A few of you will probably scoff at me but my pick is World of Warcraft.
I remember in the EU Beta, just a month or so before actual launch. I had just made my first character, a Tauren warrior (named Lorgarn, how about that huh) and I wanted to meet up with my irl-friend who made had made an Orc. After a bit of trying to decipher the unexplored map, our first time playing the game and our first time playing an MMO in general. We decided to meet somewhere in the Barrens.
After what felt like hours of stumbling along on a irregular path trying to follow some loose plan to end up in a location somewhat near eachother, many a corpseruns, etc. We finally found eachother on the road just south of the Crossroads. It felt like I had explored an entire world, dangerously filled with beasts ready to take my life, without even having to spend a second in a loading screen. I had heard about these "MMO's" before but this was a true "WoW" moment for me, it was at this point I realized what games could be.
I've had a real struggle playing anything that isn't an MMO ever since, it just never feels quite the same. Unfortunately singleplayer games have almost completely died for me for this reason. I can't get immersed when I know that literally everything is make-believe, there are no other players to help me immerse myself in the world. Which is unfortunate because I know there are a ton of fantastic singleplayer franchises that I would love to be able to experience fully.
Kingdom of Drakkar when it changed from text based to 8 bit tile game. You had to go through a big ugly screen with a list of links to click on to get to the game through hyper link retrieval technology.
On one level, Diablo 1 because it not only opened the door to gaming in a general way, but also opened up online gaming in a very specific way.
But probably even more important to me in the big picture, the game that changed everything by opening up a world of deep, engaging roleplaying and that taught me what immersion really meant was Mass Effect 1 and, later, the second and third. I don't think that I'll ever find another game that had such a massive, literally life-changing effect on my life.
Probably online Quake on my schools T1 connection. That was the first time I became addicted to a game. Although the old baseball sim Microleague Baseball for my Commodore 64 was pretty amazing to me at the time.
Dude i played that Microleague stuff lol.It was really tough to find that in my city.I was also hung up playing for hours that old horse racing game "Quarterpole" that was similar to Microleague stuff.I played Microleague on floppy disc though not on Commodore,although i did own a Commodore as well.I actually made a few of my own games on Commodore as i was very intrigued by computers and was learning Dos in school at the time and there was a large coding book that i had with the Commodore.
I loved Quake a lot but didn't care as much for the online because i didn't think the weapons were quite up to snuff for multiplayer,i enjoyed UT99 more so for MP.However watching the best Quake players was really impressive,can't remember the most famous guy name,there was a documentary about him actually.Brian Flanders aka "Destrukt"was the online mp player i looked up to,he was a pro UT player,very impressive as he was the first player i ever saw beat DSL players with 56k.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
There have been a lot of games over the years that gave me that feeling -- it's pretty rare to get it now. I remember feeling like "wow" when first playing the 'gold box D&D games', Ultima series, and later on UO, EQ, DAoC, etc. Definitely felt that way with WoW at release, it was awesome. For me it's the realization that there is this world that I'm playing in, and that I'm part of it.
I think it was Elite on the C64. From the same era I have fond memories of Pirates! and Defender of the Crown too.
Then in the late 80's and early 90's the Amiga 500 in general blew my mind away with its gaming and productivity capabilities. That piece of hardware was a true artwork and the IBM PC compatible market needed years to come even close to it. The first IBM PC game I adored was probably Baldur's Gate or maybe a Heroes of Might & Magic title from earlier.
I would have to say Heroes of Might and Magic 3. I was maybe 8 years old when my neighbor would get the demo for it. For months we would gather at his house and play the same level over and over again trying to get all of the 7th tier monsters unlocked. (The demo had a turn limit.)
3. Mercenary - exploring world in 3d vector graphics
Atari ST 1. Millenium and Deuteros - great strategy games. In one of them, you could decode alien transmission and, AFAIR, learn exact time of alien invasion. I did it with my friend, without any help or hint. Before decoding, we didn't even know, if the message wasn't just some random symbols hehe. That was real wow moment :-)
2. Armour-Geddon from Atari ST - the same friend, my first cooperative 3d simulator with multiplayer over RS232. Tanks, hover crafts, fighters, bombers, technology research and and prerendered intro sequence hehe.
