The paper found that many real-world patterns of intimacy formation are recreated on the virtual stage. One interviewee recounted, "I and a guy I liked spent a lot of time flirting in game. One evening we discovered an abandoned hut near Ironforge [a major city in WoW] and spent the whole evening with our avatars cuddling on the bed just touching. I really felt close to him and didn't notice time passing."
But virtual worlds also create novel situations. "Originally, the guy... was talking to me a lot," wrote one man, "but I didn't realize that he was a guy, cause his avatar was a girl... It's a big joke with us really, because his girlfriend/fiancée thought I was hitting on him, and the whole time I thought he was a girl. Anyway, we all reconciled the situation, and we are still, what I like to call, friends to this day."
via arstechnica.com