Your first ever MMO experience

[Icehearted]

Ultima Online. I believe Richard "Lord British" Garriott said it best when he said "people are bastards" when referring to the game's players. It was a nightmare landscape of ganking and griefing, where you didn't play the game so much as try to do something without dying.

I remember my first time just running along through a forest when some creatures began attacking me, so I made a run for it, only to find myself in the same spot minute later and half dead. I think they called this "rubber-banding". Whatever it was it was annoying, and the most common reason for my being a ghost for most of the game.

The only other thing I remember was hanging around in a swamp, being invisible, while I mixed reagents. These two other players wandered nearby and could hear me mixing potions. They stopped for a moment, unable to see me, then I see one say "Run for it?", and the other replied "Run for it." Then they ran away. It was probably the only time that game ever amused me.I've played a few since, but I'm really unable to find where the fun's hiding in these games. it's mostly social, but often times for me it seems that unless you are a teen or younger most of that aspect will be just as off-putting as any other part of these games. I didn't want to hear about school, Twilight, or how shitty someone's mom was for making them feed their cat during a raid, but that was mostly how it was.

Sometimes I miss those 6-12 hour AVs though. Nothing like a wall of bitching when one side stalemates the other.

 

[Spitfire]

The first MMO that I played was, unsurprisingly, World of Warcraft (Burning Crusade, to be spcific). I played a Human Rogue, and while the solitary gameplay of the Rogue wasn't exactly the best introduction to what MMO's are really about, I for one loved it. A bit too much, in fact. I played the game continuously for over 2 months, in an increasingly addictive fashion.
Eventually, I had a moment of clarity, and realized what a fucking time-sink the game was, which is when I quit.. though it probably also had something to do with how damn boring the content got from level 60 onwards..

Even though I was mostly a solo player, I was also a member of a guild, and we'd do fun stuff together every now again, but like you, I didn't truly understand the appeal of playing MMO's with other people, until I played Star Wars: The Old Republic. The way the quests are conceived, and because there's no real solo-oriented class in the game, you're pretty much forced to group up with other players, if you want to make any serious progress.
I had some real fun times with TOR, and now that it's gone free-to-play, I'm tempted to go back and play it some more, if only to screw with Bioware's restrictions on F2P players. Challenge accepted, Bioware..

 

[MorganL4]

I just kind of assumed that everyone's FIRST MMO was Runescape..... But I guess the FTP thing has exploded to a much bigger size than it ever used to be and not everyone is in their early 20's like me.

But yeah, for me it was Runescape.... I used to play that all the time. got my Character up to lv 63

 

[Neonsilver]

Final Fantasy XI. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I only played until level 13 or so. I never really got the hang of it. I wanted to go back to it again after some years, with years of WoW experience in my bag, but I never did. Now it feels like it's too late.

More or less the same, got to level 10 or 11 I think.
The game could have used some kind of starting zone to introduce new players to the game. All I did was grinding mobs, because I didn't have any idea where I could find quests or what else I could do. I got bored with the game after about 2 weeks and a few months later started with vanilla wow.

 

[Zipa]

Star wars galaxies was my first MMO, joined in 2006 and experienced some of the combat upgrade. Spent most of my time though in the post NGE period. Started to play the spy class, fell in love with it. Joined the forums and eventually ended up being a volunteer representative of the spy community for the last year or so of the games life (which I invested a lot of free time in )

Also met some of the best people ever, several of whom I am still good friends with and play other games with on a regular basis. The community in SWG was awesome.

No MMO has ever held me since then and probably never will.

 

[RufusMcLaser]

My first experience with an online persistent-world multiplayer game was the beta for Jumpgate [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jumpgate:_The_Reconstruction_Initiative]. I put many hours into it, and had a decent time. Unfortunately the gameplay was (at that stage) missing many of the team-based elements which seem to make MMOs worthwhile. There were other people in the game, but the missions weren't built for cooperation. Nevertheless I steadily built up my character, my funds, and my equipment- bit by bit, trading good from outpost to outpost, taking courier and escort missions, eventually equipping my ship with weapons which could take on some of the hostile NPCs instead of running for the nearest gate. It was my introduction to "grind," and this didn't bother me at first; I had formed a habit around it.
At some point I stepped away for a week to visit someone on the other side of the country. When I returned and tried to settle back into my Jumpgate routine, I realized it wasn't fun anymore. The same-ness of the tasks drove me up the wall.