Mercenary on the 8-bit machines was an amazing 3D game indeed. From the 16-bit era Millenium and Armour-Geddon were unique and well executed ones too. I had an Atari 520 STfm upgraded to 1MB and I was a huge fan of Dungeon Master and Populous just to mention other great classics from that era.
So many to pick from and so far back, but a few main ones would be.. Bobble bobble in the arcade, Super Mario on NES, Sim city on Amiga, Might and Magic 2, 3, 4, Civilization, Duke Nukem 3D, Warfraft 2 (my first big internet multiplayer game over Kali net), The Settlers, Baldurs Gate 2.
Well but nothing blew my mind like Everquest did, because it was the first taste of a virtual world in fantasy setting.. In light of the insanely fast development in hardware and games leading up to 2000, Everquest fostered dreams of future virtual worlds of untold magnitude, and that Everquest was just the beginning .. It never happened, but I still hope it will (EqNext was the great hope for the first a real virtual world in a fantasy setting since 1999).
MOBs looted you! And they still had that stuff for the next player who killed that MOB. This could last forever, or until that MOB was killed. (Usually players would get help in getting resurrected and then get their stuff back from the MOB.) There was this powerful Dragon in an out of the way location where players didn't go very often, and one player killed it once and found heaps of player gear, reagents, and gold from what must have been months worth of other players dying to it.
So much more. I can't talk all day here. lol
I remember playing Moria and there was this invisible mob that would steal things from the player, without actually fighting or killing the player. That bugged the crap out of me.
The way you describe it, if you defend yourself, you keep your stuff, which makes it more fair than in moria. Yes, interesting. The element of risk I think would make everyday game-play more interesting. Was this for all mobs or just bosses?
This forum is broken. It is time to move to proboards, because they're broken.
- You can jump up above the screen and skip entire worlds! - Whoa, Samus was a girl?! - Time Traveler, that hologram game in the arcades. - Seeing Sonic the Hedgehog running in a Funcoland window for the first time. - Kefka just destroyed the whole freakin' world! - Flipping & climbing through 3D jungles, blasting dinosaurs, & dying in many crazy ways in the first Tomb Raider. - Choosing from 3 vastly different races and fighting with or against others online in Stacraft. - Realizing the scope of future online gaming when my first several sessions in EverQuest were all 8+ hour marathons. - Storming the beaches of Normandy in the "photorealism" (lol) of Call of Duty. - Unleashing the Flood in the first Halo. Holy crap... - Vanilla WoW's MASSIVE world full of depth and variety without loading screens, and with plenty of polish! - Would you kindly? - MY Commander Shepard carries over from game to game?! - The brilliant scripted intensity and polish of modern action games like The Last of Us/Uncharted - Still playing WoW on a semi-regular basis after 14 damn years.
I started gaming when I was about 5, back in 1990. My dad was a teacher and taught computer science back then so we had a couple of PCs in the house.
So, was introduced to gaming via Lemmings, War in Middle Earth and Doom 2. We then had a ZX Spectrum with some interesting games, the one I remember mostly is a Bruce Lee game.
I think being introduced to gaming at such an early age meant it was hard to blow my mind. I was just used to the technology and concepts. Even when we got our first "proper" console, in the form of a Sega Saturn, it felt like a natural extension of the old arcade machines we all used to play.
So, I think it was my introduction to RPGs and proper 3D worlds that finally got me, and I think that first happened with Final Fantasy VII in 1997. It wasn't so much the technology as it was the combination of tech and high fantasy. Most of the other games I'd played before then had been pretty common - fighting games like Virtua Fighter, or racing games, or old school 2D platformers etc.
FF7 combined cutting edge tech with a subject matter that also blew my mind.
I had a similar moment with GTA3. I remember my first 15 minutes in game to this day and how hard I laughed the first time I stole a car, only to have the owner drag me out and beat the shit out of me! Had another similar moment with Morrowind, felt like such a step up from previous RPGs.
Currently Playing: WAR RoR - Spitt rr7X Black Orc | Scrotling rr6X Squig Herder | Scabrous rr4X Shaman
Everquest. I bought a computer magazine that had a CD with a 30 day trial version of the game on it. I loaded it up, saw a drawbridge leading into a town and someone was sitting just in front of the entrance. Having never played an MMO before I sort of assumed it was an NPC but wasn't sure so I said Hello and they stood up, said Hi back and buffed me with a spell. My first ever person to person interaction in a game. It blew me away and I still remember it like it was yesterday.
