Nothing compares to  -

Ultima Online, the big battles we used to have... PVP at it's best.

Shadowbane - fighting for the survival of your clan.... man those were the days.

DAOC honorable mention

Originally posted by Hopfrog

It's amazing how many great memories were spawned by DAoC. I didn't play it for too long, but it spawned some cool memories for me as well. As someone mentioned the stealth assasins not breaking stealth... lol I remember soon after launch people just dropping like flies as a powerleveler came into Midgard stealthed and was oneshotting us off one by one and no one knew what the heck was going on... so funny just watching people dropping left and right for no visible reason.

Also in DAoC, I remember questing in some woods on a hill and seeing a giant Rat come running towards me and was like.. what in the heck is that thing! And then a locust of little rats (I think, memory fading), running through the area in front of it and wiping us all out.  Totally freaked me out.

But my fondest memory comes from Vanilla WoW.  Before battlegrounds and arenas, when people PvP'ed for honor and reputation.  We used to go back and forth on the Dragonblight server pushing each other between Tarren Mill and Southshore. My little gnome fire mage got a bit of a reputation so after taking a beating from the Horde I got in general and started organizing an assauilt.  Lol, I can still remember running back in forth in front of about 100 Alliance players all lined up on the hill overlooking Tarren Mill and screaming "Hold the line!", and then "Charge!" as we overran them and finally got one over on the Horde. Those were great times.

I always shake my head when developers talking about how they are going to "add great story".... don't they get it... in MMOs we make the stories!... look at all these great memories, what do most have in common?  They are epic tales about the actions of players, not some scripted voiceover cutscenes.....sigh... good times.

 

Wow man that is unreal... I totally remember that in DAoC... the guys name was Sixpack or Sixpax or something like that. He was an archer/ranger class, I forget the classes now its been so long. I remember being right outside the front gates in the 1st frontier region after newbyville and people droping like flies from that guy standing up on the hill sniping everyone from stealth.

Originally posted by TwinGuard

 

Wow man that is unreal... I totally remember that in DAoC... the guys name was Sixpack or Sixpax or something like that. He was an archer/ranger class, I forget the classes now its been so long. I remember being right outside the front gates in the 1st frontier region after newbyville and people droping like flies from that guy standing up on the hill sniping everyone from stealth.

 

LOL.... that was the guy!  I couldn't remember the name but kept thinking it started with S and was about six characters long... the six probably stuck in my mind because of it being in the name.  Wow, just another example of how player actions can create some long lasting and tangible memories.  Small world. 

Memo to devs... we don't need more AI created "story" or ways the world is impacted in our instanced version of that world... we need ways for us as player to impact the world with other players!  One of the biggest reasons I cannot stand instancing is because running around and helping people leads to friendships and memories... something you can't do when other people are in their own little instance of the same area. Just amazes me that so many devs can't see what it is that makes MMOs great.

People talking about DAoC when killshots didn't break stealth reminds me...  Who remembers when the battlegrounds first got introduced? Caledonia. 30-35.  How awesome was that?  I'm going to venture to say that that was one of the most organized BG's ever. (The first bg ever?) We were all too low to really make an impact in the in the frontier but damn were were rippin it up in Cale.

It's especially memorable to me because it was nothing like the random, it doesn't really matter approach that people (myself included) take in BG's today.  These days you might see one organized group in a BG and they will be wrecking shop. You'll hear it in chat.  "There's a pre-made in here..." and you can almost feel everyone throwing up their hands.  "Whelp... can't do anything with that." You'll see some people actually sit off to the side and do nothing... waiting for hte BG to end.

In Caledonia it was serious.  Not only was it our first chance to really mix it up, but it was also seen as training for real RVR. People set up alliance chats.  Full group were the norm.  Even stealthers were in groups or at least in alliance chat acting as spys and relaying enemy movements. Thinking back it reminds me of the training grounds in Ender's Game. Yeah we were young but were were getting after it!  Leveling out of there was so sad :)

p.s. Battlegrounds eventually went way downhill in DAoC though... I think it was because there were way too many.  They hit the sweet spot when there was only Thidranki (20-24) and Caledonia (30-35).

p.p.s. Fast-forward to WAR.  Who noticed that this BG experience is EXACTLY what Mythic was trying to re-create with the Warzones? "You guys liked the battlegrounds huh??  Well you're gonna love this!"  It had the persistant keeps. It had the respawns at the border. It had the specific level ranges. The siege engines... Of course, it didn't work out that way, as we all know.  It did get pretty damn close on a number of occasions though. I certainly was involved in a few epic keep sieges that rivaled DAoC.  Of course they were a rare occurance in WAR.  

I think WAR was closer to sucess than it's given credit for.