Since then I've been tempted from time to time, particularly by Eve Online, but haven't because I won't regularly play a game I can't pause, and the fundamental emptiness of grind-play is still echoing in my mind.

 

[kitsunema]

my first MMO experience was final fantasy XI back when it first came out and the controls and leveling system was a lil complex, traded that for WoW and am playing guild wars 2 now

 

[DeltaEdge]

My first ever MMO was FLYFF. I loved it. I thought it was so awesome that you could fly around on a hover-board thingy. I bare no animosity towards MMOs as they taught me how to type. After years of school and parents shoving Mavis Beacon and Spongebob typing down my throat to no avail, I picked up typing in around a few days more or less after playing FLYFF and learned to do in a few days from FLYFF what SatanBob typing and Mavis Beelzebub failed to teach me in like two years. Granted, I am still not the greatest typest, but I consider my typing to be passable at least, and I did more or less teach myself to use the home-row keys, although I usually don't bother and my hands just hover directly above the keyboard, which is weird since I don't look at the keyboard when I type, yet I still manage to get the buttons right most of the time. But when I screw up, I really asfdgss dsgag.
Now I feel like talking about all the MMOs I played up to finding The One. As I said, FLYFF was my first MMO, then came DOMO (Dream of Mirrors Online), followed by an attempt at MapleStory, which did not work on my computer. By this time, I had been playing MMOs for over a year and was getting sick of the standard battle system where you only melee one enemy at a time while all the others can rape the shit out of you, so I decided to continue my search. I found temporary solace in Pi-Story, a 2D side-scrolling MMORPG, but I grew bored with it rather quickly. I also remember playing Fiesta Online briefly, and then I tried a few more side scrollers that I can't really recall, and eventually I found Latale, which for me, was the end to my long journey (I started MMOs in the early 6th grade, and Latale in early 9th grade). Latale came out around august 2008, and my friend prompted me to play it. I was a bit reluctant, but I really enjoyed it, and got addicted to it once I started. There were some obvious issues, such as the first job advancement not being until level 80 (although that did add to my sense of accomplishment once I actually reached level 80), and with it being originally a Korean MMO, it had abysmal translations that varied from almost sensible to not even always using actual letters. This particular 2D anime side-scroller felt like it had a bit more life to it than some of the other ones that I played. It definitely felt more immersive and engageing, due to the more detailed character sprites, and the combat felt a bit more organic than most other sidecrollers I had played. Oh, and quests were actually useful in this game, unlike many other games that I had played, although they became less and less useful as the levels wore on. I still play it to this day, because I am addicted to it. I am attached to Latale like a crack addict to coke. Even when you try to quit, you just end up coming back a few weeks/months later.
And also, with season 2 coming soon to the US version, the game will get a lot of improvements. The skill trees will become more refined, the first job advance will be lowered to level 50, the 2nd to lv 100 (versus 140), and the alternate job staying at 140, but with the amount of quests it took to get it being reduced. Also, quests wills now be the way to gain xp and money, and there are infinite quests, so you will be able to grind to your hearts content.

Hm, I think this is like the 3rd time I just broke down and started gushing about Latale. I need help .

 

[death525]

I played Runescape for about a week when I was 10, but the first MMO I played seriously was Torncity. It was a text based MMO with no graphics but my best friend and I played it for months until I moved. It wasnt all that great. Most of the vital stats were hidden and you had to guess when you were ready to move up the next tier in crime, but hey, it was fun. I wonder if it is still around and how much it has changed?

 

[l3o2828]

http://www.maidmarian.com/sherwoodlanding.htm

This thing.
I swear.
And then when i actually started giving a crap about MMOs because my friends played them i went to WoW
And it was TERRIBLE. Worst hours of my life.
EDIT:
Let me expand.
Sherwood was an alright deal, the gameplay was godawful and so were to graphics, but it was a nice distraction and it was free and didn't need me to use up several GBs of my computer to play it.
Now, when my friends started playing WoW, i was interested, if anything on the gameplay was better than Sherwood but still was as distracting then i would have the time of my life, so I got WoW and well...I played for about 4 hours and i was sick of the game already.
Granted, the gameplay is better, but i had grown out of the grindy and stupid nature of MMOs by that point, but i still kept playing because i had friends there who i could help and they would help me.
Then they quit, and i quit. and Ever since, i haven't liked a single MMO i've played.
Mabinogi has been the closest one to being OKAY. but it's not that good either.

 

[Murrdox]

My first MMO was Ultima Online.