Easily Ultima Online........... What an immersive world , full of danger and risk at every turn ... But with the learning and effort put in , the pay out was the most satisfying of any MMO i have played to date and still is ..
UO also still to date even on Trammel offers a more danger filled, mysterious, rewarding world to explore than any other game .. imo
Funny I had the complete opposite experience......I remember taking my first step out Brittain and was killed in less than 5 seconds and all my stuff taken......I said "not for me" and went a couple years without playing.....Then a friend suggested Everquest and I loved it....
Easily Ultima Online........... What an immersive world , full of danger and risk at every turn ... But with the learning and effort put in , the pay out was the most satisfying of any MMO i have played to date and still is ..
UO also still to date even on Trammel offers a more danger filled, mysterious, rewarding world to explore than any other game .. imo
Funny I had the complete opposite experience......I remember taking my first step out Brittain and was killed in less than 5 seconds and all my stuff taken......I said "not for me" and went a couple years without playing.....Then a friend suggested Everquest and I loved it....
I had the same experience. I got hit by a fireball when walking out of the city. I also got killed by the guard for accidentally trying to steal inside a city. I was always a persistent person with regards to getting through annoying, tedious, and unfriendly environments. Eventually, I did move on to Everquest because of the player killing, but I had a lot of fun in UO while I was there.
There was nothing like it and it helped fuel the imagination as far as "what else could be done".
It's true it was mind blowing and it's why I'm not jaded on video games/don't complain about graphics or expect the moon.
Having started video games with a dot flying across the screen and that being amazing, to me, it's all sort of amazing in its own way. Even seeing friends who don't play video games look at my screen I can see the wonder in their eyes (though they really have no interest in playing).
Like Skyrim? Need more content? Try my Skyrim mod "Godfred's Tomb."
Actually the very first game that awed me and I enjoyed was a text based game on an AOL bulletin board about an adventurer and his dog who ran dungeons and fought evil monsters. I think that's really what got me hooked on computer gaming and my love of gaming grew from that. Been so long I can't recall the name of that game but it's the one that got me serious on computer RPG gaming.
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
Basket ball (hey, OP hasn't mentionned video game) 100% Action game, it's Magic !
MMO wise, UO, at the time I knew nothing more "fantasy realistic-ish" . CoH, man who's never spent a few hours in the character creation menu before entering the world ?
Dragon's Lair(arcade version). It was first "Animated" game. You could play it through multiple times and get a different story each time.
Think I'm going to have to change my pick after reading some of the other member's picks. I remember playing some of the old Gold AD&D 2nd edition IBM/PC games back in '91. Was playing Temple of Elemental Evil AD&D weekly with friends at same time and these games filled that AD&D hole the rest of the week, lol.
Another IBM/PC game from '91 was Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe from LucasFilm Games. This was the predecessor to X-Wing and Tie Fighter games. Being a big WWII buff, I loved being able to fly the BF-109 and ME-262(first jet fighters in the world).
Legend of Zelda NES 80's - It was the first game i had played that pretty much featured open world exploration, The music , the setting hell even the gold cartridge all screamed something was special about this game
Mike Tysons Punch Out NES 80's- As a kid it was surreal to have all these boxers with unique personality, appearance , and fighting style, Not to mention the graphics for the game were mindblowing at the time. Add to all that the hype of the game being sold out everywhere and as a kid calling ,K mart,child world and K b Toys obsessively to see if it was in.
Motor City Online 2002 I Think- My First MMO, I joined this game about 4 or 5 months before they shut the game down but the 4 months i played it was awesome. It was surreal to be playing this muscle car circa 1960's Online game with other live players. From Building your own car, to live auctions and car clubs, drag strip rivalries , Rare skins for the cars it was all so new and immersive.
Probably online Quake on my schools T1 connection. That was the first time I became addicted to a game. Although the old baseball sim Microleague Baseball for my Commodore 64 was pretty amazing to me at the time.
Dude i played that Microleague stuff lol.It was really tough to find that in my city.I was also hung up playing for hours that old horse racing game "Quarterpole" that was similar to Microleague stuff.I played Microleague on floppy disc though not on Commodore,although i did own a Commodore as well.I actually made a few of my own games on Commodore as i was very intrigued by computers and was learning Dos in school at the time and there was a large coding book that i had with the Commodore.
