Out of Pod Experience

...to MMO's? What was your very first mmorpg?
or aka graphical MUD, excluding text based.
Bonus questions:
How did you hear of that game?
What kept you playing?
How long did you play?
Why did you quit? (if you did)

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My response: Oh, Ultima Online, yes. I was at work, during lunch break, reading my PC Gamer mag. Came across an article about UO, and all the launch insanity going on. I was like "oh that's that Ultima game I used to play". I hadn't picked up on it's MMO development (though I played text MUD's at the time), spending most of my time strategizing on how to kick my friends butt in the RTS world. But picked up a UO CD on the way home to give it a try.

Well apart from being PK'ed the first five minutes lol - as soon I stepped out of a town in my ragged newbie clothes, the whole wiled and open sandbox world full of other players grew on me quickly, full of danger and reward. Dungeon crawling was intense, especially with guildies. Liked running my little shop out in the woods (around Yew). PvP wars were great! was apart of some huge battles (huge for the time).

Kept me going about six years. Was awesome the first few years, no real hand holding, all wiled and free. Nothing came easy, and skills were king.

Left about a year after it became an item based game (AoS). I had already picked up EQ from launch, one grindy item based game was enough. Played them both at the same time for years, but the changes to UO just became ridiculous, far less than what it was those first few years. Played a retro player shard for ages, but have since left. I logged into the live shard last year for a month, but still the old item based game and with few playing it any longer. But they really had a good idea early on good times.

World of Warcraft

1. Friend suggested we should try it out.

2. Loot. I needed loot so I could get new, more shiny loot.

3. On and off up until Mists of Pandaria.

4. I got bored of the genre. I like spaceships now.

Same as me... EVE ...

Although I started playing due to an RL mate of mine who introduced me... I can't believe I hadn't heard of this game sooner...

Tabula Rasa

1: i had a friend in school who was obsessed with it, and i tried it and fell in love with it.

2: because space

3: i played until they shut the servers down :'(

now im here

1) Neocron

2) Saw it on a shelf in a warehouse

3) interacting with others to gain common goals; the "free" world, where you can choose, what to do

4) round about 10 Years

5) A major patch removed the posibilities for my main fun action : collecting special items from PvE, which were needed by others to do their PvP but their are too lazy to do it for themself. In addition to that another patch made it very hard to PvE solo and collect the loot. This destroyed the motivation continuing to play the game. Furthermore the "online friends" went into other directions, and after an personal important person within this gaming comunity died in real live, and the remaining - i will call it "personal game social surrounding" - changed, i lost the emotional connection to it. ..... I quit.

EVE, back in late 2004.

A friend of my bf at the time suggested it to him, I wanted to be the perfect new gf and bought it for him for his birthday.

Who would have guessed that I would still here after all this time while he quit like 7 years ago

City of villains, then probably 90% of the mmo's since if only for the first month.

Eve is the only mmo I'm subscribed to now for a long time, but multiple accounts makes up for that in cost!

He ganked you and ninja'd all your stuff didnt he?

EVE. That is all.

An ancient one on AOL called Hundred Years War, back in 1995. It's turned-based and menus are text-based (no GUI), but technically it's an MMO. It's an historically-accurate simulation of the Hundred Years War, down to individual historical barons. A lot of sophisticated intrigue and diplomacy, done IC.

I played that on and off from 1995 to 2008. Then switched to EVE. Not because of the spaceships, but because of the reportedly sophisticated intrigue and diplomacy. Was sad to learn that it would be pretty tough for groups built ingame would have a very hard time competing against blob groups coming out of out-of-game forums communities.