So I'm curious, as my reason for getting into MMO's is relatively odd in itself. What exactly got you guys into playing MMO's?

To kick it off, I'll explain my history of gaming. I originally started off playing console games on the Sega Genesis and of course the original Nintendo console. Some of my favorites from those consoles were Mike Tyson's Punch Out, Sonic the Hedgehog, Super Mario Bros, Mega Man, Contra, Double Dragon, Zelda(1 & 2), Final Fantasy and... well, the list could go on and on, so I'll just stop there to save you time.

When I was 12, my dad bought me a computer; it was totally awesome - at the time anyway - with 8mb of ram, a 90MHz CPU, and an SVGA graphics card(!!). Along with it he bought me my first computer game: Sim City. I loved it, it was a great game to get into as a kid, and really taught me quite a bit about management. Then of course I had to buy Doom and Doom II, as well as my first RTS game - Warcraft II.

At 19, I was living with some friends for a few months; one of them played this new MMORPG called EverQuest. My first thought was, wtf is an MMORPG? I had no idea; the only online game I played at the time was StarCraft, so even hearing the term "MMO" was something alien to me.

For the first week or two I watched him play his cleric - Matthius Savioras - on the Lanys T`Vyl server. Then he asked me if I wanted to check the game out for myself, so I said sure. He let me play on his account when he was out with his girlfriend or working, and I leveled up a warrior named Zeratul(Yes, I know - I was an SC junkie so can you blame me?) on the same server as him.

I got to about level 18 and decided I wanted to check out another class, so I deleted my warrior and made a wizard. At that time I was pretty much hooked - I really liked the game and wanted to play it more. Around the same time the house we were all living it had some issues and everyone kind of went their own ways. The problem here was I lost access to EQ, so I had to rectify that. I bought my own copy, and created an account just before Shards of Velious came out.

I got in contact with my friend who introduced me to the game, and decided to make a counterpart to his cleric, so Kodylan Stompioras(Looking back, the name is incredibly corny, but it fit with the theme we were going for.) the warrior was born.

From there I leveled up, met Nimloth, joined the "baby eating uberguild" Conquest, and the rest is history.

So yeah, sorry for the rambling, but I always like looking back on how I got into MMO's after all these years of playing them.

Funny part is, i have the exact same background, except i did not start with EQ, but with T4C, it was a free UO like small MMO.( also played a lot of diablo and diablo2).
I moved to Dark age of Camelot for about 3 years, the played WoW for 2 years :)

During all this time i also played most of the free2play MMOs available, and nearly all the popular MMOs except SWG.

PS: sim city was my first PC game, the only one i was allowed to play because my parents were not considering it as a *dumb video game*

Also when i was 6 i was watching my brother playing with his atari st 520, games like Ishar (awesome rpg), frontier elite 2(EvE online but offline, 15 years ago) and popoulous.

Started with Meridian 59 which I tried and thought was incredibly lame, stopped playing that pretty rapidly. Moved on to Ultima Online which I remember was insanely expensive back then. The cost of the box was twice of what you would normally expect. Ultima Online had a lot more freedom, just the crafting system was in my opinion better that what you find in most games today. I've tried going back and I think my memory of that game is far fonder than what the game actually is. I quit before they split the world into Trammel and Felucca so I remember a pretty vibrant PvP world with a lot of action.

I think my next game was Dark Age of Camelot followed by a very brief adventure into Anarchy Online which was in incredibly bad condition when it launched. Since then I've only stayed very briefly in all the MMO's I've played. Which was basically a binge of Asherons Call 2, Shadowbane, EVE online, Guild Wars and probably some I can't even remember. Shadowbane was probably the game I spent the most time in and I got stuck like four or five months in that game siege raiding, which was fun. The game was later trashed by rampant cheating and the fact that people were running out of things to do in game besides sieging.

I went from Shadowbane to World of Warcraft, leveling two characters to 60 but never getting into the whole raid thing. I quit while Ragnaros was the end boss I believe. Moved on from World of Warcraft to Vanguard but never got very far as I started developing the Vanguard database and that ended up taking most of my free time. Now I don't play any MMO's and I don't see anything on the horizon that would change that. Word of Warcraft in my opinion is probably the best game out there, it's as diverse as you make it and very polished. If I'd start playing again, that would probably be the game I would go back to.

