What is one of your most memorable online gaming moments with strangers?

[Bunzy]

Let's face it, there is a ton of toxicity and negativity online, but every now and then you get in that special session with a group of people and have a great time. Sometimes you even bring back that old schoolground feel where every one learns about the game from each other, just like how we learned the tips and tricks before the internet.

So I thought it would be cool to tell our special online moments with strangers or even a large community.

I'll go first and it's actually a random xbl game. It was the port of TMNT arcade. I remember having this wave of nostalgia come over me before the release and then immediately being dissapointed by the reviews and all the journalist saying this game was from a bygone era that was designed to eat quarters with no skill required.

I purchased anyway and at first I thought the reviewers were right, but the more I went online I began to get linked up with skilled and friendly TMNT players who were willing to take the time to teach the intricacies of the game. Each session I would learn something random like how to walk across the level without being touched to eventually beating the game without losing a life. I also would pass my new found knowledge to other players and the community would grow from there. All of a sudden a game that seemed like a simple quarter cruncher became a game where you could outsmart the computer, and with some skill you could become a teenage mutant ninja master.

Now none of this would be possible if I never joined up with randoms online. Learning from strangers and then making new friends while mastering a game, this is what online communities should be about.

 

[Samaritan]

Journey the thread.

 

[Yog-Sothoth]

Wrecking people with Sheeva in MK9. Got lots and lots of hate messages. A couple of praise messages too.

 

[Orochinagis]

Reaching the first boss on IceCrown Citadel after weeks of farming a decent armor to be eligible

 

[Seahawk64]

World PvP in Vanilla World of Warcraft.

 

[Dr Pears]

Journey the thread.

Click to shrink...

Absolutely.

Was doing my second playthrough of Journey when a nice stranger showed up near the beginning. He seemed to be a pro at the game and I just followed him around. He showed me like every single collectible in the game.

Near the end when we were reaching the end of the game, I noticed he disappeared so I looked for him. When I found him, he led me to an out of bounds area of the game where you could reach the absolute top of the mountain (Not the area where you enter the light to end the game) but like literally the top of the mountain where you're not supposed to reach. It was awesome, I just chilled there with him for a while and after the credits finished I added him as a friend on PSN and just chatted with him for a while.

Can't believe I spent ~3 hours with a stranger without even proper communication.

 

[Strings]

Reaching the first boss on IceCrown Citadel after weeks of farming a decent armor to be eligible

Click to shrink...

Similarly, downing the first boss of Naxx during vanilla WoW, after the insane reputation and gear grind, was awesome. Beating Nefarian at the end of BWL was my favourite moment though, just because that fight and raid overall was super fun to push through as a guild.

 

[JustJavi]

I met a lot of good people playing Tibia about 16 years ago, while at uni. We used to stay up until quite late every night doing quests and grinding levels while talking about girls, drugs and life. So much fun.

 

[Samaritan]

Absolutely.

Was doing my second playthrough of Journey when a nice stranger showed up near the beginning. He seemed to be a pro at the game and I just followed him around. He showed me like every single collectible in the game.

Near the end when we were reaching the end of the game, I noticed he disappeared so I looked for him. When I found him, he led me to an out of bounds area of the game where you could reach the absolute top of the mountain (Not the area where you enter the light to end the game) but like literally the top of the mountain where you're not supposed to reach. It was awesome, I just chilled there with him for a while and after the credits finished I added him as a friend on PSN and just chatted with him for a while.

Can't believe I spent ~3 hours with a stranger without even proper communication.

Click to shrink...

Was their name ThxForTheJourney by any chance? A friend of mine recently streamed the game for the first time and ran into this player who basically acted as a Journey "Sherpa". They also embedded themselves in the chat and were chatting the whole time without saying it was them in the game, it was really terrific.

 

[Alastor3]

With strangers? Nothing much really, but I remember clearly climbing the halloween tower in guild wars 2 the first halloween event, putting litteraly Darune Sandstorm in the background and trying for HOURS just to get to the top.

Finally got it then process to try it again just after and gotten to the top first try

 

[The Argus]

Battlefield 2 was really special. I still remember bonding with random squads over voice chat and marching on objectives as team. This was before everyone had to be a troll or say something racist for shock value.

