What's your MMO gaming background?

[VioletZero]

MMOs have a special place in our hearts. Especially our first one. And it should come as no surprise that they shape our opinion of other MMOs going forward.

In this thread, we answer the following questions in a well worded paragraph or two.

1. What was the first MMO you stuck with? If it is obscure, describe it.

2. How did it have an impact on you?

3. Do you have any standout moments in memory? If so, what?

4. Do you still play this MMO? If not, why did you quit?

5. What kept you coming back to this MMO?

Just as an example, I come from the hideously crappy RF Online. Your typical Korean grindfest. But what it did have was good PVP. Almost all of the gear in the game was relatively easy to acquire(Save for like elementals or something) and the combat was VERY simplistic. So it required absolutely NO skill to play. And instead, it relied on tact. The PVP is what kept me coming back to the game. Despite all of the game's MANY flaws, the PVP was a lot of fun because it wasn't about being a hero. It was about working with the rest of your faction to win. Which shaped my views on MMOs to be more in favor of tact based combat rather than skill. However, I quit after CCR took over and finally ruined PVP with its pay to win free model.(Get this, they sold invincibility pills in the cash shop. I am so not even kidding)

I am far more interested in your MMO backgrounds. Please post them.

[Coreldan]

1. What was the first MMO you stuck with? If it is obscure, describe it.

Tibia

2. How did it have an impact on you?

I played it for like 7 years on and off. Met shitloads of amazing people that I played with every day for several years.

3. Do you have any standout moments in memory? If so, what?

Too many with that game

4. Do you still play this MMO? If not, why did you quit?

No, I guess there's a time and place for everything. I've tried to go back many times, but it never really worked out. I guess it doesn't help that also majority of the people I played with have also quit it since.

5. What kept you coming back to this MMO?

Well, for a long time it was just about the only game that my rig could actually run. MMOs in general have wasted a lot of my time and money, mainly cos they offered way more playtime/enjoyment for the same money than your usual retail game.

[Vancha]

Originally Posted by VioletZero

1. What was the first MMO you stuck with? If it is obscure, describe it.

Dark Age of Camelot. It was the "PvP option" opposite "Evercrack" (as it was known then), before the acronym "WoW" had ever been uttered. It consisted of 3 "Realms" (factions), one based on Arthurian mythos, one based on Norse mythos and one on Celtic mythos - Each with their own 4 races and 10+ classes.

Originally Posted by VioletZero

2. How did it have an impact on you?

It opened my horizons to MMOs. It showed me the size of an MMO, it showed me the kinds of communities that could exist within them and it introduced me to their addictiveness along with the perils of alteritis (I don't think I even reached the halfway mark to level 50 in the year or more I played). It also showed me how good the combat in a hotkey MMO could be...It was somewhat like Planetside I suppose, in that it was before it's time. It had positional attacks and combos, but the net code could get in the way.

Originally Posted by VioletZero

3. Do you have any standout moments in memory? If so, what?

Plenty. The was a time when I used to go to an internet cafe almost every night (R.I.P., R. A.) and got friendly with the regulars. I'd only recently become a PC gamer and CS 1.1 was all I knew in that regard. One day I came in and they were playing a medieval-looking game, wearing capes and casting beautiful spells. I spent ages watching them play just so I could see the spell effects. A little while later I bought the game for myself (after convincing mother to pay the monthly fee!)

The other important one was my first PvP raid. My guild knew of my alteritis ways and after some months took pity on me and allowed me to tag along one night. It was that night in a battle of hundreds that I discovered how epic the scale of MMO PvP could be.

Originally Posted by VioletZero

4. Do you still play this MMO? If not, why did you quit?

5. What kept you coming back to this MMO?

I never reached 50, so I got bored eventually. I tried to return later on, but they'd introduced ./level by then (anyone with a level 50 could start new characters at level 20), which was the death knell for someone with alteritis like mine, who's characters rarely made it that far.


Edit: Fun fact - The term "QQ" originated from DAoC, apparently.

[Crator]

^^^ Nice post! I feel the same way about DAoC... I loved that game... Some very epic PvP raids happened! I actually helped lead a PvP raid one time. Large scale attacks on several keeps starting very early in the morning, so that we could sneak in and take them while the enemy sleeps (literally)! Fun stuff! BTW, the land areas for all the keeps are massive in DAoC and fast land travel required a player in your group that had the ability to make you all run faster. There were no mounts, speed potions, or equipment that made you go faster. So you could imagine the logistics....

This is of course before they added mounts and other things to the game... It's still running btw.... I haven't really played it in a long time though... And can't speak for how world PvP is currently....

[SKYeXile]

First MMO I played was Earth 2025, yes its web based for those who dont know, I started playing when i was 12, i think it must have been 98.

this got me hooked on mmos because of the great community...I mean in a game that's web based...the community is all your really have, I was playing with some friends, but they were to casual for my liking so i join the clan RAGE, it took awhile to find my place there, but I found it as a leader of one of the kill teams, while others would focus on growing their empire, my team would or wound those who would oppose RAGE's policy's. Also been a web game, alot of things came down to number crunching and stats, i think its very much made me the power gaming stat whore that i am today.

I loved the war room when were were at war killing targets, and having them die within minutes, i also liked that my empire was always one of the ones to do the most attacks(since it was built for it) in a war.

