Ultima Onilne was the first game I lpayed, but Everquest was my favorite and WoW my second favorite.  Ultima Online was my third favorite.

In Everquest I have a lot of both good and bad memories, but overall I had more memorable experiences in it then in other MMOs that I have played.

My first mmo was L2 back when C1 just started, Ive played many mmo's since then but still hold a fondness for L2, cant wait for Aion. Kind of wierd I think I might start playing again since Gracia came out.

 SWG from launch to NGE. It was fun while it lasted. For now I'm giving up on the MMO genre and sticking with console games.

Originally posted by Zayne3145

I'm interested to see people's views on this. I see a lot of posts where people constantly refer back to their first MMORPG when comparing games.

My first MMORPG was WoW (for shame!) and sadly I fall among those who will make comparisons to it, purely due to my limited frame of reference.

One good thing that has come out of this however is that  my eyes have been opened to the wider genre (along with millions of others, for better or worse) and I follow all new games on the horizon with great interest. I'm not above switching allegiance should the right game that suits my playstyle come along.

I had to vote the top option but my first MMORPG isn't the same as it once was, (i'm a Pre-NGE SWG refugee) no other MMORPG has compared to it in my opinion since the NGE went live, i prefer the complexity of things, there are those that say they "don't want to come home from work and load a game up and then feel like they are at work again" which is fair enough for them, my train of thought and preference for a game is it's complexity, i don't work all day then load a game up and feel i'm at work again because it's a game, i was into heavy crafting on Pre-NGE SWG and loved every minute of it, it was complex and i enjoyed undercutting the market by gathering my own resourses instead of buying them from someone else, it was also CREATIVE not simply gather this amount of that and make this, it was all about the quality and experimentation..   They haven't been released as yet but Darkfall and Earthrise are saying that they offer this kind of thing and i'm looking forward to seeing if they are correct, if they are then it's been nearly 3 years since any game decided to build on the popular crafting of SWG, if they don't then it'll be god knows how long and chances are i'll stop playing MMORPG's..  too many of the same log on, kill this, raid that, PvP him games around no matter what their theme is..  every MMO to date has forgotten about the RPG side of things.

*note to those who say crafting is just like it was pre-NGE

IT ISN'T..  the NGE removed the need to see a crafter once in a while to repair your items and it made instances and random mobs drop better than crafted items,  this killed the crafting of SWG and no game i've played contains decay where a crafter is required, and no game today can say that crafted items are better than looted items, removing the need for crafting all together.

Originally posted by gostly

I see a lot of people saying pre-cu or pre-nge SWG...do some googling and you'll find out they've been working on a pre-cu SWG for a while now and i think a lot of people would be interested in playing it...ive already got it installed and have been on it...i cant wait til they get done, i want my creature handler back so bad!

how about you just tell us without the googling

Originally posted by Antaran

 

I had to vote the top option but my first MMORPG isn't the same as it once was, (i'm a Pre-NGE SWG refugee) no other MMORPG has compared to it in my opinion since the NGE went live, i prefer the complexity of things, there are those that say they "don't want to come home from work and load a game up and then feel like they are at work again" which is fair enough for them, my train of thought and preference for a game is it's complexity, i don't work all day then load a game up and feel i'm at work again because it's a game, i was into heavy crafting on Pre-NGE SWG and loved every minute of it, it was complex and i enjoyed undercutting the market by gathering my own resourses instead of buying them from someone else, it was also CREATIVE not simply gather this amount of that and make this, it was all about the quality and experimentation..   They haven't been released as yet but Darkfall and Earthrise are saying that they offer this kind of thing and i'm looking forward to seeing if they are correct, if they are then it's been nearly 3 years since any game decided to build on the popular crafting of SWG, if they don't then it'll be god knows how long and chances are i'll stop playing MMORPG's..  too many of the same log on, kill this, raid that, PvP him games around no matter what their theme is..  every MMO to date has forgotten about the RPG side of things.