 

[caff!!!]

Leading a homeless revolution (twice) in gmod RP servers

 

[Lant_War]

When Bloodborne was free with PS+ I invaded people and instead of attacking I opened shortcuts for them. It was pretty funny seeing people scared of me and then realizing I wasn't trying to kill them.

 

[Tokyo_Funk]

Edit- NM I missed one part

 

[Van Bur3n]

Nah, wait. I'm changing my original answer to this experience a few months back.

When I was doing the Riven raid boss in Destiny 2 with the worst raid team ever:

1. A sherpa who was so annoyed with the group that he went insane.
2. A "WHATS UP GUUUUUUUUUUUYS" streamer.
3. Some chick who kept complaining about her cats while playing.
4. A college professor who was too nice for their own good.
5. A dude with a speech impediment.
6. Myself who was drunk as fuck.

The raid was going so badly. Funniest experience I've had with randos. By the end of it the sherpa and myself were just talking about dumbass nonsense because he didn't care anymore, the streamer was talking shit about us to their chat because we were so annoying, the chick was just talking to herself at this point, the professor was just chill about everything, and no one still understood what the speech impediment guy was saying. I did though. Kinda. I think he was trying to hit on the chick but was unsuccessful because she ignored him the entire time.

Yeah, that was great. I ended up matching up with the speech impediment guy a few months later and I was blown away that we found each other again and was so happy to see him, and as soon as he realized who I was, he fucking left. What an asshole. After all we've been though.

 

[SoH]

Early days of TF2 there was a guy who had his steam name set as TOM FROM MYSPACE, avatar as the image and everything. The guy was a killer too. In one particular match he was just killing it with the headshots and suddenly at 200% voice chat volume came the most annoyed shriek of frustration from a guy getting particularly stomped.

"FUCKING TOM FROM MYSPACE AND HIS HEADSHOTS I SWEAR TO GOD!"

It was such an unexpected string of words sentence of complete and utter despair that it has stayed seared in my brain to this day. Ruthless.

(It was followed by loads of laughter from everyone playing)

 

[Omanisat]

It's Journey. I'll still boot it up every once and a while and do a playthrough.

 

[Vincent Alexander]

Gears of War 1. Everyone used voice chat back then. Games were tense as fuck, and if was great you could chat with opponents in death lobby when you died. Lots of fun shit talking in there. Easily my best online memories in general.

 

[Cort]

The pinnacle of online gaming with complete strangers to me will always be Halo 2 customs and WoW raiding. There were a few times where I ranked high on a few fights on World of Logs/Warcraftlogs and had people on my realm whisper me about it, shit do I miss those days.

 

[whiskas_fanatic]

RP server in WoW, going to some cave as a warrior. Priest sits in front of it, he says "Thank God, i was hoping warrior will come around!". It was beginning of a long friendship and countless adventures together.

 

[blitzblake]

Yeah battlefield 2, or BC wow. Basically before things got too intense and the elitist jerks flooded the internet.

 

[Deleted member 8001]

Final Fantasy XI.

Was farming Voidwatch for the Ogier's Helmet on Kalasutrax.

And it ended up being with mostly JPN players. Now on this boss I've had so many failed runs playing with western players and with as much as I had to farm this boss, it was truly annoying cause it takes a lot of effort to kill it.

These JPN players though? Fucking amazing. We won everytime without issue, killed constantly in a timely manner. Not just that, there was a mother fucking white mage with with a Mythic weapon out here melee DPSing this thing! A white mage! in FFXI not FFXIV! It was so inspiring because like White Mage you really don't want to DPS in that game (at least at the time). It's far too dangerous and you can't really do much. So cool.

 

[super-famicom]

I had a Chun-Li mirror match in SF4 pretty close to launch. It was a super close match, and we were evenly skilled. I ended up losing. I really enjoyed the match and sent a message complimenting my opponent. He replied back in kind, and then we actually spent about 40 minutes playing each other and just practicing. It was pretty cool! Thanks, random Chun-Li player!

