I read about Federation ( http://ibgames.com/index.html ) in an old BBC Micro magazine, which got me into MUDs. I dabbled with a variety, with highlights including Avalon and MUD II. Was trying to write my own MUD server (which was fast but ultimately unmaintainable) when Meridian 59 came out, which was my formal introduction to MMOs.

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When i was 13 (5 years ago) i got my first computer which i would use to browse a load of sites to get free demos for games ( i was a cheap skate lol). I came across a demo for Everquest 2 and didn't realise it was different from any other one. Loved the trial and got the full game and not realsing for about a week that it was online.

From there the inevitable rivalry began with WoW with i again tried with a demo and played for a bit. Since then i have tried to devote a week or so to a new MMO demo when it comes out.

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A friend of mine kept bugging me to play this game he'd gotten into -- Dark Age of Camelot. Being a pen and paper roleplayer from back in the day and having dabbled a bit in MUDs, I thought the idea of an online RPG was really appealing... but I initially balked at the monthly fee. Or, rather, my wife balked at the monthly fee, so I forgot about it for a while.

One night, after a huge fight with the missus, I found myself in Wal-mart on a diaper-purchasing mission. I saw DAoC on the shelf. I scooped it up and brought it home. So, thanks to my friend and my passive-aggressive need to spite the missus, I got into MMORPGs. :)

I played DAoC for about two, but I started hopping around to see what else was out there. I'm a still something of a hopper today -- I get bored very easily. I've played almost every major MMO there is. Unless I find a good group of folks to play with, I don't stay tied down if the game isn't satisfying me.

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I suppose you could say that I discovered MMOs "on my own" as I was a fan of the Ultima games, and jumped into Ultima Online at launch. But I got bored of that game and eventually quit. I was reintroduced to MMOs one night at a bar, talking about a friend's latest obsession in gaming over a couple of beers... EverQuest. He told me all about the game and I decided to buy it.

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Before Ultima Online, before Everquest, there was this "information service" called CompuServe. And on CompuServe was this great little graphic game done in text characters (ala Rogue) called The Island of Kesmai. If cost $12.00 per connect hour to play at 1200 baud, your loot dropped where you died, and it had perma-death. Each time you died you lost a point of constitution, and if your constitution dropped below 3, you re-rolled.

The only way I could afford to play was that I was playing on a company account, and I very nearly lost my job the day my bosses called me in to inform me they were no longer paying thousands of dollars per month for me to do "online research" on CompuServe.

It was AWESOME.

I've been playing these games ever since...

Dlangar
http://ofcourseillplayit.com

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Like many, I started gaming early. But I didn't take to PC gaming until I ended up stumbling onto a demo for a shooter call Command and Conquer Renegade. And shortly after playing for awhile and meeting people of the server I would often vist, and later moderate. And I stayed 'faithfull' to that game for years.

I'd heard of these MMO RPGs from other people. Had seen them on TV and thought that the idea was interesting, but often the combat systems would turn me off just at the sight of it. In the eyes of someone that was comfortable with aiming and cover, it just seemed so slow.

However, one day, the leader of my clan at the time started talking about a game going into beta called GuildWars and that keys for the beta weekend were going out and how interesting it looked. Well if she was interested in it there must be something to it I thought.

Well between the beautiful landscape of the starting zone, friends, and being able to play an archer, I was hooked. And it wasn't long before I started looking into this world of online games with more opened eyes.

Now, my list of MMO's played is easily longer than my list of- well, most anything else game-wise. And with Aion, it looks like thats going to stay that way.

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I discovered MMOs by beta-testing Clan Lord (its still around).

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honestly the blame goes to FFXI.. it took Final Fantasy to convince me that a monthly fee for a game was worth it, these days I play almost nothing but MMO's. Still in FFXI after an off and on relationship... played EQ2 a bit, WoW for about 3 years, GuildWars, and countless others I've tried out.

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Well, it all kinda started with MUDs... BatMUD being my favorite. But then, my brother was working for a Total Entertainment Network, or TEN (Now Pogo.com), that ran a game called Dark Sun Online and introduced me to that. Then, I dabbled with Meridian 59 and beta-tested Ultima Online. But the epiphany, for me at least, didn't come until the first time I played Everquest. That game all but consumed the next four years of my life and no game would ever come close to that again.