*note to those who say crafting is just like it was pre-NGE

IT ISN'T..  the NGE removed the need to see a crafter once in a while to repair your items and it made instances and random mobs drop better than crafted items,  this killed the crafting of SWG and no game i've played contains decay where a crafter is required, and no game today can say that crafted items are better than looted items, removing the need for crafting all together.

well, if you like crafting and you want crafted items to be better than looted ones try Ryzom
 

though Ryzom has a shaky or unsure future the statement that "no game today...." is untrue

 My first MMORPG was Anarchy Online. I still like it, but I just can't keep up with all the expansions. My agent is still under level 100 so it feel like I missed alot while in the army. But somehow I always keep comparing every other game I play with my old AO experiences and most of the time get dissapointed when newer games don't really reach my expectations. ^^

Originally posted by gatheris

Originally posted by Antaran

 

I had to vote the top option but my first MMORPG isn't the same as it once was, (i'm a Pre-NGE SWG refugee) no other MMORPG has compared to it in my opinion since the NGE went live, i prefer the complexity of things, there are those that say they "don't want to come home from work and load a game up and then feel like they are at work again" which is fair enough for them, my train of thought and preference for a game is it's complexity, i don't work all day then load a game up and feel i'm at work again because it's a game, i was into heavy crafting on Pre-NGE SWG and loved every minute of it, it was complex and i enjoyed undercutting the market by gathering my own resourses instead of buying them from someone else, it was also CREATIVE not simply gather this amount of that and make this, it was all about the quality and experimentation..   They haven't been released as yet but Darkfall and Earthrise are saying that they offer this kind of thing and i'm looking forward to seeing if they are correct, if they are then it's been nearly 3 years since any game decided to build on the popular crafting of SWG, if they don't then it'll be god knows how long and chances are i'll stop playing MMORPG's..  too many of the same log on, kill this, raid that, PvP him games around no matter what their theme is..  every MMO to date has forgotten about the RPG side of things.

*note to those who say crafting is just like it was pre-NGE

IT ISN'T..  the NGE removed the need to see a crafter once in a while to repair your items and it made instances and random mobs drop better than crafted items,  this killed the crafting of SWG and no game i've played contains decay where a crafter is required, and no game today can say that crafted items are better than looted items, removing the need for crafting all together.

well, if you like crafting and you want crafted items to be better than looted ones try Ryzom
 

though Ryzom has a shaky or unsure future the statement that "no game today...." is untrue

 

I apologise. meant no game today that i've played..  ryzom i've heard good things about but after digging up info and that it hasn't appealed to me, although i love complex crafting and such it's not the only factor i look for in a game m8,  thanks anyway though, might end up trying it out at some point.

EQ was my first and while it was great alas it was not my favorite.

SWG for the first several moths after its release was my absolute favorite MMO. For the first time there was a game with no boundaries. It was innovative well beyond its contemporaries and there has never since been a MMO that can deliver the virtual world experience that SWG made possible.

When the whiners started getting their way and they added Doc buffs and holocrons and such the end was obviously near but those glorious months prior to that were pure bliss.

My frist Game was Earth and Beyond.  I still miss it and I try to avoid EA games now too.

Originally posted by Antaran

Originally posted by Zayne3145

I'm interested to see people's views on this. I see a lot of posts where people constantly refer back to their first MMORPG when comparing games.

My first MMORPG was WoW (for shame!) and sadly I fall among those who will make comparisons to it, purely due to my limited frame of reference.

One good thing that has come out of this however is that  my eyes have been opened to the wider genre (along with millions of others, for better or worse) and I follow all new games on the horizon with great interest. I'm not above switching allegiance should the right game that suits my playstyle come along.

 

I had to vote the top option but my first MMORPG isn't the same as it once was, (i'm a Pre-NGE SWG refugee) no other MMORPG has compared to it in my opinion since the NGE went live, i prefer the complexity of things, there are those that say they "don't want to come home from work and load a game up and then feel like they are at work again" which is fair enough for them, my train of thought and preference for a game is it's complexity, i don't work all day then load a game up and feel i'm at work again because it's a game, i was into heavy crafting on Pre-NGE SWG and loved every minute of it, it was complex and i enjoyed undercutting the market by gathering my own resourses instead of buying them from someone else, it was also CREATIVE not simply gather this amount of that and make this, it was all about the quality and experimentation..   They haven't been released as yet but Darkfall and Earthrise are saying that they offer this kind of thing and i'm looking forward to seeing if they are correct, if they are then it's been nearly 3 years since any game decided to build on the popular crafting of SWG, if they don't then it'll be god knows how long and chances are i'll stop playing MMORPG's..  too many of the same log on, kill this, raid that, PvP him games around no matter what their theme is..  every MMO to date has forgotten about the RPG side of things.

