Of all the MMOs out there, Eve Online is definitely the most involved and unique. In 2007, Azia Burgi began a player-led project to create a sort of graveyard and memorial for the many players who pass away in game, and now developer CCP Games has moved to make it a permanent addition to the game.
Initially Azia based her design on a cathedral-like structure seen in Kor Azor. The player and some friends would venture out past low-security space and collect the corpses that remained from large battles, all to bring them back to the cemetery, even going as far as to provide an ongoing log of all the characters interred there.
Shortly after the player project began, 2008 brought a new update to the game that would affect how items could be anchored in space. The cemetery would need to move to a POS where items within a certain distance remain permanently and do not despawn, otherwise the entire graveyard would simply blink out of existence.
As time went on, the space shifted in focus from merely a cemetery to a place where players travel to memorialize friends, family, and anyone else who had passed away. As Eve Online continued to evolve, the place faced another major challenge. POS were being phased out of the game, but rather than place the burden on Burgi, CCP decided to create a permanent memorial.
The new permanent memorial is stunning, featuring an event every so often where a ball of light appears around the capsule before ascending upwards. Much like the previous iteration, players will still be able to place cans within a 200km radius and they will not despawn.
CCP’s decision to make permanent this memorial is exactly the kind of thing one might expect from an MMO like Eve Online. The game is so unique in its playstyle, economics, and sprawling, intergalactic spaces. Other MMOs have also seen player-led memorials pop up, though they do not compare in scale to what Burgi created over time.
With that said, some games do tend to immortalize key members of their community, as if often the case with World of Warcraft, where an NPC might be created in memory of a person. As these MMOs have been around now for so long, stretching into nearly two decades in some cases, it would not be surprising to see something like this added to more games. For now, the newest memorial in Eve Online can be located on Tranquility, and it is well worth the visit.
Source: eveonline.com