I loved Quake a lot but didn't care as much for the online because i didn't think the weapons were quite up to snuff for multiplayer,i enjoyed UT99 more so for MP.However watching the best Quake players was really impressive,can't remember the most famous guy name,there was a documentary about him actually.Brian Flanders aka "Destrukt"was the online mp player i looked up to,he was a pro UT player,very impressive as he was the first player i ever saw beat DSL players with 56k.
well I was in a quake clan that played a fast paced CTF mod. It was when esports were just starting and they had a site with online rankings.
UT99 domination was my favorite time in an FPS game though. I also played in a clan there as well
Knights of the Old Republic. It was simply awesome. Great graphics for it's time, and you got to play all the way through the knight experience. The story was great. It's still one of my favorite games and the first time I played it was decades ago. I replay it every once in a while, usually with new mods added in since people are still modding it after all this time.
Nothing has ever compared to that first experience. I played lots of games before and after but that first time loading that game was just magic.
If it's an MMO, then EQ2. It's the only MMO I still play.
Comments
I remember in the EU Beta, just a month or so before actual launch. I had just made my first character, a Tauren warrior (named Lorgarn, how about that huh) and I wanted to meet up with my irl-friend who made had made an Orc. After a bit of trying to decipher the unexplored map, our first time playing the game and our first time playing an MMO in general. We decided to meet somewhere in the Barrens.
After what felt like hours of stumbling along on a irregular path trying to follow some loose plan to end up in a location somewhat near eachother, many a corpseruns, etc. We finally found eachother on the road just south of the Crossroads. It felt like I had explored an entire world, dangerously filled with beasts ready to take my life, without even having to spend a second in a loading screen. I had heard about these "MMO's" before but this was a true "WoW" moment for me, it was at this point I realized what games could be.
I've had a real struggle playing anything that isn't an MMO ever since, it just never feels quite the same. Unfortunately singleplayer games have almost completely died for me for this reason. I can't get immersed when I know that literally everything is make-believe, there are no other players to help me immerse myself in the world. Which is unfortunate because I know there are a ton of fantastic singleplayer franchises that I would love to be able to experience fully.
Tweet at me - Visit my website
This isn't a signature, you just think it is.
But probably even more important to me in the big picture, the game that changed everything by opening up a world of deep, engaging roleplaying and that taught me what immersion really meant was Mass Effect 1 and, later, the second and third. I don't think that I'll ever find another game that had such a massive, literally life-changing effect on my life.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I loved Quake a lot but didn't care as much for the online because i didn't think the weapons were quite up to snuff for multiplayer,i enjoyed UT99 more so for MP.However watching the best Quake players was really impressive,can't remember the most famous guy name,there was a documentary about him actually.Brian Flanders aka "Destrukt"was the online mp player i looked up to,he was a pro UT player,very impressive as he was the first player i ever saw beat DSL players with 56k.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
Then in the late 80's and early 90's the Amiga 500 in general blew my mind away with its gaming and productivity capabilities. That piece of hardware was a true artwork and the IBM PC compatible market needed years to come even close to it. The first IBM PC game I adored was probably Baldur's Gate or maybe a Heroes of Might & Magic title from earlier.
From the 16-bit era Millenium and Armour-Geddon were unique and well executed ones too. I had an Atari 520 STfm upgraded to 1MB and I was a huge fan of Dungeon Master and Populous just to mention other great classics from that era.
Bobble bobble in the arcade, Super Mario on NES, Sim city on Amiga, Might and Magic 2, 3, 4, Civilization, Duke Nukem 3D, Warfraft 2 (my first big internet multiplayer game over Kali net), The Settlers, Baldurs Gate 2.
Well but nothing blew my mind like Everquest did, because it was the first taste of a virtual world in fantasy setting.. In light of the insanely fast development in hardware and games leading up to 2000, Everquest fostered dreams of future virtual worlds of untold magnitude, and that Everquest was just the beginning .. It never happened, but I still hope it will (EqNext was the great hope for the first a real virtual world in a fantasy setting since 1999).
"I am my connectome" https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HA7GwKXfJB0
The way you describe it, if you defend yourself, you keep your stuff, which makes it more fair than in moria. Yes, interesting. The element of risk I think would make everyday game-play more interesting. Was this for all mobs or just bosses?
- You can jump up above the screen and skip entire worlds!
