MMOrigins: MUD on the tires

Welcome to MMOrigins, a new weekly series here at Massively where we take a look at what makes us who we are as MMO gamers. Much in the style of our Redefining MMOs series, several members of the Massively team will have their chance to take a look back at their influences, favorite classic games and what got them to where they are today. Then, as we've done before, we'll ask you to compile your own blog posts on the same topic and we'll showcase it for the finale.

So I thought I would kick this new series off with my own influences and origins in gaming and what molded my current enjoyment of MMOs. As anyone who grew up in the 1980s might know, the dawn of personal computer video gaming was an exciting time. With inexpensive hardware such as the Atari 2600 and the Commodore 64 and 128, you didn't have to always get your mom to drive you to the arcade to play some good games.
The first video game I ever remember seeing was Telengard on the Commodore 64. I was probably 8 or 9 years old, and my best friend's dad just bought the system and the game on tape. Yes, back before game disks, floppies and cartridges, we inserted what looked like audio cassette tapes into a tape drive.

Telengard was fun, but I didn't get to play it very often. It was just enough to get me hooked though, and I started telling my parents about how much I loved these new video games. When I was 10 years old, I got an Atari 2600 as a present from my rich aunt and uncle. I played games like River Raid, Space Jockey and Grand Prix for hours and hours on end. My parents never told me I needed to stop playing, which is probably because that little machine was keeping me out of trouble and out of their hair.

I eventually got my hands on a used Commodore 64 that my parents found in the classifieds for really cheap. My first games were all copies of my friend's games, but I did eventually save up enough money from chores to buy a few of my own. These included games like Pool of Radiance, Bard's Tale I and II, and still my all-time favorite game: Wasteland. From ages 12 to 15, I played these games after school, before school, on weekends and every second I had the chance. I even set my alarm an hour early every morning to give me more time to play.

These games were my introduction to roleplaying, Dungeons and Dragons, and the whole fantasy genre as it relates to gaming. I was hooked from there. My freshman year of high school, I found a group of people who played tabletop AD&D (before they changed it back to D&D) and would play with them at the local library once in a while.

But fantasy wasn't everything for me. I loved the whole sword and sorcery aspect of these games, because that's all I really knew at this point. I associated role-playing with this fantasy setting, until I was introduced to Shadowrun. This is really where I began my love for the sci-fi and cyberpunk genre. This opened up my mind to trying out other games, including a recent Buck Rogers game released by the same people who created my first loves in the SSI Gold Box Series.

"My parents never told me I needed to stop playing, which is probably because that little machine was keeping me out of trouble and out of their hair."

During this time, my C64 and Atari 2600 weren't my only influences. There was the local arcade, which when I think about it now, was almost like my first real multi-player environment. My best friend and I would spend hours playing Golden Axe, while other kids would approach us for a challenge. I was quite shy and timid back then, and this almost forced me to learn that gaming with strangers wasn't so bad after all.

I also played several board games as a child, including Monopoly, Sorry!, Dark Tower and Risk. Risk was a game that my dad and his brothers all played together on holiday get-togethers. They'd sprawl the game board across my grandmother's kitchen table and start what I always thought was the most intense gaming I'd ever seen. There was yelling, shouting and trash talk the entire session, which always entertained me more than anything. I was never allowed to play with the big boys at this point, but it was a nice introduction to how competitive these games could get with other people.

Around age 16, I stopped playing as many games as my priorities had changed dramatically. College studies eventually made gaming a distant memory for about the next four years until the advent of internet chat rooms and MUDs (Multi-User Dungeon) really struck a chord with me.

I found one such MUD at age 20, and was soon hooked back in. I made many friends there, from across the world, and re-ignited my interest in gaming and interacting with people in a gaming environment.

When games like EverQuest and Ultima Online came out, I mostly ignored them, appalled at the thought of paying a monthly fee to play a game. I distinctly remember looking over the retail box for Motor City Online at the local Best Buy and thinking that one might convince me, since I loved classic cars. I resisted the temptation, and continued to live my life perfectly content without a monthly subscription for an online game.

At work one day, probably around 2002, I read an article in Wired magazine about a man who made a living grinding away at EQ characters and selling them on eBay. This became his full-time job as he spent every waking hour essentially gold farming. This absolutely fascinated me and I began to look more closely at this whole MMO thing. I was interested in the market side of these games, and I thought about how great it would be to set up a shop and sell virtual items to real players in game. I wasn't so interested in selling these items for real money on eBay, but just the fact that this was even possible... it floored me. It's just too bad I missed out on Star Wars Galaxies at the time, because from what I hear, I would have loved the game pre-NGE.

I still resisted subscribing for a few more years, even when World of Warcraft came out. I wanted to play so badly, but there was just no way I would ever be able to afford $15 a month with a wife and two children.

Enter Guild Wars. ArenaNet really knew what they were doing back then, and I'm grateful for it. They broke down that barrier for people exactly like me who wanted to play these games, but couldn't fit the bill for it every month. I began following the game through beta, but still held off on actually buying it until a few months after release.

I loved the game so much, that I soon created a podcast for it, which eventually got me into this job. Guild Wars was able to bring together everything I had loved thus far, from the fantasy genre to playing with other, real people. I was stil naive at this point, and didn't see how much more expansive MMOs could be (with persistance and less instancing), but I was content at the time.

I was dedicated to GW for a few years, with Lord of the Rings Online being my first stray. Tabula Rasa was next, and it just kept going from there. I have currently played just about 80% of the MMOs in existence, with only four or five catching my attention enough to play regularly.

While Guild Wars will always be my first true love in what I would consider an MMO, it was games like LotRO and Tabula Rasa that really put me over the edge and made me realize that this whole MMO thing is really where it's at.

So when I look back at my influences and gaming roots, and how everything culminated from a combination of the timing between my age and the era, it's no wonder I'm at this point now. There's no doubt that massively multiplayer gaming will continue to evolve from here, bringing in people like me who lived this stuff for most of their lives, but also those who finally accepted the fact that gaming isn't only for nerds and geeks.

This series will continue with very similar stories from the rest of the Massively staff. I'm interested to see what has influenced the rest of the team, and how they built their own love for MMOs through the years. Stay tuned next Friday for the follow-up in the MMOrigins series!