WHEN AMERICAN AIRLINES Flight 11 struck the North Tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 a.m. Eastern Time, Linda Carlson was stunned. It had to be an accident.

As United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower just over 15 minutes later, shock gave way to horror. For a time, she and her husband were helpless to do more than sit and watch. Like so many Americans, they felt powerless.

A few hours later, Carlson shot to her feet. “Holy shit,” she said. “This is happening in-game, too. I’ve got to log in.”

Within minutes she had logged in to her server on EverQuest and found the game’s channels inundated with comments that reflected the emotional melting plot the world had become: shock, rage, grief, agony—it was all there, raw and ugly. Racist comments about Muslims flooded the channel.

Carlson took a breath and began to type. In the real world, she was helpless. In EverQuest, she had the power to make a difference.

LIKE MANY, CARLSON was new to online gaming when she discovered EverQuest. “I mean, what was there before that? Meridian 59, Ultima Online, but they didn't have the full-on 3D, first-person experience that EverQuest had. That changed things for people.”

In the beginning, her dwarf avatar seemed powerful—until she wandered too far afield and was slaughtered by a pack of monsters. Her dwarf’s corpse remained where she’d fallen. Tears welled up. She had spent the better part of a week patching together rusty armor pieces. Her gear was crude, but she’d worked hard for every piece.

Now it was all gone, probably forever—there was no way she’d ever be strong enough to run in and snatch it back on her own.

Sitting at her desk in tears, she typed a message in public chat: I hate this game. I’m going to lose my corpse. I don’t know what to do.

Within minutes a pack of rescuers flocked to her side and followed her to the spot where her beloved character had died. The experience of calling out for help and good Samaritans rushing to her aid was life-changing. Here, in a video game, was a place where she could live. Over the ensuing months, she befriended many of her rescuers as well as other strangers who adventured by her side in a guild.

Soon after, she introduced her son, aged 13, to Norrath. Mother and son rolled troll characters and began their virtual lives in Innothule Swamp. In the game, they ran through bogs and fields side by side. In real life, they sat beside each other at desks, chatting over mouse clicks and keyboard taps.

Carlson and her son were role-players, fully assuming their troll identities. When high-level characters playing gnomes wandered into their territory, they’d tease them, crowing about how delicious gnomes tasted. “Then we'd get into trouble because we'd wander a little too far from the newbie area. I guess people found us amusing because we were roleplaying, and they'd come and save us,” she said.

Together, the Carlsons and their friends amounted to a small army. As hours passed, players jumped out of the group as real-life obligations called. Others took their place, and the group brought them up to speed on where they were and what objectives they were pursuing. “That's when I realized that you could also roleplay in this game and make your own entertainment. I always loved roleplaying in D&D, and you can do it just as well in EverQuest.”

Her son soon discovered EverQuest had more to offer than graphical swashbuckling. One subject he didn’t like to discuss with his mom—or anyone—was English; he could converse in-person, but was a poor speller and received low marks at school. The more he played EQ, however, the more he realized that no one in their group knew he was just a kid. Homework was a drag, but playing his character and interacting with others gave him a fun outlet in which to sharpen his skills and portray himself as something more than what he was.

“He started communicating well because if you communicate as an adult, people will treat you like one because they don't know who you really are,” Linda Carlson explained. “That was an interesting experience for me as well because it also dramatically improved his English marks. It's like math: You might not care about it until you have an application for it.”

Carlson’s son wasn’t the only one who remained anonymous even among the tightly knit bonds of the guild. Most players preferred to separate their real lives from their online personas so EQ remained a place of fun and escapism. One day, one of the guild members mentioned he owned a cabin in the backwoods of Kentucky. How would the guild feel about a real-life meet-up?

“This was the year 2000, and everybody said, ‘What? You're going to a cabin in the woods, in Kentucky, with people you've never met before? From the Internet? Yeah, this is gonna end well.’ We did it, and we've been getting together every year since then,” Carlson remembered.

Nerves settled in as the big meet-up drew nearer. Another group member devised a fun way to break the ice ahead of time. “Okay, we should have a lighthearted contest. Everybody send in a photo of yourself,” he—or she—suggested.