 

[SturokBGD]

Dreamcast Quake III Arena community. Despite the obvious inferiority of this version of the game, online gaming was new and exciting to console gamers at the time so - at least in the earlier days - there was a sense of fun not found in the considerably more hardcore PC community and with a relatively small selection of servers you tended to run in to the same people frequently.

The GameFAQs DC Q3A board in particular was a lot of fun, believe it or not. There was a Dreamcast clan called "EG*A" (Elite Gaming Angels) that was made up of all the top players; in response a bunch of people (including myself) formed a counter-clan called "BG*D" (Bad Gaming Devils) with the gimmick that we were made up of all the worst players... our motto was "suck with pride". All in good fun of course, it was more of a social thing and most of them were actually pretty good at the game. To this day I still carry the clan tag on all my online gaming personas, despite the group not being a thing since around 2001.

Unfortunately my Q3A story has kind of a dark ending because of the long term affect on some personal stuff in real life. Water under the bridge now and it's funny to think back on all my friends and family who thought I was a sad sack for spending so much time playing games "on the internet", when Call of Duty sucked them all in the same way several years later.

 

[Vincent Grayson]

When I did a 4-person random in Fortnite and ended up with several bro-y dudes that played with me for a couple hours and randomly started talking about how "not to be gay or nothing, but your voice is sexy", and calling me "Dad".

It was an entertaining evening.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

My first successful purplebro betrayal in Dark Souls 3. I met this player who clearly had no idea what Mound-Makers were at the time and basically took him on a round tour of the entire High Wall of Lothric. I made sure to go out of my way to unlock every shortcut for him and even killed the mimic before he could get himself eaten by it.

Then I backstabbed him right as he was about to step through the gate to the first boss. I murdered him, but on the bright side, I made sure that his run-back to the boss gate would be nice and easy. I'm a helpful jerk.

 

[OryxTheBakinKing]

Halo 3 infection on Isolation

 

[Mindestens]

It happened about ten years ago... Back then I played World of Tanks a lot and I often played with Germans and Austrians. The fact is, I don't know German for shit. I could barely speak it and I remember even less now. We communicated mostly in English using chat messages.

But then one time guys suggested that I join them on their clan's Team Speak. Well they were more members of modding group for Silent Hunter 3 who happened to play WoT together than a clan but w/e ;).

The point is we 'knew' each other for a couple of months already playing together. When I joined their TS channel, guys got excited.
One dude in his late 30s who I played most with barely knew any English and then there was Ottibald who was about 60 and was quite fluent in the language so he used to translate. And I remember moment when Matthias's son (4 yo) came to him and Matthias after a couple of exchanges between them started very vigouriosly saying things about his son so Otti could relay the info to me because Matthias wanted me to know about Nicholaus. I could understand myself like half of what Matt was saying but I could obviously hear he's a proud and loving father just going by the tone of his voice. And when Ottibald was finally translating, Matt constantly interrupted him telling him to ask about me and my life once he's done with translation... which he was at the same time sabotaging himself. It was part hilarious, all parts heart-warming. 'Ask him about his family!' he almost yelled time and time in German with genuine interest and that guy cared just because we played games together.

 

[Dyle]

I've had multiple games of Smash where I was playing as Isabelle and ran into another Isabelle and we played the entire match just taunting and goofing around instead of fighting and then got a friend request at the end of it. It's happened twice so far but I'm hoping it happens again

 

[Ratazk]

As a gamer in his 30s, online play wasn't really around during my teens. So playing with strangers has always been an odd concept to me.

But months ago, I formed a PUG to clear Leviathan in Destiny 2; vendor was selling Midnight Coup and I was a few tokens short.

Group came together pretty easily and everyone seemed very pleasant.

Raid started swimmingly enough, but one player had no idea what he was doing. No big deal— everyone has to learn at some point, and I was far from a veteran myself.

This guy kept causing wipe after wipe and kept apologizing and apologizing. But nobody was getting mad. In fact, the group of strangers came together and really started pulling for the guy; providing that positive encouragement, joking around to keep things light, etc.

We would explain every encounter in painstaking detail, and some of them took him a dozen tries before things would click.

