Online, we find grief and mourning mirroring the trappings of funerals and ceremonies in real time. Below find a description of the practice from Oliver Servias, who studied the phenomenon:

Funeral ceremonies within WoW

In most cases, the rites of intensive gamers are events that pay homage to a virtual friend who has died in the actual world. In short, the physical death of a human being leads to a virtual ceremony.

Forms vary widely; funerals can take place in a natural environment, such as alongside a lake, or in a religious edifice. The Stormwind cathedral is probably the most commonly utilized edifice. These happenings, when they are public, may assemble from a few to nearly a hundred people, but the majority are organized by closed groups and so remain small-scale.

The form of the ceremony itself is also highly variable. It might consist of songs for the person lost, public speeches, or simply a gathering of avatars in the same place, in silence. In some cases, the deceased is a work colleague or a friend, but often, the majority of gamers do not know the deceased outside of their digital relationship. In many cases, relatives of the deceased are involved, including members of the dead player’s guild. Virtual funerals thus involve a personal dynamic among the players. In one case I analyzed, the ceremony was symbolically located in a peaceful area, Moonglade, outside the traditional martial logic of the game, to attract a maximum of participants. The celebration rallied around 50 players from several guilds and consisted of a commemorative walk followed by a moment of silence and respect.

While investigating the issue of funerals within WoW, I chanced upon a series of funeral announcements on the game’s forum, such as ‘A Special Funeral: WoWers Mourn a Dead Fellow At Cathedral.’ These notifications led me to a new vision of the rites in WoW. These ceremonies, created by players for deceased relations in actual life, undeniably have a religious dimension.
Funerals in the ‘World of Warcraft’: Religion, polemic, and styles of play in a videogame universe

He mentions at the end a religious dimension to the events, and later relates it to the religious canon within the World of Warcraft universe. He also goes on to discuss the controversy- which when searching for this was almost all I could find- in which memorial services were targeted in-game for raids.

I think the self-organizing of this behavior (the memorials, but more on the raid in a moment,) is evidence enough that online communities have the capacity for true human bonding- and that spaces for them to exercise their grief need to be factored in to their creation.

The raid explored in the above work, as I understand it, was not only deeply troubling to those who were attacked while patiently forming a line before the avatar of the deceased, but was only possible because the area they held the service was in “enemy territory”.

If Blizzard / WoW had a vested interest in facilitating these rites for their players, I suspect a technical solution to this juvenile behavior wouldn’t set them back in terms of time or money. What would a formal process look like to request a temporary neutral zone? Would the empathy inherent in that gesture help their business model?

Finally, I leave you with an excerpt from a story about a woman named Autumn, who not only lost her guardian-grandmother, but was told of her passing in a cavalier and damaging way.

While she had played The Sims when she was young, she came back to it after her grandmother’s passing with a determination to set some things right. Coming from a black family, the first step in processing this loss was, surprisingly, turning to the modding community of color. The out-of-the box settings for The Sims are skewed “white as hell” in her words, so she needed to change some things for the perfect recreation.

When everything from the exact skin tones and hair styles, to objects in the house were set, and everyone was the proper age, she turned time off.

MACK: For a year, that felt good. Like, she could walk around in this Sims universe and just randomly run into her grandma in the park. Or she could like go visit her grandma at home where they could sit on this big wooden swing she had and just chill. Like, this is great, it's like perfect because like everything Autumn wants, right?

Well, Autumn started to notice that after a while she'd go into the game and it wasn't working as well as it used to. Like it just–it didn't make her happy anymore. And she starts to realize the problem. She just created a world where her grandma could never die, which meant she can't grieve. Which is like, what's the point? Like, this is already her reality.

And so that’s what leads her to her big decision. She decides to go back into the settings of The Sims, and she turns time back on.

AUTUMN: I turned aging back on, and it was absolutely miserable. Like I felt awful because it was like you would see, like, the little–at 6 o'clock every day in the game, like the little age meter would move up a little bit. And it's like, well, we're that much closer to the end, that upset me because in my mind it's like, I don't want to lose her again.

--

MACK: Why didn't you just decide to keep it off? You know, that would've been so much easier. Why did the–why did that realization make you feel like you had to like turn it on, wher–rather than just kind of continue to live in the fantasy?

AUTUMN: I think that it was important for me to, like, see that life can continue past someone so important passing on. Does that make sense? I know it's like really convoluted and weird.

--

And then eventually I got a notification in the top corner of my screen that said that her name, Grace, was going to pass soon, and if I had any business left to take care of it now (sniffles).

I was terrified. Because it's like I can't- like- it–it wasn't initial shock of, I can't lose her again. I don't want to lose her. I want to turn off aging. I'm not ready. I'm–I can't do this. I want to keep her. I don't want to lose her again.

But I had to pause the game, kind of walk away and think, it's like, well this is, this is life. This is what happens. And at least it's peaceful, and you're getting a warning, so go ahead and keep playing and just let what hap–what's going to happen, happen. So, I unpaused the game, and I moved her Sim out of her house into my house, so I could keep an eye on her. She got to be really comfortable in her last end game days. I let her go out and sit in the garden. We sat and we talked and then I saw that it was the very end of her life thing, like it was at the very end.

There was no time left. It was going to be that day. So I didn't let my Sim go to work. I didn't let the kids go to school. No one went anywhere. Everyone stayed home with her. And then right on time, she just kind of, like, the, the camera like shot to her so you have to see it. And she just laid down and she–like it was kind of peace–it was really peaceful, like she just- she–she passed. Like there's this big, fancy luau-looking thing, like the Grim Reaper comes, and (sniffles) they just like nod in acceptance that it's their time. And they go, and it left behind, because it was inside, it left behind an urn. And all of my Sims start crying. And they're all bawling. And I'm crying (sniffles). I'm sorry.

Like I couldn't stop crying. But it still felt better for me, like as a person. It felt better to watch her pass in luxury knowing that she lived a long fulfilling life doing the things that she loved (sniffles). And there was no suffering and no pain. I could be there for her and would–gave her like hugs and kisses and everything.

She wasn't by herself. Or she wasn't with some nurse that didn't really, like, get attached to her or anything. Like she was with family (crying). Like I spent a long time, like while I'm crying, this is my grieving process. I took the urn and put it outside to make sure it was a gravestone. And I put like so many flowers and trees around her, her grave.

MACK: In the weeks that come after this, Autumn keeps watching her Sims kind of process this, and she's seeing like her two kids they're like hugging and weeping and holding each other's faces and holding her. And she could log in and really see her family visiting her grandma's grave.

MACK: Do you think you could've processed this grief that you had associated like with the passing of your grandma in the same way without The Sims?

AUTUMN: Heavens no, not a chance. I would still be sitting and thinking to myself, "My grandmother is sitting in the living room in her house."

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