If you have not heard the news, the amazing artist and author of Berserk, Kentaro Miura passed away early this month, the news only got released by the publisher of his manga recently.

The news came as a great shock as he was only 54, re-raising known issues about overwork in the Japanese mangaka and the creative industry, as he not only passed at a relatively young age, he also passed of a stress-related condition.

His main work Berserk had such far reaching influence on creative media especially those of a dark nature, like Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Castlevania, etc. It’s quite impossible to imagine a lot of work existing from that genre without his influence.

The Final Fantasy XIV Job Class Dark Knight also draws influence from Berserk’s main character Guts, dark edge-y armour, huge big sword, etc. The FFXIV community on hearing of his passing did an amazing tribute across a lot of servers where they formed a line of Dark Knights at one of the starting cities Ul’dah. Shown below is the line forming on Coeurl

The line while not as long as another server’s Balmung (which reached from end to end) eventually hit the other archway in the later hours.

It’s really nice to see the community especially a MMORPG community take pride and do a tribute like this, some may not even know who Miura was but wanted to join in all the same, they acknowledged his influence that started this in the first place, some are hardcore Berserk fans who wanted to grieve in some way, some just wanted to join since everyone is doing it.

Some even gave out the Campfire Minion/Companion which is what the little campfires are, I didn’t have one and I managed to get one to light up alongside everyone else.

Regardless, this is one of the best nice examples of an MMORPG bringing people together although in this case its a sad, grieving, mourning occasion, it still brought people together to pay tribute and acknowledge Miura’s works and their influence.

When MMORPGs die and get closed like old MMOs, you will usually see big groups of people gathering together to say good bye to the game and possibly each other one last time, there’s also amazing heart-touching things to see, people saying good bye to each other, moving on together to other games, getting each other’s in real life contacts to stay in touch, etc.

When someone passes in real life, their friends from all over the world can come together to grieve together and pay tribute online, or even when a developer passes, they will also gather and grieve together and give tribute.

The community of an online game, any game, (I’m looking at you, Overwatch) makes or breaks a game, and I am glad that the FFXIV community has shown that they have the heart and soul to do a beautiful tribute like this is to a great storyteller like Miura and show that MMORPGs aren’t all bad.

And all that is really the beauty of massive multiplayer online games.