Nick Yee, a Ph.D. student in the Department of Communication at Stanford University who studies online games, found in a survey earlier this year that 29% of women players and 8% of men said they had gone on to date someone they met in a game. He says the games are filled with scenarios that shed light on players' personalities. A risky raid on a dungeon, for example, can reveal whether someone is a team player. "These are trust-building exercises," he says. Players "are constantly having to make decisions like, 'Do I run out and save myself or help the others survive?' " Situations that reveal so much about someone's character are less common in the real world, he thinks.

Susan Bard says that, unlike most online gamers, her partner whom she met online "made sure his sentences weren't choppy." David Knife says that his wife, to whom he is married both in real life and in Anarchy Online, has impressive leadership skills. The players noted in the article spanned ages from 26 to 39 and locations across the world. One research firm projects that 25 to 30 million people worldwide participate in online games. That's not a bad dating pool.