Was your first mmo your best one?

Amathe

I'm curious whether people tend to have their most fun experiences in whatever their first mmo happened to be. That is the time when everything is new and you haven't already done the same things over and over a million times.

 

So my questions are, what was your first mmo?

Have you played anything since then that you liked better?

If you have played something better, how was it an improvement over your first game?

DAHBOO

Yes my first was the best

It was swg from launch and i played it for 3 years until i could not take the nge anymore

Since them ive played, wow,aoc,war,lotro,sto and vanguard

dar_es_balat

First MMO - Ultima Online 1997

Favorite MMO - Asheron's Call 1999

What did it do better?  Larger more immersive world.   UO eventually turned into a giant suburb, with every piece of available land occupied by a building.   AC offered most of what UO did, with a better place to do it in.

wildtalent

My first MMO, I bought by accident and was City of Heroes.  It's not my all time favorite but is in my top 5 for sure.  My favorite, well thats a tough one.   WoW does nothing great but is good at everything.  DDO has the best combat,  (sure it's twitch, but I like that).  DDO also has the best instances but you would expect that out of a D&D title that focuses on instances.  My favorite world though is that of LOTRO.  It's the only MMO where i feel part of a livng world.  I know its a theme park, but if you take time to explore the world it just doesn't feel that way.  Anyway, there ya go, not cut and dried answers I know but it is how I feel.

On another note if you asked me who my fav dev is, well thats much easier.  Turbine.

Khalathwyr

First - Ultima Online 1997

Second - Asheron's Call beta & 1999

Third - Dark Age of Camelot 2001

Fourth - Everquest 2002

Star Wars Galaxies - 2003

 

Furcadia is in there somewhere early be we don't talk about that one. That outlined, my first MMO is in my top 3 of all time that I've played along with AC and SWG. They swap places depending on my mood, the wind or the day of the week, but those three are my solid top 3.

xaldraxius

Originally posted by dar_es_balat

First MMO - Ultima Online 1997

Favorite MMO - Asheron's Call 1999

What did it do better?  Larger more immersive world.   UO eventually turned into a giant suburb, with every piece of available land occupied by a building.   AC offered most of what UO did, with a better place to do it in.

I feel much the same, though I didn't give Ultima much of a chance, only catching it in the last part of beta and not liking it due to its 2d nature.

 

Though for me it's a close race between AC and DAoC as for which was my favorite.

migueltb

My first MMO i played was EQ....my second best MMO experience, mostly because this type of game was new to me...

but my favorite MMO...which almost severed my social life was SWG Pre-NGE....I was just frickin addicted to that game,flunked school, didnt give a shit about chicks, didnt sleep enough, etc etc etc... but I thank the DEV for applying the NGE...my addiction stopped and my life changed ...

 

A year has passed since I have susbscribed to an MMO...have tried a few but none convince me after losing SWG...which was actually a win for my life...srlsy so currently i dont play any MMOs

Im just keeping  watch on this webpage mainly for SWTOR...surely I will try that game...

elocke

Nope, first was not my best. SWG was my first, and while I did enjoy it, the whole stupid grind professions randomly to unlock jedi was pitiful. Everyone at the time thought it would be a huge epic questline you had to secretly find, but NO, SOE went the way of the lazy man and made it a grind. Pathetic. Oh and then they ruined the game with the NGE.

Anyway, my second MMO was the best. FFXI. I still love this game, even though I've played more accessable MMO's here of late and enjoyed them as well. Ones like EQ2, WoW, Lotro, and AoC. Patiently waiting on FFXIV though to relive the best days of my MMO career while enjoying a new perspective on an old favorite.

Quirhid

1st some F2P I forget the name - rubbish

2nd. First P2P MMORPG I tried which was Lineage 2 - horrible rubbish.

Yes I have played many games that are better than those above.

Guild Wars? GW was maybe among the first half a dozen of MMOs I tried. No grind, no lag, no spawn camping, no kill stealing, no PKing, no time consuming travel or nuisances, good and exciting PvP, decent story in the PvE campaign, good character advancement, so on so forth...

Pretty much all of the games I have played since were better than the few first ones. Namely because I learned to avoid games with similar features and avoid F2P games. One must know what he/she likes and choose accordingly. Not just try something out blindly.

tcuvillier

Yeah my first MMO ( Everquest ) was the best but not because of the game, because of the gamers playing it. There was a true community back then, something that, sadly, cannot be found since the WoW phenomena.

Zarynterk

SWG by far... the best community of any online game I have ever played. Bugs, crashes... who cares, still had more fun in that game then any other since.

cukimunga

First MMO I saw and heard about was UO.

First MMO I played was EQ in like 2000 or something and  played it for a month in 2003 before my friends told me about FFXI.