- Whoa, Samus was a girl?!
- Time Traveler, that hologram game in the arcades.
- Seeing Sonic the Hedgehog running in a Funcoland window for the first time.
- Kefka just destroyed the whole freakin' world!
- Flipping & climbing through 3D jungles, blasting dinosaurs, & dying in many crazy ways in the first Tomb Raider.
- Choosing from 3 vastly different races and fighting with or against others online in Stacraft.
- Realizing the scope of future online gaming when my first several sessions in EverQuest were all 8+ hour marathons.
- Storming the beaches of Normandy in the "photorealism" (lol) of Call of Duty.
- Unleashing the Flood in the first Halo. Holy crap...
- Vanilla WoW's MASSIVE world full of depth and variety without loading screens, and with plenty of polish!
- Would you kindly?
- MY Commander Shepard carries over from game to game?!
- The brilliant scripted intensity and polish of modern action games like The Last of Us/Uncharted
- Still playing WoW on a semi-regular basis after 14 damn years.
I guess I'm easily wowed.
So, was introduced to gaming via Lemmings, War in Middle Earth and Doom 2. We then had a ZX Spectrum with some interesting games, the one I remember mostly is a Bruce Lee game.
I think being introduced to gaming at such an early age meant it was hard to blow my mind. I was just used to the technology and concepts. Even when we got our first "proper" console, in the form of a Sega Saturn, it felt like a natural extension of the old arcade machines we all used to play.
So, I think it was my introduction to RPGs and proper 3D worlds that finally got me, and I think that first happened with Final Fantasy VII in 1997. It wasn't so much the technology as it was the combination of tech and high fantasy. Most of the other games I'd played before then had been pretty common - fighting games like Virtua Fighter, or racing games, or old school 2D platformers etc.
FF7 combined cutting edge tech with a subject matter that also blew my mind.
I had a similar moment with GTA3. I remember my first 15 minutes in game to this day and how hard I laughed the first time I stole a car, only to have the owner drag me out and beat the shit out of me! Had another similar moment with Morrowind, felt like such a step up from previous RPGs.
Norden
There was nothing like it and it helped fuel the imagination as far as "what else could be done".
It's true it was mind blowing and it's why I'm not jaded on video games/don't complain about graphics or expect the moon.
Having started video games with a dot flying across the screen and that being amazing, to me, it's all sort of amazing in its own way. Even seeing friends who don't play video games look at my screen I can see the wonder in their eyes (though they really have no interest in playing).
Godfred's Tomb Trailer: https://youtu.be/-nsXGddj_4w
Original Skyrim: https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/109547
Serph toze kindly has started a walk-through. https://youtu.be/UIelCK-lldo
"We all do the best we can based on life experience, point of view, and our ability to believe in ourselves." - Naropa "We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are." SR Covey
100% Action game, it's Magic !
MMO wise,
UO, at the time I knew nothing more "fantasy realistic-ish" .
CoH, man who's never spent a few hours in the character creation menu before entering the world ?
Other game genres,
- Headshot - Double kill - killingspree - Ludicrous kill - Monsterkill - Multikill - Rampage - Ultrakill - Unstoppable - Dominating - Godlike !!!!
Another IBM/PC game from '91 was Secret Weapons of the Luftwaffe from LucasFilm Games. This was the predecessor to X-Wing and Tie Fighter games. Being a big WWII buff, I loved being able to fly the BF-109 and ME-262(first jet fighters in the world).
Mike Tysons Punch Out NES 80's- As a kid it was surreal to have all these boxers with unique personality, appearance , and fighting style, Not to mention the graphics for the game were mindblowing at the time. Add to all that the hype of the game being sold out everywhere and as a kid calling ,K mart,child world and K b Toys obsessively to see if it was in.
Motor City Online 2002 I Think- My First MMO, I joined this game about 4 or 5 months before they shut the game down but the 4 months i played it was awesome. It was surreal to be playing this muscle car circa 1960's Online game with other live players. From Building your own car, to live auctions and car clubs, drag strip rivalries , Rare skins for the cars it was all so new and immersive.
Aloha Mr Hand !
UT99 domination was my favorite time in an FPS game though. I also played in a clan there as well
Nothing has ever compared to that first experience. I played lots of games before and after but that first time loading that game was just magic.
If it's an MMO, then EQ2. It's the only MMO I still play.