I think most old school MMO players remember their first interaction with the game genre and are chasing that same feeling we got when first entering the massive world and learning about it. It really is a completely new type of game and that feeling truly is very addictive. We're always chasing the dragon, where the dragon is that perfect game which has all the features we want and provides the exact type of world we want. I think every avid MMO player is certain they could design the best MMO ever conceived because it consumes such large quantities of time everyone becomes an expert in their own mind. "I lived it so i KNOW it". Yet people seem to always be sure the next MMO they are following IS that perfect MMO but it doesn't seem like that has ever been the case.

I think I've just grown tired of my abusive MMO girlfriend that promises to change but always disappoints.

My gaming experiance started when I came home to a Sega Mega Drive/Genesis to the americans. I pretty much played the Mega Drive for ever, going to my cousins every so often (read, once a day) to play his Sega Saturn.

Then, the playstation was released, not content with it, I begged and pleaded for PC, and I got it, along with THE INTERNET! I can even remember logging on and going straight for a search engine - Lycos.

After a few years gaming, of the usual RTS's and some FPS, my cousin found this game, "Runescape" my immediate reaction was, "what the hell is that?" A free adventure game. Woah free I'm there, that was my introduction to an MMO.

• a few years pass*
  

Then, talking to a friend he mentioned this game, World of Warcraft (I had no idea what Warcraft was, I'd never even heard of Warcraft3 at this point) that had just been released, frist question I asked, was it like runescape? His answer, Ill buy you a copy.

That was over 2 years ago. I've never regained that feeling of first stepping into WoW, that naive feeling you have, where you're just enjoying the game and not thinking about, I could use a new 2h, or I wish these damn boots would drop, or I wonder if we'll down Illidan tonight.

I used to be a hardcore FPS gamer but it started with UT2004rpg and golden sun on GBA that i took a turn toward the rpg world's, after that i went MMO Saga of Ryzom after playing that for a year i was forced to play WoW with bunch of friends when it released.. never thought i'd get addicted.. tho it happend.. "i was clean for 4 months :O.. but ye started again recently"

Well i have a very long gaming history too so i'll try to stay short :

I start playing when i was 6 years old, on the Philips Videopac G7000 console i received from my father, i didn't have much games tho since they cost a lot (philips things are expensive !), i remembered my favorite game was a "pong-like" game but instead of the two lines, you had 2 cowboys with mushrooms bumpers in-between. The Philips console last not even a year so i got an atari 2600 console next-year at Christmas, i played many games on that one, formula games, soccer, basketball, but i got bored of them pretty fast (games weren't that exciting ! ).
When i hit 9 years old, i bought a NES, played my first mario bros game and i was very excited, i bought ninja turtles, castelvania, my neighbor had the same console so i could grab many games from him after so i didn't have to buy them hehe.
I started RPGs with Final Fantasy, The Legend of Zelda that i borrowed from my neighbor, Zelda was my favorite game for months.
My friend then bought a Sega Master System (don't know if it's the same name for the english console), he didn't like it so i borrowed it from him too and played some Alex Kids goodness, i really liked this game with the "scissor paper rock thingie" :), i really like Sega games at that times (note : in the same time my little brother was born
Few months after i heard about SNES and my mom bought it to cheer me up (that's when my parents broke up and when my father left home so :( ), i played many games on that one, i remember Donkey Kong, Mario with Yoshi (i really liked that character, Yoshi Island was a nice game), Zelda, Street Fighter and SHITLOADS of RPGs games, i was addict at that time (i think that it was the SNES that really got me into the RPG genre and MMORPG in general) i tried Chrono Trigger, Secret of Mana, lots of incredible RPGs (i think the SNES is the best console for RPGs really).
Afterwards, to make things short, i then bought a Playstation and started to play many RPG too, Tekken Games, Parasite Eve etc but in the end that was really RPGs my favorite genre.
Then i heard about Ultima Online, an Online RPG, i was like " OMG MUST TRY THIS", i rush the store to buy a box, and started my online and MMO adventure.
I spent 2 years on that game, got pked many times by other players and Lord British Richard's Garriott himself, it was really 2 years of fun, it was hard and expensive at that time to play online game for french people since bandwidth costed a shitloads of money, and there was few ISP (world online, AoHELL) that weren't that good and "lol" at the 22Kbps modem with disco when someone phoned.
Anyway, i then, move to many MMOs, Anarchy Online, Acheron's Call, without finding a MMO i liked (it was hard to stay on a MMO after trying UO which was really nice and one of the best to the genre) so i wandered from MMO to MMO, i tried T4C but i really didn't like it, the game was MSPaint-made (seriously) and was uglier than Ultima Online, so it was hard for me to stay on it.