I would have to agree with most of the DAoC posts on here, the pre ToA and Old Frontiers battles were just continuous and adrenaline fueled! But mine in particular was just the memory of hitting 50 on DAoC and venturing out to Old Frontiers and realizing that this "area" was HUGE. The expansivness of it all, and just the overwhelming fact that people were coming at you trying to kill you while you were looking at all the monsters and environment around you.

generally, not knowing or caring about the endgame made the journey of all old mmos fun... so its hard to pick a single memory.

but for a favorite memory.. i think i might have to pick some out of Asherons call 2. Setting up xp groups with tacticians was so much fun... I miss that. I also miss using the custom skill point system.

Originally posted by Llars

Out of all the great memories I have two that always come to mind first, one from EQ and one from DAoC.

The EQ memory was my first trip all the way from Quenos to Freeport... at level 14. To those that didn't play, level 14 was WAY too low for that trip. .  I basically had to pick my way through 5 zones where EVERYTHING in them could kill me easily.  Days later, after dying to bears, huge swarms of like a 100 beetles, griffawns, skeletons, scarecrows, some douchebag NPC Dark Elf who roamed the West Highlands and more, I finally made it.  To this day that was one of the toughest MMORPG undertakings I ever accomplished. That and a lot of other smaller but similar episodes are why when I think of adventure in an MMO, I always think of EQ.

 

Mine is basicly the same, at lvl 11 i overheard somone talking about the elven tree city of kelethin so i decided to go from qeynos to Fadywer to check out the city, getting through highpass hold was the worst part of it, going through the plains of karana i atleast had a large area to try dodging the Mobs, but when i got to highpass i somehow manage to sneak past the majority of the gnolls but i agroed 2 of them lucky enough the one close enough to hit me at the time missed and i had SoW on so i could out run them, i manage to run around not knowing where i was going and stumble across highkeep entrance where the guards so nicly killed them, going out the orcish side was somewhat easier ebcause there was a group farming the orc spawn. unfortuently by the time i got outside of highpass it was night time so all the high lvl undead have spawned instead of the lvl 1-10 mobs so i had to hug the wall around luckly i didnt agro although i did get close to agroing i ran past the rivervale tunnel but luckly for me i remember to go back and bind my soul before heading out to the command lands because i died right before i made it to western commanlands. It then became daytime shortly after i died so all the high end mobs despawned and i could easily make it out of kithicor forest, from there it wasnt to difficult making the way to freeport where i ran around for 30 minutes looking for the port in freeport and as a reward for making it to this point i got to enjoy a scenic boat ride to butcherblock mountains.

The best of all is from WoW 2.4.3 patch.  The persistent world was Alterac Valley with no need of leveling, where it had NPCs selling all kinds of gear and a massive battle for almost all day long. Ive seen 500Vs500 battles on peak times. It was laggy, but fun as hell.

The major objective was to kill the other sides general to get a buff that lasted untill it respawned. It had major overpowered guards that didnt let the other faction spawn camp the weaker one.

Those were my best mmo days. And it wont ever come back :[

I have many great memories from the older games; here are a few favorites below.

AC - We had all just hopped in the game and were around level 5, we were out by an apple orchard near Rithwic and we were all standing together to take on a level 7 Carrion Shreth that killed one of us (solo) earlier and we took it down and got our buddy's corpse.  Then we were just standing there talking.  It was one of my first memories of playing with all of my friends in an MMORPG.  That's one of those - first time memories that you never get back I realize, but it was such a fun time when it was all new.

AC  - This time, buying  house, a house that was in the persistent world, on land that was in the game, it had a door that you could open and close, no instances.  It also had windows, I could be in my house and see someone running by outside.  I have to say the combination of the non-instanced house with windows open to the world that everyone else played in was such a rush.  I didn't even care if I ever decorated it or anything I just OWNED something in the world.

DAoC - Getting a high level crafted sword from a player that I didn't even know, we had to search for a weaponsmith and ask him if he could make it, and when I got that sword it was such an awesome sword, made it feel like crafting was worth the time.

WoW - seeing Ironforge for the very first time in a screenshot before playing the game.  And also pvp at the Tauren Mill/Southshore before they made the battlegrounds.

All my great memories come from Final Fantasy XI.