I feel like we're in a bit of a MMO rut right now. I mean, yes, the graphics are better, the GUIs refined, etc. but there seems to be a severe lack of innovation in the genre. I find myself trying out every new MMO that comes along, but never playing for more than a month.

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I don't know when I learned about EQ, but it was slowly, over a few months I heard about it and thanks to "Snow Crash" I instantly knew what it was without needing much of a description.

Anyways I still did not think much of it due to the $10 a month fees. I had no desire to pay $50 for a game and $100 for a video card just to barely run a game and have to pay $10 a month for it... but one day maybe 1 month after Kunark released I was inside of EB. The employees at the time were true games BTW, not salesmen. If a game was bad then they told you... anyways I digress.

I heard the employees talking about EQ and it's new expansion Kunark. I knew the box very well... Could never help but stair at the bound chick on the front. anyways they were describing being in kunark and watching the boat arrive with more people and describing them exploring the new world... At that moment with that proper, poetic description of EQ I wanted it... it was probably a few months later till I picked it up.. I wanted it, but budget was limited. They had EQ2 and Kunark for $20 so I grabbed it!

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I was wandering around Future Shop when a game called Earth & Beyond caught my eye. I thought it looked like fun and picked it up without even understanding what an MMO was. I played it for a day or two without realizing the other people running around were in fact other players until a friend of mine who had played UO pointed it out to me. I've been hooked on MMOs ever since.

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An avid PC gamer for over 10 years, I'd heard about MMOs, but had no real interest in them at all. Then one rainy Saturday afternoon, almost 4 years ago, bored and with nothing else to do, I thought I'd make use of the free trial of World of Warcraft given away with that month's issue of PC Gamer magazine (UK one).

The learning curve was, indeed, slightly steeper than most games, and at first I found it "boring but addictive". Still, I kept returning to it, and a few days later I did my first group quest. That's when it clicked, and WoW became a total obsession for a while, filling all my spare time. I still play it, although nowhere near as much as I used to, and love trying new MMOs shortly after they're released.

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I went over to a friends house after high school one day because he had something to show me. That something happened to be Ultima Online.

After seeing what I saw, and trying it out for a bit, I realized how much fun an online world with lots of other players was. I was definitely hooked.

Strangely, I skipped EQ and took a sabbatical to test my measure as an avid Counterstrike player (back when it was still a Half-Life mod).

I dove again into MMOs when Dark Age of Camelot was about to release. I convinced my friends we *HAD* to play this the day it came out. My memories of an online world like Ultima Online combined with my passion for player versus player competition (evolved from Counterstrike) led me to see this as a Utopian game.

I haven't been away from some MMO or another since (and there have been a fair share).

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I was 9 years old and my bigger brother was playing Everquest. Whenever he played that game, I always watched him with enjoyment. Once I got into Everquest, my whole life changed, I've been an avid gamer since.

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My brother introduced me to "The Realm Online" when I was back in middle school.

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a buddy of mine who was /very/ into warcraft [the rts games] and i started bumping into video clips at or around 2001/2002/2003 of world of warcraft. it seemed pretty interesting.

being in south africa, it meant that we figured we had very little hope of ever seeing the game, live. our internet infrastructure is terrible - and expensive. so, we sorta shrugged and moved along.

in 2006 - five years later - a friend of mine had gotten disks that were for the eu realms. he figured i might like it and suggested i try it out. i did - and have been playing ever since.

our internet infrastructure is, indeed, still terrible and paying for the subscription is annoying, at best, but i'm glad i picked up the game.

[to be fair, though, i'd played campus wide muds at university - so i had /some/ idea of what an mmo was, before stepping into azeroth.]

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I got a full version of Anarchy Online with some gaming magazine, perhaps 8 or 9 years ago. It really got me hooked as it was a kind of game I had never played before (and I had played games since "pong"). I played it for some year, then played Eve-Online for a year or so, got back to Anarchy Online for another year, tried Everquest 2 before playing the WoW-beta. Been stuck with WoW ever since (with a few attempts to find something better, but no luck yet. SWOTR perhaps?).

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I had become super frustrated with the cheaters and hackers on BF 2142. Finally one night I said enough and ran out and picked up a copy of WoW at the local Wal Mart. All I knew about the game at the time was that they had TV commercials and gaming mags wrote lots of articles on the game.

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I played every Final Fantasy since the days of NES, so that inevitably lead me to Final Fantasy XI.

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