Now, over the course of the raid, he would have to take random breaks and his mic would stay on. In the background, we'd hear things we probably weren't meant to. We'd hear this poor guy getting yelled at by his mom (assuming that's who she was anyway), we'd hear a baby cry, we'd hear dog barking, we'd hear sirens blazing; it sounded like a rough home life. And each time he'd come back even more apologetic than the last.

Nobody would say anything about what we heard— we were just committed to helping him clear the raid.

It took us a good two and a half hours, but we finally downed Calus. We open the final chest and he pulls a masterworked Coup. Everyone cheers him on, and he starts to cry over his mic. I was a bit shocked at his reaction to the loot drop, but I soon learned it was more than that.

Through his tears, he told us all that it was his birthday.

My heart sank.

Maybe he was doing exactly what he wanted to do on his birthday— I'm not one to judge. Lord knows I'd rather have a quiet night, given my druthers.

But maybe, and perhaps more likely, Destiny was/is the escape for that guy, his reprieve from whatever was/is happening at home.

I think about it often— that he spent his night in the company of strangers, in tears, apologizing for things that weren't his fault while people he'll never meet did their best to make him believe he was good enough to beat whatever crossed his path.

 

[PintSizedSlasher]

Maybe not memorable, but a funny little moment nonetheless.

 

[SOTC is a 6/10]

So, I'm partially deaf. This is important.

I tend to avoid things in games that require extreme amounts of vocal coordination and cooperation, particularly if they're on console as those games don't have the luxury of text chat.

However, back in 2016 I got REALLY into Destiny 1 after I got a PS4 for Bloodborne. Problem is, that game's endgame is mostly raiding and that requires the dreaded vocal communication. So I hit the max light level possible outside of raids/PvP and put the game down for a bit to go play others.

Fast forward a week or so. I'm in the Discord for the game and Age of Triumph (An update to make all raids provide viable gear and be reworked) was released. When talking lore with some people, they brought up Vault of Glass and I said "Yeah I've never done it" and explained why. I say brb and go get a snack, and come back to a DM from someone that says "Yo we can help you clear the raids, just get an emote. Being deaf isn't a problem".

Over the course of 6-7 hours, him and his friends proceeded to guide me through the raid and clear all of the challenges. I hit the game's true max light level and considered it complete.

I never spoke to those people ever again, nor can I recall their names, but that was the nicest thing randoms have did for me online.

 

[Phendrana]

Yeah, Journey. I didn't realize the significance of it at the time, but I was lucky enough to be escorted by a white-robed buddy. They clearly knew the game very well, and helped guide me to lots of the secret areas. It's incredible how much the game makes you feel bonded to your partner. All you can do is whistle, but context gives it so many meanings. Sometimes we'd just be singing to each other, and other times I could tell my friend was giving me a little 'this way' or 'hurry up' chirp.

Every so often I'd lag behind, but they'd always come back to find me. Until one time...they didn't. Minutes went by, and I stayed where I was hoping they'd return. Eventually I had to make the decision to carry on without them. I made it to the next area by myself, and...there they were, waiting for me! I was elated, and that's not an emotion I feel often when played games.

Journey is an incredible co-op experience, and easily one of my favourite games ever.

 

[Vert1]

The first time everyone started spontaneously super jumping around in Saltspray Rig in Splatoon [Wii U].

 

[SlickVic]

I remember after finishing my first Journey playthrough (back around the time the game first came out), the person who played with me sent a PSN message thanking me for sharing the experience with them, as well as a link to a youtube video of our run. I know nowadays with built-in share features of modern consoles, recording gameplay isn't really a big deal anymore, but at the time I remember really appreciating that someone took the time to record our playthrough. It just felt special to capture the memory of that first playthrough, and I'm really glad that they shared it with me.

 

[JustTom]

Alright, something I experienced 13 years ago.
I used to play World of Warcraft back then and I was within Ahn'Qiraj. As we had defeated all the bosses we were about to start the fight against Ossirian when one partymember interrupted us via chat. His game character went to his knees and he proposed to his girlfriend through World of Warcraft. I still dont know how to feel about this. I mean, one the hand, if World of Warcraft was what they were really into it kind of would fit that he did it through the game, on the other hand however, I think it is kind of weird.
Anyhow, we had to wait for like 20 minutes before we could start the fight because they were 'doing things' (they lived together).
So, this is something I remeber quite vividly.
P.S. We wiped several times and did not defeat Ossirian.