Carlson liked the idea and volunteered to set everything up “Send in a real-life photo,” she told her online friends. She’d gather everyone’s photos and screenshots of their characters, and the group could try to match each avatar to his or her player based on what they knew about each other.

“Nobody got any of it right,” she said, laughing.

Carlson enjoyed chatting up everyone, but grew close to one member more than the others. She played a male dwarf, and the other player, Eric, assumed the role of a female elf named Alluvian. “I was going through a bad phase in my life, and we talked about anything and everything,” she said.

After the contest, the group realized Carlson and the stay-at-home mom were the only two real-life females in their ranks. Carlson was surprised to receive a private in-game message from Eric—aka Alluvian—that said, I’m sorry.

For what? she typed back.

I didn't know you were a lady. I'm sorry for all the stupid things I'm sure I said, he replied.

Dude, you're my best friend in the universe, Carlson said. We’re all good.

At the cabin, all traces of anxiety thawed. One guild member was a stay-at-home mom. One belonged to the Navy SEALs. Another was a human resources director for the Six Flags theme parks. All were EverQuest players, and that was all that mattered.

Carlson and Eric deepened their bond, not without some hesitation on his part. Before that fateful meeting at the cabin in the woods, she remembered, Eric had been worried at how she would react to the fact that he was disabled.

“He was terrified I would find him physically repulsive because he's handicapped. He cannot stand up straight. He could walk without a cane, although it was painful, but he thought I'd be repulsed by him.”

Nothing, she stated, could have been further from the truth. “We fell in love, and I moved in with him not that long afterwards. He lived in Orlando at the time. I moved down from British Columbia, Canada, to Orlando.”

Carlson’s and Eric’s friendship was an extension of how the guild felt about one another. It made her reflect on how, when she was a kid—“when the dinosaurs roamed,” as she put it—kids made friends with others who lived in their neighborhoods, or in their class, or on local sports teams.

“When online gaming started, your pool of potential friends—and, let us say it, life mates—now pulls from all around the world. Our guild still plays together. Not just EverQuest; we spread across all the games: World of WarCraft, Star Wars: Galaxies. We're from all walks of life. I owe EverQuest that as well: Opening up a new world.”

CARLSON LIVED IN Canada before she flew to Orlando, Florida, to visit Eric. The idea was to stay for three months and see how they got along.

A few days before she was supposed to fly back, 9/11 happened. After airports reopened, Carlson, like so many, found herself paralyzed by the idea of setting foot on a plane. That was only one problem. Immigration and customs were in complete disarray, so Carlson couldn’t leave even if she’d been emotionally and mentally prepared to fly.

Her immigration lawyer advised her to relax and bide her time. “You’re Canadian, blonde, and you just married an American,” he said. “I give this three months, tops.”

She wouldn’t receive her green card for another three years.

At first, she had plenty to occupy her time. In public chat during 9/11, she used her position of authority as an in-game guide to encourage players to talk politely and respectfully, and remind them that anyone using any racial slurs or other hurtful and hateful language would be booted out of the game. Like many others, she still slalomed between terror, rage, and anguish at what had happened, but at least helping to moderate in the game gave her something to do—an outlet for the maelstrom of emotions warring in her brain.

“Some people would come back and message me, saying, ‘I'm sorry, I'm just in such a state of shock. I won't do it again.’ We all got through this event together in an online world,” she said. “This type of environment can bring people around the world together.”

Carlson began to play a little game. One of her characters was named Saudi, a beautiful female designed to resemble a Saudi princess. In the days and weeks after 9/11, Saudi became the target of verbal abuse. Instead of logging off or fighting fire with fire, Carlson would private-message the abuser and reveal that she was, in fact, a white woman, and that not everything online or in reality was always what it seemed.

“Then we'd have discussions about their perceptions. That, and being able to publicly support people in times of crisis online, showed me that online worlds can bring people together. When we strip away language, accents, appearance, and culture, we become different people. We can evolve together and make things better. I still hold to that hope.”

Carlson had been named a guide after volunteering to serve as one—something else to fill her time, on top of running guilds in EQ, EQ II, and Star Wars: Galaxies. “That is where I learned everything I'd ever need to know about how customer service works in the gaming industry. It was interesting because, yes, it was a volunteer program, but it was also like a college education. That's where I learned to deal with the myriad issues that people who play online games have.”

