The Daily Grind: What originally got you into MMOs?

As a technicality and I say this because its classification as an MMO is tenuous at best, Diablo. No it wasn't massive simultaneous play but it did show me that there were tons of people out there with which to game.

As far as actual MMO, my friends dragged me kicking and screaming into DAoC :)

Anyone remember that show on G4 from years ago, it was called Portal iirc. That was what originally got me to try out MMOs.

Boredom. This was about 4 years ago only. There was nothing really happening on the 360, and I had started to play some older PC games via Steam.

I knew what WoW was, but I'd never played. I'd been afraid of the stigma. But I finally said screw it and went out and bought a Battle Chest at Best Buy.

My first character was a Tauren Shaman and Mulgore at the time was a brutal starting zone. I didn't understand that you can't multi-pull, so I was getting constantly smashed. I made it to 22, but gave up. I followed a really good guide for getting a Warlock to 80 and that became my main. Good times...

I started with UO.
to this day, I have never experienced a greater joy in any other MMO than when I finished my spellbook.

EverQuest. I started by watching my friend kill wisps in West Commonlands as a level 13 wizard.

I also remember that he was near a tollbooth landmark, and I was confused as to how much the toll cost or why he didn't have to pay. Ah, being a newbie to MMOs had its charm.

Phantasy Start Online on the Dreamcast. While not quite an MMO, it introduced me to cooperative online play. That was the gateway drug that led me to Everquest and started my addiction.

Diablo. I wished we could play that game with massive amounts of players. Then one day I read about a game coming out called "Ultima" and I was hooked.

Having recently purchased my first PC back in 1998, I was in..Babbages(?) shopping for a new PC game, and stumbled on a little title known as Everquest.

I was like, "Wait...this is like Dungeons and Dragons in videogame form? SOLD!"

It was a little while before FFXI's Beta on the 360. I never thought much about MMO's until I read about FFXI in a magazine and got obsessed with the idea of a JRPG with an entire world full of other people playing online together, it was an amazing time since I was just getting into gaming after my cousin let me play Halo 2 online on her Live account (My first online game).

When I was playing the FFXI beta a few of my best friends had to go on the run because we got caught by the police with some guns and they took the charge so we all didn't get arrested and I ended up having a lot of spare time to play and really get into gaming and completely changed my life. After playing FFXI all I wanted to do was spend all my free time playing a game rather than getting into trouble with my friends. I'd probably be dead, doing life in prison or a career criminal (Like my old friends) if it wasn't for those series of events.

It's so sad to see what MMO's are becoming now though. Most new ones are just using the same old bland formula copied from WoW and marketing it to be a WoW killer to make all the money back from box sales then they lose most of the subs and go FTP when the next new WoW clone comes along. Now some of them are just borderline co-op games claiming to be MMO's.

Earth and Beyond... I played the game for 2 days before a friend explained to me that the other characters running around were controlled by other people.

Three things:

- Open ended gameplay. I was always keen on games I could play on my own schedule, and keep playing with the same character after I "finished" the storyline.

- Character permanence; that feeling that the effort I put on my character won't be "wasted". This, incidentally, is why I only started with WoW; I wasn't going to try an MMO where I could very well end up worse than I started due to failure penalties.

- The chance to play with other players without having to first look for them and ask for a place in a formal group. Which, unfortunately for me, didn't really happen in the MMOs I play until instance queues and, with DCUO, objective sharing without a need to be grouped were introduced. It's also why I'm eagerly waiting for GW2, with it's commitment to let players enjoy all benefits of group play without having to formally join groups.

I remember getting started with gaming with the old single person favorites like Baulder's Gate etc. Moving on to Alpha and Beta URU online (who remembers this one?) and then my first real MMO was SWG. Man do i miss that one. Shame it had to die for SWTOR.

I used to played consoles until I got a computer. I always loved the idea of multiplayer and was never too fond of single player games.

Once my friend told me about Ultima Online and that you could play with thousands of other players at the sametime, that was it for me.

Hearing about games like WoW and Everquest.

That's a tricky question: I went where the games (and new experiences) were. And I really didn't think about it too hard or consider if a game had many players on at once or not, but that was a draw.

It was more about, "Here is this new game that's only online, how does one get to play it?" Mostly the answer was to buy a console for specific games (or different computers) so I had to go online; online, in retrospect was a "platform" like the console and PC were, in regards to just playing the one/few games out at that time.

From there, it was a gradual step/process into the larger field. GEnie (and it's games) led to finding out (in Magazines) of other online services (RPGN.Net and Drakkar). The low prices of AOL (compared to other services at that time, even with the hourly rate) led to further internet exploration and MUDs, MUSHes, and the like (along with a re-introduction to Simutronics).

But, like a fair amount of commentors above, I think Diablo was a moment when I started thinking in terms of visual game, a nice single-player experience and tying it to a lobby. I wanted more of that and was exploring the indy Diablo clones (NOT modded Diablo games) and other such things. Then, supposedly my search was answered in the form of UO, but that wasn't for me in the "ideal world" but it did teach me a few lessons (or actually, it confirmed them because I already knew about being leery of FFA PvP and people on the internet but Garriot did not).

Soon after, EQ1 came along and pretty much answered what I wanted (although I was missing the Isometric view at that time). I also begun searching for more obscure/indy MMOs after that and finding efforts in other countries.

To be honest, I got into playing MMORPGs because I was going through a divorce... a pretty nasty one, and it was either find something to occupy my time, or end up either killing her or being killed by her.

I chose Star Wars Galaxies (July 8 2003), and never looked back. Ironically, I first logged into the game on HER computer at HER apartment. It would not be till months after that I could get my own computer and internet (DIAL UP!!!)

This will sound a little crazy but it was Phantasy Star Online, this game was really close to a MMO as I can think of back in the day. The real game that pull me in was City of Heroes.

I had friends from an internet forum who got me to play Ragnarok Online and later into WoW. It was fun joking around and playing together in a group. We had the forums to chat on about various games, an MMO to play persistent characters on, and games on Yahoo and the like to play for casual fun.