But my Favorite MMO was FFXI, thats when I really got into MMO's, because I actually had access to a decent computer and had money to spend on a sub.  Tried a bunch of MMO's through out the years and just recently came back to FFXI once again because there is no other game that keeps me playing. I've finally gave up the search for that something better, lol well till XIV comes out.

Cryomatrix

First MMO was Diablo 2 not exactly an MMO but damn was i addicted to it like crazy. But for official MMO, i'd say WoW but it wasn't my favorite. That has to go to EVE.

So far here's the list.

First MMO = WoW

Most hated MMO = Lineage 2 (also my 2nd MMO)

Game I can't believe i got addicted to = Runes of Magic

Best MMO experience = EVE (3rd MMO)

Current MMO = Star Wars galaxy (2 months old haha in a 7+ year game)

Cryomatrix

dzikun

No... Second one was tho.

Tonicshot

Everquest brought me into the MMORPG genre. It was my most memorable because it was my first, not necessarily because it was better than the other games people mentioned. The grind in EQ was more enjoyable than the lineage 2 grind and many others, but the biggest thing like the post above said, was that it had an awesome community with people who wanted and needed to group. Today many of us want to play solo, but the best memories of Everquest were the ones where I was grouping up in raids and storming castles/battlefields. Point is, we remember the first because it was tied to particular emotions that we experienced.

Axehilt

Saw EQ/UO but passed em up.  With UO it was more technical/money constraints.  With EQ it was "that looks like a big timesink -- yeah, it is" followed by a plethora of terrible-sounding stories about various ways the game wasn't fun (I must've heard 20 different people make comments about EQ1 over those following ~6 years, and literally every single one of them came up with some new way to make the game sound like a terrible, masochistic experience.)

Played AC, DAOC, AO, AC2, EVE, Shadowbane, and Lineage 2, and found them all to be dreadfully boring compared to the other games I was playing at the time (online RTSes, FPSes, misc online stuff like Subspace/Infantry/Diablo 2, and many singleplayer games.) Didn't pay past the free month with any of them (actually AO and DAOC I took big breaks with then came back for a single month to see if things had improved; they hadn't.)

Shattered Galaxy was the first MMO (MMORTS) I felt was worth subscribing to past the first month.

Planetside was the second (MMOFPS).

First MMORPG I felt was worth subbing to was WOW. 

shrub

My first MMO was EQ and i think it is the best i've played. I liked the other players alot. I rarely got into a group that i didn't like unlike most games i've played since. the death penalty was good because it made you really not want to die and i think that made people better players. I played EQ for four years and then moved on to other games for some reason. I swore after Vanguard came out that i would never play another SOE game again but i know if they ever make EQ3 i will try it. unless its console only.

lornphoenix

Tho I tried EQ1 first I don't look at it as my 1st MMO since I only played it for 5 days before it pissed me off.

Played FFXI for 3 months and look at it as my 1st MMO.

Is it my best one.. nope that goes to WoW.

Though I had fun grouping... the fact you had to group to do anything pissed me off.

I spend most my days looking for a group that never came or it was pointless to bother joining up because I only had an hour left before I had to log.... It's take 30-40 minutes just to get the group together in the same place.

Part of that was the times I played. 8am-1pm EST most days.

I left FFXI with so much hate for it, there is no way I'd every return to it.

Garvon3

Dark Age of Camelot was my first, and it still is one of the best MMORPGs to date. It balanced PvP and PvE so well, and had so many new innovative features that STILL haven't been done since.

 

Why can't MMOs be good anymore?

Sovrath

Well, Lineage 2 was the first game I ever tried in earnest. I loaded up Shadowbane for 5 minutes but hated the look of everything and it came off.

Everquest never attracted me, also because of the aesthetics.

Though I read about Lineage 2 and realized I'd probably hate it, I just wanted to see what a huge, online game was about. I planned on spending no more than a week and ended up spending over 4+ years.

I can't say it was "the" best game for me but it was the game I put the most effort in and in many ways has a lot of what I'm looking for. And in many ways it does not.

I'm not sure I ever want to play a game that requires that much time and effort ever again. But I do love many things about it, met some great friends who I still paly alongside and essentially still revisit it from time to time.

Acvivm

Posted by Amathe on 4/07/10 at 5:04:47 PM

I'm curious whether people tend to have their most fun experiences in whatever their first mmo happened to be. That is the time when everything is new and you haven't already done the same things over and over a million times.

 

So my questions are, what was your first mmo? My first MMO was Everquest

Have you played anything since then that you liked better? After EQ I took a break for a few years due to real life reasons (joined the military) When I got out I got together with some old buddies who were playing WoW and played that for about 3 years. I am now playing AoC.

