An Alternative to Player Marriage

[Aerin92]

EDIT: just saying that I've changed my opinion on the second page after giving it some thought. You can see my new opinion here:

Right so I've been giving it some thought, and I now too don't think it would be a good idea to have only npcs as marriageable. I think in an MMORPG where social interaction with other players is such an integral part of the game, keeping players from marrying each other but letting them marry npc's only would be silly. I guess I'm just afraid they'll implement marriage the same way they did in XI. That was a terrible feature imo. Months of planning? seriously? For a game wedding??

HOWEVER! I think it would be a nice feature to add the option to marry an npc fellow, if/when they ever add them, for the players who feel less inclined to marry a real person.

And it's not any more creepy than having a spouse in a game like Skyrim or Fable. It's not like I'm suggesting we all actually marry a fictional character like that crazy guy and his DS girlfriend lol. Despite what you may think, it's still a roleplaying game and there may come a time when I want my character to have a wife. I don't see why it can't be an npc. However if they're going to add marriage they should add the option to divorce. It'd be pretty hilarious if a player divorced their npc spouse to marry another player. Imagine the interaction with the npc after that lol.

Now obviously I'm not implying that this should be a priority over dungeons and other MMO goodies. But if they're going to add npc fellows eventually anyway, why not add the option? It would be another way to make the player feel more connected to the world. Something that can often be severely lacking in MMO's.

Also I really love the idea from Nix to make it a pact between two people. I wouldn't mind that at all.

OLD OPINION:
I'm reposting what I said in the marriage feedback thread. I can't remember where or when Yoshi said it, but I'm positive he said they were going to add a system similar to npc fellows from XI. Maybe I'm just crazy! o_0

From the thread:
I agree with what earlier people said. Marriage just shouldn't be in the game period. It really doesn't add a whole lot of good. Most of the time it just adds unnecessary drama to the game.

Here's an idea: If marriage will be implemented why not make it so that players can only marry npcs instead of other players. You can still have same-sex marriages(as long as it isn't like dragonage when your party members hate you because you don't swing that way lol). The roleplayers will be happy. No drama. Everybody wins!
I think they could add some sort of system where a player could marry a unique npc. Remember the fellow system in XI? Or even the Path companions.

Make it so that the player can choose the first and last name and what race and gender they want the npc to be, and then have the devs give a unique questline for each gender of each race. That would give enough variety to make the npc stories feel more unique than all of them no matter what gender and race having the same questline like the path companions.

Obviously the you would have to progress through their questline to actually make it possible to romance/marry them, but keep it optional so that if players just want an npc friend instead of a soulmate they can have that.

This imo is the only way marriage can be implemented into an mmo without it turning into a disaster of a feature.


So what do you guys think? If They were going to add a fellow system in the first place why not do something like this and make everyone happy?

If you guys have other possible alternatives to player marriage, feel free to share! I'm just trying to throw some ideas around here.