The Daily Grind: I would like to have been there

well, i've played quite a few games in my day but the one that annoys me most is that i was never there with the Launch of Dark age of camelot or with the launch of eve.

i missed the first due to lack of interest and the second due to being recovering from surgery.

the one game that i left due to changes id Ultima Online. which i played from release until about a month after the Age of Shadows expansion.

since then i've pretty much been there with every game i wanted to play, and those that i didn't play at release I always had a reason for (i'm looking at you DDO and STO)

It's a shame I never got to try Tabula Rasa. It's definitely been on my list of games to try out, but I never actually got to play it before the servers shut down.

It's also too bad I wasn't involved with Guild Wars from the beginning. I have to admit I don't feel too much of a connection to the original continent Tyria; the Factions campaign was my first campaign, so I always felt much more connected to Cantha, the Dragon Empire and the Luxons and Kurzicks. I wonder if I'd like Tyria more if I had been playing GW since the very moment the servers went live; or at least before Factions came out.

I believe in just the opposite these days. Most MMOs go out half baked and it is simply better to just wait a few months to see how it shakes out. Rarely do games get worse as they progress.

I think the better question is which games would you rather have waited to play? That is a long list for me including Eve, DDO, etc.

I was fortunate enough to get in on the ground floor of the EVE beta, but I left when WoW when it came out a few months later. Part of me wishes I'd stayed with EVE from the beginning because I know that the end-game can be so much more fulfilling than WoW's, but being so late getting back to the game I would face such a steep learning curve to get going with it.

As for total "What-ifs," I really wish I had gotten an opportunity to play Ultima Online back in its heyday during the mid-90s. I played a lot of text-based MUDs during that period and always fantasized about how cool a graphics-based online RPG would be. I remember when UO came out, but I was only in 8th-9th grade at the time and my parents never would have allowed me to play it.

I still hear people waxing nostalgic in Darkfall and at work about the original UO, though, and I really wish I could have experienced it.

With just about any MMO, you always want to be there in the first year (or the first few months after an expansion). Otherwise everyone moves on and it's harder to experience the entirety of the game (i.e. lower level group content).

In retrospect, I wish I'd played Galaxies in the period between JTL and the NGE.

EQ2. I ignored it because I had such utter hatred for EQ1, and because, well, everyone and his dog was planning to play WoW when it launched like 3 weeks later. I tried it out a few years after launch and I kinda liked it. Sure it had a lot of issues and some leftover annoyances from EQ1, but no matter what else you think about Sony, they know how to pump content into EQ2. I wish I'd been around for their 'arabian nights' theme expansion especially. But nowadays I know no one hangs around in those zones, and it's empty and I'm too far behind, and it's just not really worth the bother to go into an inflated economy and levelset, as a noobie.

I wish I'd bought the lifetime sub to LOTRO back in the beginning too. Now there hardly seems to be much point.

I played a lot of games from the beginning that I've never regretted -- UO, SWG, Camelot, WoW. And a lot more I wish I'd skipped entirely -- WAR, AoC, Hellgate London (ug). And even more I'm glad I didn't jump on right away (or at all) -- Aion, Champions.

Funny someone above mentioned Guild Wars. I played GW in the beginning and it was terrible. I went back mid-Factions and by then it had turned into a solid game, and I was hooked. You missed nothing by skipping the early days of Prophecies!

Well i'm kinda sad i missed out on the 'Golden Age' of two MMOs:

Dark Age of Camelot - I joined just as Catacombs came out. I missed the Old Frontiers and mass PvP.

WoW - As my friends all started playing WoW I was trying to convert them to DAoC. I never played WoW and now that i'm considering it i cant help but feel it's to late to start a brand new account - i'm the sorta guy that likes to get in on all the content; now i'd never get to run a 40 man raid as the gear at higher levels is easier to obtain.

However, i did get in as SWG came out and im glad i did - it was great. NGE ruined the combat.

On the other hand there is one game i didnt start playing from the beginning - LotRO. I started about a year ago and i take it very slowly/casually (i've only just hit 50 - with a lot of exploring). I would recommend anyone thinking of starting LotRO to do it now as there are always lowbies on prime time (at least on the EU servers).

These days things are so badly rolled out (pushed out), they're not ready I don't want anything to do with these games at launch. I WILL NOT pay for their extended beta's. No "pre-order's" no way. I always wait till it's been reviewed (on trustworthy sites), and there's some kind of trial to see for myself.