My roommate and I played it, and we had some fun together with it. I can't say I ever accomplished a whole lot in that game. We spent a lot of time just figuring out how to play, and the internet back then just wasn't quite built to handle MMOs as well as it is today. I remember not being able to go into large cities because the game would lock up on you and you wouldn't be able to move because of all the people.

One of my favorite times with Ultima Online was when we were bored one night. It was night-time in the game and we were in a small city. We took off all our characters' clothes except for a pointy wizard hat, built a fire in the middle of the town square, and started drinking all the alcohol we could get, and leaving empty bottles on the floor. We started screaming "NAKED PARTY!!!". Eventually we got 8-10 other characters to join in. Someone started crafting more pointy wizard hats for everyone to wear. We got lots more alcohol. Then someone suggested streaking, so we all got torches out and ran through the streets of the city in a huge mob screaming "NAKED PARTY!!!". Good times.

After that we tried several of the other old school MMOs, but for some strange reason never Everquest.

Anarchy Online was the next one, followed by Final Fantasy XI. I had a very brief affair with WoW, but got bored by level 20. Then I bounced around a bit, and hit Guild Wars, Age of Conan, DDO, and LotRO. I haven't played an MMO since LotRO at this point. Guild Wars 2 intrigues me a little bit... but in the end I just don't think I have the time to play games like that anymore.

Does World of Tanks count as an MMO?

 

[ratzofftoya]

Mine was reading about Ultima Online in the first issue of PC Gamer I ever bought, December 1997. (Cover story was Duke Nukem Forever, by the way). Though UO definitely seems antiquated now, I still think it had much more depth in some ways than any modern MMOs, and felt way less like a rat race. As a result, I've never really been able to get into any MMOs since then, and I've tried pretty much all of them.

 

[Darren716]

Runescape in 2006, a friend showed it to me and I enjoyed it quite a bit and got some of my other friends to play. Then after a year or two I stopped playing because the whole "die and lose all your items thing" annoyed the hell out of me once I had gotten to around level 30 and I lost my adament armor. One interesting thing though is that Runescape is where my username came from but it was originally Darrena21 (for the record I forgot why I put the 21 there I think I lied about my age so I could play and I set it to 21)

 

[EscapeGoat_v1legacy]

My first MMO was World of Warcraft - that's probably not all that surprising. I remember being really against trying it; I was (and still am, I suppose) against the fact that you buy a game and then must pay constantly to keep playing. As a console gamer, used to buying a game and that's it, I guess I found that business model awful. At the time, I didn't really appreciate the fact that the cash you pay goes towards a boatload of new content and shit, to be honest. Still, a friend of mine convinced me to give it a go.

I have to admit, my first try of World of Warcraft was awful but it was a technical issue that made it so - I was running Vista at the time on a painfully bad laptop, so the game barely worked. I went back to it about a year ago on my shiny new laptop and actually found myself enjoying it. The grind never really bothered me and I really found the lore and the world quite interesting, alongside the appealing graphics and familiar RPG systems. But, I was still against paying for it on a monthly basis, so after I hit the free-to-play level cap with a character (Human Paladin) I stopped. I've never really wanted to go back to it, but it was at least a positive experience.

 

[Roroshi14]

The first one I played was a F2P called Dragon Raja. Not sure what ever happened to that game. But shortly after I started up on FFXI which I loved. I dont care if others hated it, to me it was better than WoW (whaaaa? for realz) then I started WoW late in high school. When I finally get a job I am lookin forward to tryin out FFXIV.

 

[Stryc9]

My first and only MMO was Vendetta Online, a couple of my friends had gotten into it and I had played a bit on one of their accounts at their house for a bit around Christmas so they bought me a month subscription for said holiday....the same day I severely fucked up my back to the point that it took me 4 hours to go from lying on the floor on my back to sitting up on my knees and had to walk with a cane for a few weeks.

I didn't get to play the game much over the course of the month because even sitting for very long became painful but what little I did get to play it was quite fun. Unfortunately it wasn't long after that month that we quit playing because one of my friends was spending more time making mods for the game than actually playing it and eventually lost interest after one of his projects more or less got taken over by another player he was working with. I believe the game is available in some form on Android now but I haven't really looked into it much.

 

[Tiamattt]

My first experience with a MMOrpg was FF11, which I played for it's one free month and put it down after that. I mean it was pretty but wasn't all that much fun. Perhaps if they didn't have giant fast monsters that one-shot you in the newbie area along with losing experience + levels for dying that early in the game I would've went farther, seriously who in their right minds thought that was a good idea?