 

[nded]

Dark Souls. Got the game on release and was promptly invaded in Undead Burg. It was a high level player who after a tense standoff appeared to take pity on me and spent the rest of his invasion running ahead pointing out ambushes, dropping useful items and bowing to me before rolling off of a ledge. New Londo Ruins was a cakewalk for me because of that guy.

Then there was the time I made an invader run around for 20 minutes looking for me in Dark Souls 3 because I used the lie down gesture in some tall grass in the corner of the map. They got pretty close to finding me a few times.

 

[AstronaughtE]

I've never been good at castlevania, but was trying to work my way through Harmony of Despair on 360. For kicks I would look for multiplayer games, it never seemed to find matches, no one playing probably. One day on a whim I tried it again and almost instantly it linked me up with someone from what seemed to be Japan. I feel like I held my own on the first level, but I had no idea what I was doing after that. My silent partner used the emotes and other methods to keep me moving. They carried me through the whole game, and even though I probably drove them crazy, they didn't give up and bail on me. It wasn't the warmest of partnerships, but I'm super appreciative of them. I sent them a "thank you" message but did hear back.

These days if a teammate saves my hide and I can record it, I send "thanks for saving me here" videos.

 

[gigaslash]

Fighting Fatalis in OG MH4 back in ~November 2013. I had a small group of guys & gals I played the game with (met all of them via Twitter) and one of them introduced me to a guy who is properly good at MH. So one time he invited me to tackle Fatalis and boy it was so embarrassing. I sucked so much and every time our party would loose 'cause I would die three times. I felt bad about letting everybody down, so I apologised for sucking so much and was like "sorry guys, I suck, I'll leave". But all of them were like "no, don't worry, it's just a game, we're still having fun, don't leave". So I stayed and the very next attempt we won! I was so happy and grateful for these guys to sticking with me, it was an amazing feeling. I've always liked playing with Japanese players, they tend to be properly good and always polite, but there three guys were absolutely amazing and I'll never forget that time fighting Fatalis with them.

 

[gosublime]

Journey the thread.

Click to shrink...

Absolutely. I don't play game much online - I don't really have many friends who game and being British and very reserved, I don't feel comfortable chatting to randoms online, but Journey was amazing. I played the whole way through with one other person, helping each other out and singing to each other. When we got to the mountain and huddled together, I was already won over.

But the next stage was where, even when typing it up now, I still get goosebumps. I thought I was alone at first and was actually upset I'd lost the other person - and then I heard him singing. I started singing as well and when we found it each other and danced around, it was brilliant. I actually started it again the next day but I turned it off after a few minutes - I didn't want to tarnish that experience.



Also, the time I was being a Darkwraith in Anor Londo on DS Remastered. Player bowed. I backstabbed him and waved. Screw honour.

 

[DrKelpo]

I was playing Left 4 Dead shortly after release. Later I could do all campaigns blindfolded, but at the time it was still a challenge. IIRC I hadn't even finished the "No Mercy" campaign before.

Okay, so anyway... I startet playing with friends, but we got stuck on the rooftop finale. We were hilariously unorganized and the tanks destroyed us every time. One by one people left out of frustration but I wanted to finish at any cost, so I kept trying and trying.
In the end it took us over 4 hours to finish, but the victory was sweet as hell. There were probably over a dozen players who joined and left during that session but one rando came in and stayed almost the whole time (we didn't even have voice chat)

 

[Danstanster]

My friends in high school added bear to their usernames maybe 8-10 of us from 6th to 12th grade in rural Oregon. I think they weren't familiar with the community. I'm sure it looked like a weird clan. The people who decided to message or talk to them when they were grouped up in Gears or CoD prop weren't expecting 12-16 year old best friends. We had bad internet and would always be mad and blame our ability on the fact we didn't have DSL.