The issues Carlson helped managed ranged from technical (a bug causing players to lose a rare item) to the all-too-common complaint from female players that male players were harassing them. Most issues were trivial, such as several groups of players arguing over which should be allowed to kill the next monster that spawned in.

“That was my favorite thing,” she said. “If one of those petitions was put into a queue, they'd send it to me to handle. I loved negotiating with people, knowing they were real people and that they weren't jerks. They're ordinary, nice people who just need someone to help them talk things out and come to an arrangement. I learned so much as a volunteer guide.”

A while later, Carlson started making maps of various zones in Star Wars: Galaxies. Patrice, a friend who worked at now-defunct strategy guide publisher Prima Games, sent her a message. “You know you can get into these games for free and get all these perks? All you have to do is write strategy guides.”

Carlson grew excited. She liked free stuff. She knew how to make maps. And she’d logged more than enough time in EQ to write strategies. Soon she was writing guides as a contractor, sharing pro tips for Star Wars, EverQuest II, and then the original EverQuest. After her workload from Prima thinned out, she searched for freelance writing jobs in the games industry. She landed a short-lived gig as senior writer for a gaming magazine before she was once again out of work.

Assuming her dwarvish accent, Carlson signed into EverQuest’s forums and wrote a post: “It seems I'm out of a job. If anyone's looking for a proper dwarf to fetch them coffee or shine their boots, even take out the trash, I'm your dwarf.”

The next day, John Smedley called her. “We'd like you to come work for us,” he said.

Carlson came down with an instant case of the jitters. Smed couldn’t really want her to work for his company. What was she qualified to do?

“I think you'd be really good in community,” he answered.

Of course, she remembered thinking. Everything she was in her new life, she owed to EverQuest, and to her friends. She was an introvert by nature, but her positions as an in-game guide, and then a cartographer, and then a writer had helped her develop people skills. Even then, she was still a bundle of nerves the first time she attended her first EverQuest Fan Faire, a gathering of EQ fans and developers.

“I'll go and help run the live quests, but thank goodness I can do it in costume because I don't want anyone to know who I am or what I'm like. I can't talk to people,” she recalled telling her manager.

After assuming her costume as a dwarf, Carlson found she could move seamlessly through crowds and even take on speaking engagements without a trace of nerves. She wasn’t Linda Carlson. She was a dwarf, and the attendees were her friends. After changing out of costume, no one treated her any differently or paid special attention to her because only a few close friends and coworkers knew of her alter ego.

“That's something else I owe EverQuest for: It brought me out of my shell. Anytime I'm in a real-life group, I tend to seek out the person who looks the loneliest and isn't interacting, because I'm thinking, That used to be me.”

Carlson admitted she owed even more to EverQuest. “I realized that everything I'd done throughout my career in Canada—working in the tourism industry, serving on the board of directors for an agricultural organization, the Canadian Goats Society if you must know—coupled with my work in volunteering as a guide and writing in games journalism, gave me exactly the skill set that I needed to work in a game's community. I owe EverQuest not only my best friends, not only my husband, but also my career. So I'm sure that Brad and Smed are going to start sending me small invoices over time so I can pay back this education they so kindly gave me.”

AFTER YEARS AS EQ’s director of global communications, Carlson moved on from Daybreak Games after a round of layoffs but remains active in game development.

EverQuest means as much to her now as it did back in the early aughts. She and her son still play, but now they’re joined by his family and her nephew, who recently visited from Canada and spent a day reinstalling EQ and adventuring together. They chose characters based on the “holy trinity” of MMORPGS: cleric, warrior, and damage-per-second (DPS) classes such as the rogue, the identity of Carlson’s nephew.

“It's a game that has crossed generations. Any time you get together with a bunch of people in a pub talking about games, EverQuest is one of the games people talk about for hours,” she said. “That's so much fun for me, because just like roleplaying in a game, it helps bring people out of themselves. I've made so many great friends over the years at various events, and I've seen that powerful effect. I've seen so many people whose lives are improved by playing MMOs. How cool is that?”