*note to those who say crafting is just like it was pre-NGE

IT ISN'T..  the NGE removed the need to see a crafter once in a while to repair your items and it made instances and random mobs drop better than crafted items,  this killed the crafting of SWG and no game i've played contains decay where a crafter is required, and no game today can say that crafted items are better than looted items, removing the need for crafting all together.

/bow

UO was the first and best.  No other game was able to deliver the total package package to me.

A long, long, long time ago, back when my hometown in Podunk, USA finally got the internet, and by internet i mean Telnet from a local BBS, I played a game called "Realms of Despair", a text-based MUD, the type of game that is in many ways a precursor to the modern MMO genre.

Then, in '96 we actually got a real dial-up ISP and I remember playing the hell out of Subspace (sort of MMO-shooter type game), before playing Underlight for about a year, which was my first 'real' MMO.

Sadly that game never really caught on and is no longer around, and I didn't play anything after that for a long time.  As a matter of fact I got really into RPGMaker 2000 and made a couple of fairly popular games (Bob's Big Adventure and Dragon Destiny), before discovering Dark Age of Camelot.

Real life got in the way though so I only played for a few months.  I got WoW about a month after launch, played the hell out of it - I was one of the top raiding priests on my server in classic WoW, switched to shaman with TBC, got to Black Temple, then realized I wasn't having fun anymore (for a number of reasons I won't go into here since they're not relevant to the topic), so I quit, deleted my characters, and now I play Eve (which I'd been playing already in my later days in WoW).

Now my characters in Eve are about 18 months old, I'm still having fun, I like the format of Eve so I'm pretty sure I'll hang around for a long time yet.  I think I'll pick up Aion when it comes out though (will still play Eve though, it's pretty light on time requirements to stay competitive) - looks like a good old-school type of MMO with pretty graphics.  Call me old (I'll be 30 in a month) but I think the older MMOs really were better - the new ones just seem... too casual / shallow / whatever you want to call it to me.

Runescape is my first lol.....But after I have grown up, I think it suck so much. The graphics are crappy, game is stupid... So I tried many mmorpg, and I find Cabal Online, its the best I have played.

Asheron's call 1, that game was so kickass!

My first mmo was some free to play asian grinder, so it was never my favorite ;p

Planetside was the 4th mmo I have played, and it was probably the one I most enjoyed, untill it went arse end up(damn SoE and their shitty expansions and 'improvements')

To be honest no mmo would even come in the top 10 games I have played, hoping that will change at some point.

Originally posted by gatheris

Originally posted by gostly

I see a lot of people saying pre-cu or pre-nge SWG...do some googling and you'll find out they've been working on a pre-cu SWG for a while now and i think a lot of people would be interested in playing it...ive already got it installed and have been on it...i cant wait til they get done, i want my creature handler back so bad!

 

how about you just tell us without the googling

He probably can't because its probably a pirated server which MMORPG.COM rightfully frowns upon.

Thanks for the votes and posts, guys. Some very interesting points. It's nice to have a thread where people can be united by their love for MMORPGs and discuss the genre without descending into a flame-fest.

I wonder if the people who are making their foray into the genre today will look back on current games with such nostalgia? The cynic in me says no. I get the impression that these pioneering games had a certain magic to them that will never quite be matched.

Games like UO, EQ1 and SWG were at the cutting edge of MMORPGs in their day, and had communities that knew they were at the forefront of something special. The market has changed now, and has finally acquired the mass appeal it coveted. The days of MMORPGs being niche are over. This is having an effect on how companies design their games, and is probably the reason many posters here haven't found a game to succeed their first love.

My first was Earth and Beyond and I had a blast playing it. After EA shut it down, I tried Eve for a very short time and this game was not for me. Off to SWG and I was back in heaven. Then CU and NGE. Guess I got spoiled, cause now every game I try, just don’t match up with E&B and Pre NGE SWG. And I think I tried just about every game out there.

My first was Siera's The Realm Online and I am glad that MMOs have gotten a lot better since those days.