I got bored of MMORPGs since i couldn't find one that suits me so i bought and play Half Life when it was out, then went on CounterStrike first betas but i stopped real quick the FPS genre since i had a really crap connection (56kbps AOL @500ms ping).
I then bought Diablo games and played it a bit but i really didn't like people the community on this game (lots of leavers, lots of trashtalkers, french people were dumb on that game) so i left, i then play Dark Age of Camelot since that was the most anticipated MMORPG at that time, i register for the US Beta and got taken mysteriously (ahah), i really enjoyed the game but had a really crap ping (FR -> US WEST COAST ping was horrible, and i think today it still is), anyway i wait few months for the European Beta and got in, start to play casually (had lots of exams at that time) but i still achieved the first highest level hibernia side (i'm always good to xp characters). Tried Everquest but got ping problems so i left fast :(
I then played Dark Age of Camelot for 3 years on european servers, i learned how to PvP there, UO was more Pk or got Pked than real PvP, and RvR, massive PvP, take fortress etc, was really an exciting game.
It's on that game that i met the Curse Guild with Net and others people, i wasn't in the guild at that time since i had a Shadowblade (stealth character) and it wasn't a really FOTM class to pvp with....
Anyway i stopped DAOC for personal reason (health, money etc) and went back on console games (was cheaper and i was getting poor) the time i got a job, work for 1 year non-stop to got a bit of money i could spend on MMOs (yes it's harder to play when Mom is not here to pay the account and the ISP bills).
I then start MMORPG back with Biosfear, a tiny MMORPG with a really tiny community (1000~ people or less) and met Net again on that game (he was already highest lvl than anyone ahah), i started playing this game serious cause my goal was to join his guild.
After a month and a half, i join the guild Curse, was happy cause i knew everyone was nice and hardcore in that guild, that was the kind of guild i liked.We totally dominated the game, PvE wise and PvP wise (there was many castle siege, and only the strongest guild could own the ONE AND ONLY MIGHTY CASTLE, that was us, Curse !) but got bored since there was no real challengers, lots of noobs and really poor end game contents/update.
I then got back to irl things, work, social, meet new girlfriend, then Net called me "hey are you going to play WoW with us?", i really didn't know what was WoW at that time since i totally left the MMO side apart.
I then look for WoW to see what it was and saw it was a Warcraft Online Universe, got excited and decided to start the adventure with the Curse guild.
I played US stress test then US Open Beta test with a few of Curse guys (most told us that "beta are useless"), i lvled a lvl 43 rogue on the US Open beta, then started to play the European One, where i lvled a 60 rogue.
At european wow release i lvled a 60 rogue again, but started to get bored of the game, we dominated MC european start but everyone got bored, we thought the raid system of wow was really crap for tiny guild like us (we didn't want/like a Zerg guild with 60+ people) cause when someone was offline and couldn't play we had raiding problems, so we took randoms but didn't have the results we wanted, we tried to PvP, but coming from DAOC, WoW PvP is a joke...

Anyway i spent 1 years and a half on WoW and i stopped, now i'm looking for Warhammer Online, hope that it will be a great pvp game.

ps : sorry for the broken english and sorry i really tried to shorten everything lol.