 

[Bunzy]

Fighting Fatalis in OG MH4 back in ~November 2013. I had a small group of guys & gals I played the game with (met all of them via Twitter) and one of them introduced me to a guy who is properly good at MH. So one time he invited me to tackle Fatalis and boy it was so embarrassing. I sucked so much and every time our party would loose 'cause I would die three times. I felt bad about letting everybody down, so I apologised for sucking so much and was like "sorry guys, I suck, I'll leave". But all of them were like "no, don't worry, it's just a game, we're still having fun, don't leave". So I stayed and the very next attempt we won! I was so happy and grateful for these guys to sticking with me, it was an amazing feeling. I've always liked playing with Japanese players, they tend to be properly good and always polite, but there three guys were absolutely amazing and I'll never forget that time fighting Fatalis with them.

Click to shrink...

That's the rarest but best feeling when a group doesn't care if your losing since you are still learning and everyone just cares about having fun, I end up playing so much better that way since I don't have the pressure to not die. I remember a few good wow runs in burning crusade and wrath with groups like this. Ended up going from a noob to a top tank on my server because I found a group of great randoms one time. Ended up joining the guild shortly after a few instances and the rest was history.

 

[Trice]

Probably the entirety of my playtime on the COD4 EHD Zombies server.

Hands down best days of my gaming life. This video brings goosebumps. I'd wager that some of you on ERA have played on here as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie6BtQrq8G0&t=

 

[Deleted member 51248]

Its always a wonderful moment when a person from the other team hijacks the warthogs gunner or driver seat and both parties just role with it in Halo.

 

[demosthenes]

FFXI in it's early days. Did an exp party with a few people and then one of them said his friend was logging on to help him with the promy's. I had no idea what these even were I think at that point. Talked to a few NPCs and I was off. We spent the rest of the night clearing them and it was such an awesome accomplishment at the time.

Group that I found in TF2 that I spent hundreds of hours with on various maps which turned into nightly L4D2 nights where we'd do 4v4 versus. It was sort of a race to get home some nights b/c our group was 10-11 people and the first 8 on would play at lease the first game.

Found a CS:Source server and gaming community when I was a sophomore or so in college (14 years ago?) and I still game with them. We're on to PUBG now.

 

[PSqueak]

My name in League of Legends is "Dr. Laser MD" and one time playing randoms i was paired with two other players who also had Dr. [name] MD in their handles, it was such a funny coincidence that we teamed up for a bunch of games afterwards, good times.

 

[Zyrox]

My very first invader in the Souls series. It was in Dark Souls 1. I read about that feature and while I wss strolling through Undead Burg it finally happenend. I was getting pretty panicky tbh "OMG what am I gonna do, what am I gonna do??" I tried to hide but the invader found me. Nowhere to run. The invader just stood a few steps away from me. But he didn't move. I didn't dare to move either. A few seconds later I found out why he didn't move. He dropped items. Dude took a few steps back and pointed at them. I thought this was a trap at first so I didn't budge. He pointed a few more times. Soon curiosity got the better of me so I went and picked the items up. A Balder Side Sword +15 (little did I know at this point that that was one of the best weapons in the entire game, fully upgraded even). Some armor, Havel's stuff I IRC. And 99 Great Warriors Souls or whatever. I was like "what? He's giving me all this stuff?". Soon after I picked the stuff up the dude ran past me and jumped of a cliff. Obviously the stuff helped me out a ton and made the game far more manageable than it was supposed to be at this point. A second invader followed soon after and I fucked that guy up real quick with my new weapon l.
I would later find out that some players in the Souls community like to play as "giftwraiths", invading people's games and playing Santa Claus instead of killing their targets. My very first invader was one of those. Quite an interesting start to my whole Souls journey.

 

[fourfourfun]

I've spoken about it before but Warhawk. Due to the PS3 not really having voice chat, everybody just worked together in an unspoken sense of what needed to be done. Communication barely extended beyond "wait for me Jeep" through the medium of pistol shots.

I loved it. I'm particularly enjoying the lack of voice comms on Switch too. Each game is a blissful silence.

 

[I Wanna Be The Guy]

My most memorable online gaming moment was when I was 14 and this guy was saying.....inappropriate things to me and wanted me to give him my contact details and stuff. I was actually kinda frightened. I'd only just started to discover online gaming and an experience like this was genuinely scary to me. It made me stop playing.