My first encouter with online gaming was a BBS-based Risk clone called Global War, some time in the early 1990s. With the Internet came Quake/QuakeWorld and a bunch of MUDs that never really held my attentioned for more than a couple of weeks. And then, on some fateful day in early 1998, a friend pointed me to a game called Meridian 59.
Meridian 59 was kind of crap but it managed to get me hooked to the idea of graphical MUDs. A few weeks later, my l33t searchengine skills uncovered a new game that was still in developement at that time: EverQuest. It was not just a graphical MUD, it was a MMORPG. Back then I was only vaguely familiar with that term, having read some stuff about Ultima Online. UO never sparked my interest because I didn’t feel like taking up a virtual career in baking or crossdressing. EverQuest, on the other hand, was the shit. I started playing 5 days after release, in March 1999.
Needless to say, I spent the next two-and-a-half years catassing my way through the wonderful world of Norrath. I finally came to my senses and quit in late 2001, a few weeks before the release of the Shadows of Luclin expansion. I suffered from withdrawal symptoms for many months. Poor me.
Nevertheless, I returned to MMORPGing a couple of months later when I picked up a copy of the newly released Euro-version of Dark Age of Camelot. DAoC did not have quite the addictive qualities of EverQuest but it was good enough to provide solid fun for more than a year. In hindsight, my biggest issue with DAoC was probably the fact that it was not EverQuest. It took me quite some time to realize that DAoC was a really, really good MMORPG on its own accord.
The next stop was EverQuest II in late 2004. The game had promise but the implementation of some of their more innovative game design ideas was severly lacking, as was immersiveness due to questionable artwork, lackluster content and “island hopping”. The German localization was fundamentally broken. EQII was a huge let down.
I quit EQII and moved on to World of Warcraft when it was released in Germany on February 11th 2005. I cancelled my WoW subscription in early December 2005. WoW is a good game and I am not entirely sure yet why it didn’t manage to keep me hooked for more than eight months. In fact, the only reason why I kept playing for so long was that several real-life friends took on MMORPGing with WoW.
In January 2006 I temporarily reactivated my WoW account and spent some time playing (casually) on a PvP server, though I can’t say I found the experience particulary enjoyable. I took a break from MMORPGs for most of 2006 except for casually playing the Vanguard: Saga of Heroes beta test, which I entered during Phase 2 in early April 2006.
In January 2007, after a short stint playing EQ2’s Echoes of Faydwer expansion, I decided to buy the release version of Vanguard despite the fact that I didn’t really like the game during beta. As of May 2007, I’m still playing and my Rogue just turned level 50.
There were other games, of course. Games that I checked out and played for a few weeks before I moved on. Anarchy Online. Star Wars Galaxies. Lineage II. I even spent a couple of days trying to find some redeeming qualities in Asheron’s Call 2.