a disturbing trade, exchanging cyber for WarCraft gold or rare items. I’m not going to touch that one!
Gaming habits can be a dealbreaker in relationships, if one person thinks Friday night is a great time to run a raid, and the other would rather go to the bar. So DateCraft relationships seem like they’d have a pretty high success rate. All members already have a hobby in common, which should ease introductions and provide a starting topic of conversation. Instead of the usual condensed life story on a first date, you could compare epic gear or debate Horde vs. Alliance.
And anyone you meet on DateCraft probably already knows that instance-running time (fighting WarCraft bad guys on a Very Important Mission) is not the right time to talk about where this relationship is going.
Meg Stivison blogs at the Meg Autonomous Region.