Hum... started with T4C, Mankind, UO, Shattered Galaxy... why?
Well, I can't remember... why not?
We where using Rogers Wilco,Microsoft Gamevoice, TeamSound... over 56k line :-P

Was very involved in the early Mankind community, shattered galaxy, starwars galaxy planetside, warcraft addons... (By involved I mean creating tools for many people).

Played a few dozen of MMO.

As a typical girl (yes im a gril IRL) whos interests was: party, café, friends and boys, i had NO experience with MMO's before WOW - the only thing i had ever played was Sims2.

It all started with my ex BFs roommate who showed me a film with gnomes running around in Goldshire, jumping around with pink hair (ofc). I thought it looked fun and desided to try the corean beta. I started a rogue and got her to lvl 15! OMG! I got kindda hooked pretty fast (reminded me of Sims were u could pick your own hair style and so on). I still remember first time my friends did Deadmines andi was like "what the *** is an instance??" i looked so difficult and fun - and i was thinking "lol im never gonna do DM, way to hardcore for me).

then we made a guild and did Dire Maul ect.

And then i started to raid.. MC, BWL, AQ20 and 40 (only did 3 bosses in Naxx before TBC).

Atm im taking a raiding break - but im sure im gonna raid again soon (my guild is doing SSC atm - almost kill Lady whats-her-face).

End of the line: WOW is gonna be a part of my life as long as i think its fun - and ofc untill i got a lvl 80 DK :P

(I now play mage(70) for raiding. warrior(70) for some pvp and shaman(40) for fun.)

long story short: girls play WOW and we LOVE IT!

GIEF ACCES OMG!!

sorry but loggin servers are down :(

I don't know exactly why I bought it.
Always liked Warcraft but never was a RPG player at all.
The idea of spending points every level, I never got used to that when playing NWN. I also never played any MMO before WoW.

But, end of february 2005 I bought it anyway (Holland here) but didn't start playing till mid/end of march. Wanted to finish some stuff before I started on WoW. Think I bought it mainly because I was just very curious about the game, and I missed out on the open Beta.

WoW got me hooked right from the start. And I still don't know why.
I guess because even though it's a RPG it doesn't really feel like one. I mean, I play it like any other game basically.
I love the social and community aspect of the game. I've known people since the first days I started playing, and still speak to them on a regular basis.

Today I do raids as a tank and loving it. Been doing it since 1.5+ years now.

wth is with the long boring self centered stories? short=got into MMO`s to avoid the boredem witch is my life..Cheerios

I also have a looong and, I think, interesting gaming history, hopefully this won't take too much to write out.

I Do not remember ever having a time without games. Born in 1983, the same time as the Commoder 64, I grew up on a steady diet of Castles of Dr. Creep and Legacy of the Ancients, which progressed into the Zeldas, Metroids, and randomness of the Nintendo era. I've been hooked on console RPG's ever since Chrono Trigger for SNES and have played almost every Squaresoft game since.

My gaming was not confined to the consoles, however. I can remember arguing with my brother who got to use the "freaking awesome" Pentium 66 my uncle had, and who got stuck on the black and white 486 laptop when we played Deathmatch DooM. I've been hooked on PC FPS games as long as anything else. I even had my friend pick the lock (remember when PC's had a physical lock?) on my uncle's PC so we could play Duke 3D when it came out. Even before DooM, I was hooked on Wolfenstein 3D on the super-fast 286 machine my dad used for work :)

I could go on forever about the various iterations of things and where stuff everything got started, but suffice it to say, my mom and uncle were avid gamers, so I always had a pull toward them. Now I'll jump to the subject at hand: Online RPGs.

My first online game (and my only reason for looking back fondly at AOL) was Cyberstrike. It was kind of a mech-3rd person shooter game, but had territory and strategy to it. There was even a kind of attrition.

Fast forward to my meeting my now best friend, who was an Evercrack addict. I used to watch him and say "How can you play this boring-ass crap?!?!" Well, about 2 1/2 years ago, I found a free online game called R.O.S.E. Online. It was a really neat environment, done up in that Anime style (I was introduced to Anime in College and love it) and it was all 1 server. Anywhere you went, you could find hundreds of people around. The neatest thing was, there was no level cap! I saw a weapon once that required level 124, and it took me weeks to get to level 23! Alas, the game was an extensive grind, MUCH more so than WoW.