• I died in my solo run to Jeuno on my first char and as I was laying there, at the Jugner/Batallia zone line, trying to get an ls mate to come out and rez, a random white mage passed by, saw me, dismounted, rez'd, and ran on to Jeuno on foot. I still remember "her" name (Esdain of Kujata. RIP Kujata).
• My LS's first homam went to me. Homam was sick macro gear for Paladins and I always would have kept those pieces even if they became obselete. Never would drop my Byakko's Haidate either.
• Auto-translate. I loved that crazy goofy system. A few thousands words, items, game phrases, were all in a game system called auto-translate so that players speaking different languages (JP, NA, EU all played on the same servers) could communicate a little bit. Any compliment I ever got in auto-translate felt special. - "Heraldic Imp x3 {Incredibly Tough}. {Paladin70} {Impossible to Gauge}.
• Monk tanking Charybdis back before monk tanking was even a thing. My Ninja buddy heard I did this, called me a liar, and logged off the game for three days. Ah, Drama!
• The time my ninja buddy pvp'd my monk and I counterstanced his full haste set. 
• Parry was an obsession of mine, and I had a screenshot somewhere where I parried all three of a tripple attack and got 0.5 parry skillup from each one.
• The first time we killed Byakko.
• The first time we killed Omega.
• The first time we killed Ultima.
• Claiming Nid in aery. Honest claim, not botted.
• Camping Mee Deggi the Punisher on my baby monk with a 75 paladin friend, we went 2 drops on 8 claims in 2 days. It was hilarious when I'd claim because I'd run like hell for him.

Mine goes back to early TBC WoW, back when Dun Garok in Hillsbrad Foothills was still an elite area (the equivalent of a heroic for you TOR folks).

My priest was questing in the Hillsbrad Region past prime time hours, when I get a whisper from a player asking if I could help his group in Dun Garok.  They figured they needed a healer -- they had gone partially into the keep, but ran into pulls they couldn't seem to handle -- and I obliged, provided that they could clear out some of the mobs near the entrance so I could get in.  So yeah, I helped their little group -- the leader was a mage playing with his girlfriend, a hunter, and they had earlier made a rogue friend who was with them -- and we just made one of those "connections."

Afterwards we picked up a tank and did the library of Scarlet Monastery.  At the end we sat just inside the instance entrance and talked into the early morning hours.  About our WoW experiences to that point.  About our favorite games.  About nothing in particular.  We decided to start a guild.  When we hit 70 together that guild ultimately merged with another so that we had enough players to raid with, but those online friendships carried through some 2.5 years playing the game.

I *wasted* too much of my life playing WoW, but the experiences I shared with those folks are something I would never give back.

My best memory is when i just started playing Rift. I was in the "Silverwood" zone, and then suddenly the invasion started on the "Quicksilver College", and i think there was some boss at the end. Lot's of people and lot's of stuff going on :). That was fun, this game really got me in to the mmorpg genre.

My best memory was before I had an indefinite hiatus in Granado Espada. I won a limited edition beginner pack with Hakkyu Kim's and former CM Hrin's signatures as well as a Dragon weapon series of my choice. Another time was when my faction and players greeted me on my birthday.

Btw, I'm new here so pleased to meet you all! 

DaoC... I had my Bonedancer Dreram all set for Molvik (35-40 battlegroud), my brother had his Healer. Around that Level the BD REALLY came into his own and with a pocket healer to mez and stun.. well, it was EPIC. 

We would run at a full group and take them down before they knew what hit em. After awhile I was getting tells where the enemy was from random people. We ruled that bg for hours and I felt like a god. 

Originally posted by Garvon3

I'll relate another one of my favorite DAoC memories. This will give an example of the SCALE MMOs once had, even on dial up. As tech has gotten better, this type of thing has become more and more impossible in modern MMOs for some reason.

 

So, in DAoC, there are 3 realms vying for control of a frontier. Each realm has their own frontier, divided by oceans. In those frontier are keeps, in a few of these keeps there are relics kept. These are insanely important and usually go to show who is dominating RvR at that point. These relics give bonuses to the realm that has them. Significant bonuses.

So, Albion had quite a few of the relics and Hibernia and Midgard wanted them back. Midgard and Hibernia entered into talks on message boards, plotting their revenge. Those of us in Albion had no idea what was about to happen.

One weekend, a massive Caer Sidi raid was scheduled. This type of thing usually involved several alliances (a group of guilds that shared a chat channel). So we probably had about 100 or so of our best level 50 players 5 hours deep into the hardest raid dungeon in the game.

Spies for the other realms in the alliance alerted their sides of this event. So, at a critical moment, Hibernia and Midgard attacked at the same time. There were about 400 Hibernians and 300 Midgard players running through the Albion frontier, crushing castle walls. Their goal was to take four of our main keeps. That would shut down our supply line and teleport network. With that done, they'd  move on to the relic keep. Without supplies the relic keep would be much less defended, they could crack it open and take the relics back to their realms.

