Star Trek Online players gathered in the MMO's virtual spaces to hold memorial vigils following Patrick Stewart's death at age 86. The legendary actor, best known for playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in The Next Generation, died after a brief battle with Alzheimer's Disease and Lewy Body Dementia.
Players organized multiple concurrent memorials across the game's instances. In Earth orbit, captains piloted Galaxy-class exploration cruisers, the same starship class as Picard's USS Enterprise-D, with vessels named USS Remembrance, USS ForEverPicard, and USS Champion. At Earth Spacedock, the Federation faction hub, hundreds of players gathered around a large Starfleet seal holding torches, an in-game emote for honoring absent friends. Seven instances of the Spacedock were either full or near capacity during the vigils.
Additional memorials took place at Starfleet Academy grounds planetside, where players saluted and shared Picard quotes and Shakespearean soliloquies. One player created a character named Picard, customized to match the captain, who stood silently as the focal point for collective mourning.
The memorials represented a substantial portion of the roughly 1,500 Star Trek Online players online on Steam at the time. The MMO, which launched in 2010, had previously held similar vigils this week for the death of actor Walter Koenig.