Shortly after that, I heard about this sweet looking game coming from Blizz (I was a huge fan of every game they produced) and showed it to my friend, who was considering getting EQ2. He went with neither, chosing to stay with EQ instead. Later, my roomy in college picked up WoW and played it endlessly. I have no clue how he graduated... (He was also lead designer for Cosmos UI for a while and now works for Blizz!) I found myself watching him play constantly. When he graduated and left, my new roomy came in and started playing it too. Again I would watch. Again, he played almost to the exclusion of all else.

That Christmas, I decided to pick up a copy, since it as on sale for $30, and picked up one for my friend too. I carefully hid it in my closet and vowed not to play till I graduated. Good thing too, as I played it to the exclusion of all else for 6 months after installing...

Today, I have a paladin with epic flying and almost to Netherdrake, no quests left to do, but content to heal Kara with my casual raiding guild. Recently started arenas too, and my 3v3 is proving to be quite fun.

Turned out kinda long, but not to bad :)

Because that was the point of the thread?

Lots of people have longer gaming histories than others(sometimes due to age, sometimes due to a spark of interest earlier in life), so it's fine if some want to keep it short and some want to go into detail.

My post could have been much longer than it was, but I felt like talking about a lot of the earlier games that got me into gaming and my start in MMO's, rather than all of the MMO's I've played since I started.

Well, it all started back in my freshman year when WoW first came out. It was after a football game with the Generals (our rival school) where we won the game, me getting two into's and a 68 yard pass (no TD). I went to a party to celebrate, and everyone was invited. There, some kid I never talked to before who was pretty cool, though kinda hit it off straight away with me. We talked about stuff you guys don't need to hear, and then finally he talked about something called Warcraft 3. Now I'm a competitive guy, and he said in this game you go against players all over the world and that he himself was extremely good. So I said I'd beat him any time, if he just gave me a few hours to practice; he accepted the challenge and I got into the game and felt it out for a good 2-3 hours the next day. Then we went into a Warcraft game on Battlenet, 1v1, and I was crushed. I found out I hated Warcraft, and then he told me to try out WoW which was the kind of thing I'd like more in his opinion. Been playing since then, and I'm definitely better at WoW than Warcraft 3.

Anyway, that's how I started, and yeah, it's a pretty strange way of starting.

I played all sorts of games before the year of 2004, RPGs, FPS', RTS (real time and turn-based), adventure games (Lucas Arts ftw), when I found out about World of Warcraft. It was in alpha back then, February 2004, and I joined the GotWoW? community two months later in April.

Was mostly lurking there until the last 2 months before it got shut down.

I was really hyped up about WoW, and I had no experience with MMOs back then. Was a really clueless newbie back then, also I was playing Championship Manager 4 (soccer managment game)

I finally played WoW on a real (official, legal) server for a month or so when it released here in Europe, and was kinda dissapointed. The thing I liked was the social aspect of MMOs and PvP though, so I was looking at alternatives. Started playing Guild Wars, and after I got bored of it, I heard of Darkfall (thanks to Ghettofish).

Needless to say I liked the idea. I was also fond of the elitist attitude and the loosely moderated forums there, and the IRC channel. I was pretty much 'forged' there when it comes to the internetz and multiplayer games, and learned alot of stuff and started playing old MMOs (UO, Anarchy Online, EQ2). Played EVE Online and World War 2 Online too. I also played some 'indie' MMOs like RYL and Saga of Ryzom. To gain some experience and more opinion on MMOs (and I still consider most of them shitty)

Nowadays I mostly play older games (which I missed because I am just 18), like RPGs and adventure games. Multiplayer I do realistic shooters mostly now (America's Army, Red Orchestra, and soon Insurgency mod). And I try to beta test a MMO here and there, hoping to find something awesome.

Oh, and griefing. Did I mention griefing ?

ya, similar as prism, I used to play warcraftIII all the time with my mates.

well, Then my ex-gf drag me into the RO game. Then I added to it. we used to enjoy our game life 12 hours per day and having only one dinner per day. That's crazy~~ play MU with my mates after that