 

So now the moment was on us. Alarms went out in every alliance chat calling EVERYONE to arms. All level 50s, even level 10s and 20s. The instructions were for everyone to scramble and meet at the relic keep. Someone made the decisive to cut our losses, and not try to defend the other keeps. As the storm of enemies moved through the frontier we had a massive stream of people moving to the relic keep, carrying wood and diagrams metal, materials. While most of us were at the keep setting up trebuchets, balistas, catapults, boiling oil (even the lowbies could run siege engines) a crack group of level 50s went out to stall the enemy. They made a last stand in the fourth keep, and stalled the enemy long enough for us to get defenders to the relic keep. We constantly got updates in the alliance feed on enemy locations and the status of allies running to defend. Finally, all became quiet for a while. The fourth keep had fallen and the combined 750 man force was coming towards us. At this point we'd gathered 500 men to fight, mostly lowbies in siege engines. We felt the lag before we saw the enemy, everything locked up and then snapped back into normal speed. We sat on a hill while we saw the two armies approach. Midgard was down to our left, Hibernia to the right. Thankfully the two armies distrusted one another and didn't merge together. They attacked in seperate waves, and I think that's what saved us. Between the three of us, it was a CONSTANT battle for hours. I had never, in my four years of playing, seen that many siege engines going. Fireballs were exploding everywhere an enemy showed up, players died, rezzed, and reentered the fight. Lowbies stayed on the walls helping where they could.

Eventually though, Albion was overwhelmed, the relics were taken and the castle destroyed. But we weren't done yet. To capture the relics, the enemy had to get them back to their home frontier, across the ocean. We set up a naval fleet and blockaded the ocean port. There was a fierce naval fight in the Irish Sea and in the ensuing scramble, the Midgard ship carrying the relics sank to the bottom of the sea, and the relics were lost until the next server maintainence.

That is still one of my fondest PvP memories, and it makes me shake my head wondering why no one tries to copy DAoC.

Bumping this amazing story. RIP MMO Golden Age

Ac1 Darktide ffa pvp server:

Me and my friends was staunch Anti's in that game for years. Killing people that random killed others for no reason. I simply loved the pvp in that game, fighting over resources (dungeons etc) for my guild, or just simply defending our claimed home city. Raiding enemy towns with a few friends, storming down the hillside and fight off the rally'ing defenders. Cant get pvp like that anymore.

I remember the dangerous run to Ayan Baqur as a noob, which we barely made after dying several times. AB was the "good guy" stronghold at that time, but in a higher lvl place than my char. I remember me and my brother getting owned on the beach by the guy "Shadowchild" only to return for vengeance and finding out a "Shadowchild" was a mob ;)....we still laugh about that,..... Shadowchild really pissed us off :)

I remember my first fight in faran robes on my mage with a melee with a hollow weapon.......makes me think of Obi Wan Kenobis empty robes on the floor in his fight with Darth Vader. One word...ouch!

I remember killing one of the big guys on the server with my same mage in the perfectly executed fight....what a rush. Getting my first full set of Amuli Shadow armor was also a big moment.

I can also mention the big wars between the Anti alliances and PK alliances over the next years, lots of great fun. This was in a game that fighting actually meant something besides killing pally 5432. The guild politics in AC1 was just so fun to follow and be a part of. A place were your word and your actions actually had a meaning, like in the real world, and you could actually talk to your enemies, wich is a big thing thats usually not allowed anymore.

Shadowbane and DAoC also holds fond memories, but that have to be in another post! ;)

FFXI - The game and community was simply amazing.  You really built a reputation in that game, and almost everybody knew everyone else in one manner or another.  I remember farming despot on RDM/NIN when another two LS's showed up.  I got him to spawn on one of my pulls and the other two LS cheered me on while I solo'd him.  The leaders told their LS's not to attack if it went yellow because of my reputation for helping people play better. 

The community in that game seemed to really strive to improve the abilities of everyone around them.  Every time I think about how FFXI made me grow as a MMO player I smile.  The game was like boot camp for MMO players.  People came in knowing nothing and grew into amazing video game players in general. 

FFXI bred so much eliteism though.  Generally people who played FFXI instantly think they are better then everyone else at MMO's myself included.

Making new friends and making our way in Uo together in wealth and power with dread lord PK's threatening every adventure, which then lead to the blue vs red wars on the server I was on, those were fun days.

My two favorite MMOs:

Star Wars Galaxies:

When the game first released, my friend had spent weeks grinding out Rebel faction points for Rebel Helmet. After all that hard work and being the first to earn it, the helmet ended up looking like a pointy sex toy.

EverQuest II:

I had a Ranger on the Nagafen PvP Server. I found a full "bot" group leveling near the top of this extremely deep mining shaft. I snuck up and punted the "tank" off the top of the shaft. He fell to his doom.

His group had him on auto follow... :)

Playing Eve Online with a friend that dual-boxed.   He'd been drinking beer and playing Eve all day...  By the time I logged on he'd gotten pretty sloshed and about an half-an-hour into my game time he'd forgotten that he sent his freighter on an AFK run through a gate he was gatecamping...   The cries of joy rapidly turned to wails of sorrow when he tabbed back over and found out he blew his own ship up...