I quit because there was new stuff, i started playing imperial conflict a year or so later, another web based game, this one abit more interactive though, i did comeback and try earth afew more times, but it was never the same as i remember it(its dead now, there is however a clone of it that somebody else has made..forget the name). I have played afew more sets of Imperial Conflict now and then, I last played afew years ago where i came:
2010-01-24 Size rank 11
2010-01-24 Networth rank 5
so i still got it

[Tehroth]

1) My first mmorpgs was Runescape which I started back in 2001. I've played it until around 06-07 because they ruined the game.

2) My fondest memory was pking back in the old days on my "pure" character just obliterating people and/or watching them run away when I brought out my Rune 2 handed weapon which was the best back then.

3) I quit because the combat left no room for skill, although the atmosphere, quests and general features of the game were really great in my opinion. They ruined it due to real world trading and getting rid of the "wild". So I quit to play WoW, then Aoc.

4) The mmorpg that I keep coming back to that is my favorite is Darkfall online. Although this game has some very serious problems which force me to quit, even though it has some of the best pvp I have ever played in a game.

If darkfall online introduced more sandbox features akin to Uo/Swg and got rid of the grinding in the game it could be one of the best mmorpgs out there.

[HitbackTR]

Anarchy Online, Planetside, Everquest 2, WoW, Runescape, (yes I was desperate), a bit of Guild Wars, Perfect World, (was even more desperate).

[acosmo]

don't worry hitback, i played rs, ps1 and ao too.

[Baneblade]

PS, SWG, EQ2, DOAC (for like 5 mins), UO (for like 20 seconds), AO, AOC, PWI, FW, L2 (my back always hurt after), SB, AC... and tried just about every other mmo in existence.

[Tamas]

1. What was the first MMO you stuck with? If it is obscure, describe it.

Runescape ftw.

2. How did it have an impact on you? Shaped my expectations.



3. Do you have any standout moments in memory? If so, what?

Remember it back in highschool, was so fun. It offered me freedom and I loved every single bit. Fishing, mining, crafting (like the whole process of baking bread from gathering wheat to crafting a clay pot to put the flour in etc). Epic times.

4. Do you still play this MMO? If not, why did you quit? I stopped playing it after 2 years. I did check back to see if my account was still available, but sadly I've given away all my stuff when I left the game to some buddies.

5. What kept you coming back to this MMO? Didn't come back to it for serious play apart from logging in a couple of times in the last 8 or so years.


Apart from that I've played:
Lineage2, GW, WAR Online, STO, WoW, AoC, RIFT, Lotro , EVE, TOR, Darkfall, tons of korean MMos.

The only games I still play are not MMos, but may have MP:
BF series, SOTS series, Total War series, Stronghold (ftw), Elder Scrolls series, Mount & Blade, SC2, X Series (Reunion, TC, AL), Sins of a solar empire, WoT (yes I play them ALL) They have a huge replay ability value to me. I'm hoping PS2 will join that list.

[krnasaur]

1. What was the first MMO you stuck with? If it is obscure, describe it.
Planetside.

2. How did it have an impact on you?
Still my most favorite videogame to this day.

3. Do you have any standout moments in memory? If so, what?
I cant just choose one. Was a combination of everything, the massive battles, tactical play, closest any videogame has come to straight up war.

4. Do you still play this MMO? If not, why did you quit?
Life got in the way, I was very involved in sports, basketball and football took up a majority of my time, had about a 3 month off season a year, thats when I got my planetside fix in. While yes, I sort of have the time now, the pops are too low to keep me interested.
5. What kept you coming back to this MMO?
see number 3

[ikon]

i skipped over everquest and pso was my first real mmo love.

i played every good mmo since

my favs being ;

closed beta wow - tbc
lineage 2 private servers
final fantasy 11 pve
eve for being on a epic scale

[Accuser]

1. It's War - http://www.itswar.net/
A persistent world where combat could last for weeks at a time...
Upgrade your soldier with powerful new weapons, skills, and vehicles that take hours of battle to earn.
Specialize to make the most of a given role and support your team's drive for victory.
And it's browser based, haha!

2. At 100-ish players per round, it was my first experience with an MMO, particularly one featuring PvP in a relatively persistent world. Also, it's community-assisted, so I was able to contribute to balance tweaks and overall development.

3. The most exciting moments of my video gaming career have come from this game. Often I was fighting for hours over the course of days to earn the skills and personal points to buy the best helicopter in the game. That heli can wreak havoc on almost anything on the battlefield, but goes down from 4-5 lucky hits from enemy soldiers who have the right equipment. The ultra high risk/reward of flying that, chasing enemy choppers and being chased/ambushed, was a bigger adrenaline rush than most of my ex-gfs.

4/5. It was a lot like Pside, but in browser-based form. The only problem is that the multi-week rounds (which end when one team destroys the other's base) require a LOT of time investment to get the best weapons/vehicles. I'm kind of an "all or nothing" person, so when I got busy I just stopped. Also, Pside happened, lol.

[VioletZero]

Originally Posted by ikon

i skipped over everquest and pso was my first real mmo love.

i played every good mmo since

my favs being ;

closed beta wow - tbc
lineage 2 private servers
final fantasy 11 pve
eve for being on a epic scale

PSO isn't -technically- an MMO but it is awesome anyway and kudos for bringing that up.

[ShockFC]

Ultima Online... Love love loved that game, until UO:R... Then PlanetSide... During PS I played WAR, Guild Wars, Fury, and maybe one other? Otherwise I stick to shooters.