Posted in: Games, Video Games | Tagged: ArenaNet, Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2, MMO, Siadina

Arena Net Donates Thousands to Guild Wars 2 Player After Her House Burns Down

If you needed a reminder of just how awesome people can be sometimes, this is definitely a great example of the power and support of MMOs.

Long time Guild Wars player Flora Hunsucker, better known in game as Siadina or to local GameStop employees as the "crazy Guild Wars lady," lost her house in a fire just before Christmas. Siadina has been playing Guild Wars since 2005 as it was her first MMO. She's picked up every expansion to the game and it's sequel Guild Wars 2 which she still plays. She's logged 4,874 hours in-game and counting, for those of you who – like me – have very little concept of what that amounts to, 4,874 hours translates to over 203 days. So, she's spent almost a whole year in the world of Guild Wars which is some serious dedication.

After the fire, her family started a crowdfunding campaign to raise money so they could move into a new home. But from the wreckage of her old house, Siadina was able to recover her Collector's Edition of Guild Wars expansion Nightfall.

As Kotaku reports:

The firefighters told Siadina and her family that she could return after a week or two to see what they could salvage. In the meantime, they set up a crowdfunding campaign to try to raise money to move into a new home. She returned to the house to film a Facebook Live, to show the people who were donating what they were helping her with. She said that as soon as she finished her video, she found her collector's edition of Nightfall. Other than a little water damage, it was intact.

After a friend urged her to do so, Siadina then posted the video to Twitter and tagged Guild Wars developer ArenaNet. Her tweet caught the attention of the studio's social media coordinator who sent her a direct message asking for her address to send her a t-shirt.

But that's not what she ended up getting.

Shortly after that Twitter exchange, Siadina said that her mother called her and told her that, "Someone called ArenaNet," made a $3,500 donation to their GoFundMe campaign. And then she got a package. Siadina said that her mom told her, "This doesn't feel like a t-shirt." ArenaNet had sent her all of the Guild Wars games, signed by the developers.

"It was a magical thing opening that up an seeing all my beloved games," she said. "That's not to mention the t-shirt and the swag bag. All of these were signed."

Between the gift and donation from ArenaNet, the support from the Guild Wars community and her local friends, she said that her faith in humanity has been restored, "a billion times over."

While Siadina's GoFundMe campaign has surpassed it's $5,000 goal, donations are still coming in as her family struggles to recover from the fire.

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