Asheron's Call 1.  The world was freaking huge and ready to be explored.  I met a lot of great people in that game.  I remember testing different spell component combinations to try to learn new spells and the excitement of going red at the altars.  I'm sure the fact that it was my first MMO has a lot to do with it, but I've never experienced gameplay like that since.

EQOA, it was my first MMO.  What made me feel like a part of the world was the seamlessness of the game.  There was VERY little zoning and really no instancing.  THe game world varied tremendously, as a Barbarian I came from the snowy lands of Halas, Trolls came from the swamps of Grobb, and so on.  You could literally run from the top of the game world to the bottom non-stop and it would take to several hours to do.  The raid zones were complex, the bosses were worthy oppenents. 

Time to kill the dragon. Good times! 

DAOC was the first game I experienced it in, (loved my Minstrel so much I considered learning to play an instrument in real life) and right now EVE draws me into its world in a major way.

DAoC the day the servers went live, running around Gotar with my Kobold Skald. I literally transcended to another dimension that day.

UFO: Enemy Unknown... that was about 20 years ago... it's the only game I've ever played that I didn't notice the time passing by...

WoW for me too. When i first started it

Stellar Lifeline on the TRS-80 Color Computer 2 when I was twelve. I remember that I was playing with the shitty keyboard controls because I hadn't gotten joysticks yet. I was on a major roll until my ship hit an asteroid and I remember whispering no and hearing it echo in my head.

Here's a screenshot (of the game, not the game I was playing... obviously):

I was also drawn in a number of times by Dungeons of Daggorath on the same system. It didn't really have hit points or stats, like modern RPGs. Instead, you had a heartbeat and if got too fast, you were dead. Add on the fact that you could hear nearby mobs that you couldn't yet see and the effect of the audio was really immersive, even at this primative level.

Here's a screenshot:

I understand that Alternate Reality: The City on the Commodore 64 used sound in a similar manner as well....

First time for me was probably playing Wizardry on my apple when I was a wee tyke. I had such an incredible imagination back then. Zork was another game that  I felt like I could see everything right before me.

Last time for me was SWG before they  added jedi and all that wierd  stuff ( not really sure what to call it since I left before they implemented it).

I doubt I will ever get that feeling again since I am now very jaded when it comes to online gaming and my imagination went on vacation many many years ago never to return.

Dark Age of Camelot wins hands down. The first time I logged in as a Highlander Mercenary and ran around just north of Camelot. I seriously played for days straight, skipped class and only left to use the bathroom. I think I even ate in front of the computer.

After that, SWG came close and so did WOW when I first started.

Recently, WAR felt that way for a little bit. By the time, I got to the first RVR lake and started dealing with queuing and instances and all that, the feeling was destroyed but before that, I loved the setting and feeling of the game.

Too bad Mythic decided to make a game and not a world. Even sadder that they seemed to learn nothing from DAOC and apply it to WAR.

EDIT: Even sadder than that, LOTRO feels nothing like a world and I have never felt like I was part of the world either. You would think with Middle Earth, it could be the best setting to make you feel like you are part of the world. But for me its nothing like that.

UO, there were so many things to do I never felt like grinding or pushing my character to max levels ... that came naturally with normal enjoyable game play.  There was no end game pve raiding which required planning and bickering over who got what uber gear, my small guild of close friends end game was looking for pk groups to fight against ... or battles with the guilds we were at war with.  Good times! :)

Only other two games that come close to this feel:

-StarWars G, lots of freedom to play your character as you wished, game play was very enjoyable. 

- Ryzom,  their game world is brilliant, immersive and complicated at the same time, very fun game but low population sometimes makes it difficult to enjoy the many sides it has to offer.

Huge guilds needed for big end game raiding groups with purple in their eyes ruin most mmorpg games for me.  It makes me stop enjoying a game when it feels like a second job to stay competitive.  

This is actually a very interesting thread come to think of it, because out of all the mmorpg's I've played only 3 really made me feel like I was there, and only when I first started playing them. Now they feel like every other game I play. Also, some of the games I played at first were fun but they didn't have this feeling.

Games that made me feel like I was there.

1. Star Wars Galaxies, until I started seeing people afk macroing the entertainer professions.

2. FFXI - my second MMO, I can't seem to recapture the feel again that I had the first few months I played this game. I like the game, but I think it is too old now for me to keep the feeling.

3. WoW - Funny enough this game really sucked me in for the first 2 years. Every since I hit endgame it went downhill. Hence why I think ENDGAMES ruin mmo's. Or at least in their current state.

That's about it. I've enjoyed playing in EQ2, LOTRO, WAR, AoC and other games but none of them REALLY captured me and sucked me in the same way as my first 3 MMOs.

Another interesting thing to come from this thread, is that it seems I am actually constantly looking for this very feeling in every mmo I play, and is probably why alot of them don't deliver and just aren't considered that good by me anymore. Games like Aion and Chronicles of Spellborn, these games almost make me HATE them they bore me so much.

Wizardry V