If you have played something better, how was it an improvement over your first game? The community in EQ at the time I was playing it was awesome, nice, helpful people overall but it required so much time that It became more of a job than a game (my buddies all left the game because of this). I liked WoW over it because of that reason; today I have work and real life to deal with I dont have the time I had when I was playing EQ at like age 16, I have more responsibilities today and WoW allowed me to continue raiding and enjoying MMOs without the time factor. Is it an Improvement? I think so...the lore was great, I loved the quests and the variety that came with the Burning Crusade expac, the raids were just as good and the community at the time was friendly and helpful. Couldnt have asked for anything more really coming back from spending a year deployed in the desert.

DrunkWolf

First was UO

second was AC and this one was my favorite

tried so many others and AC still is the best i have played

( would like to note i never got a chance to play DaoC heard great things about it though )

scuubeedoo

My first and favorite is Rubies of Eventide. Can't say i have found something more fun as a whole, although i enjoyed group PvP first in WoW but mostly in WAR.

Goatgod76

Yes. EQ1....However, allow me to explain a bit.

It was best for me due to the memories...which is also due to some of the mechanics/events that no longer exist, or barely exist in newer MMO's. These are...

- GM led world events: Like being a lvl 10 wood elf ranger sitting and taking a rest outside of Kelethin by one of it's many elevator's and suddenly hearing "HUGE train of Orc's to Kelethin!!!" Naturally, I thought someone had simply made a bad pull and I turn towards the hill to try and help pull some off the poor SoB that had caused it...only to discover not 5 or 6 cresting the hill, but DOZENS of them! It was a GM Orc raid event, and it was a blast! Many others happened over the first couple of years of EQ before it fell away and stopped all together...sadly. But they were memorable and kept the game fresh when they did take place.

- No mini map, making remembering land marks and knowing the areas important.

- Death had a penalty. Sure, it could be frustrating at times...but it made it that much more gratifying when you did pull off looting your corpse in a dangerous area while naked. It took patience and, believe it or not, skill to not aggro and die again. Also, it made you THINK about what you were doing and come up with a plan of attack to avoid dying. After all, losing xp sucked too...especially if you went back a level.

- The friendships's made. Because it was tedious and a long journey of leveling, you tended to make long lasting friendships. There are STILL guys I game with or stay in contact with from my EQ days. How many MMO's can you say that about now?!?

 - The sense of accomplishment. Again, because things took so long, it made it that much more gratifying and/or special to get that first good weapon/armor piece, your epic weapons, your mount, get to level cap. Now these things are a dime a dozen and meaningless for the most part.

- World exploration. Before PoP expansion ruined it, world exploration existed and was part of the adventure.

- MMO's being a journey, NOT a destination. There wasn't a rat race to get to end-cap simply to raid ro get to meaningful content. You could spend hours/days/even weeks in one area. May sound boring to some, but their was just that much to do.

Aladyleyna

My first MMO was Runescape, and though it was and I dare say never will be my favourite game, it definitely ranks as one of my favourites, mainly because I love the crafting system. In fact, it was in Runescape that I started getting interested in crafting. I admit, I never got to a high level in Runescape so I can't really say whether upper-level crafting is as annoying as some people say, but at the lower levels, I really liked it. In fact, it was one of the few games that I could concentrate on crafting rather than fighting, and that's what I liked about it. Only other game I found that had the same thing was SWG,  if you picked a trader.

There were three games that I liked more than Runescape, and they were Guild Wars, SWG, and EVE Online. I especially loved Guild Wars (it still ranks as my favourite game of all time) because of the epic storyline and quests, and the fact that grinding and hitting the level cap was not the main focus of the game, and of course the classes. It was the first game in which I actually liked all the classes. I've never tried the PVP though, but I plan to once I finish the campaigns. Only thing I don't like about Guild Wars was the lack of crafting, and I felt that in terms of crafting, Runescape was far better.

As for SWG, it's Star Wars, enough said. I'm a huge Star Wars fan, and I needed a science fiction game that would take my mind off EVE, since EVE was unable to work on my laptop after the recent expansion. I only wish I had played SWG before the NGE, because my cousin said that it was actually much better during that time, but at that point in time, I didn't have a debit card, so I couldn't play. 

And of course, EVE Online. I cannot really explain why I loved EVE so much, I guess it just clicked with me. Even though there was a lack of avatars, I liked the extensive crafting system and the fact that you could do practically everything on one character, since the game had no classes, and all players could learn the same skills. That's a huge benefit of the sandbox genre, in my opinion. 

brostyn

My first MMO was EQ. My favorite is DAoC. Followed by AC, then EQ.