I am really interested in finding out how most of the community heard about their first MMO they ever played. If other, then please describe. Also, do you feel that this was an effective way of getting you to play your first MMO, or did it take some time before you finally purchased/downloaded the game then played it?

Edit: I am also seeing a common response that many were actually hesitant about playing an MMO at first either due to a monthly fee or just because it was "online". I wonder how many others actually shared this experience too. I know I was hesitant about paying a monthly fee for the game till I got hooked. 

I learned about Ultima Online on an IRC channel about RPG or Games, dont remember.

I learned about Star Wars Galaxies back in 2003 in magazine article entitled, "I Wanna Be A Wookiee". If I remember correctly, the magazine was Electronic Gaming Monthly. I've always been a big Chewbacca fan, so after I read that I was so ready to play SWG. Before that I had never heard of a MMORPG before at all and I've been gaming since 1983.

Many years back, a friend of mine use to host Lan parties in his PC shop. And random people would show up, well one guy, kinda kept to himself, didn't play any of the other games people were. He just sat there playing that one game. So I walked over and began watching him, I liked what I saw. Asked him what it was. He said "Star Wars Galaxies", at the time I wouldn't play a game with a monthly fee, I figured it was a rip off. But after watching him for about 30 min or so. I figured I would give it a shot. So I told a friend about it, we both picked it up and got hooked on MMOs.

Originally posted by greed0104

Many years back, a friend of mine use to host Lan parties in his PC shop. And random people would show up, well one guy, kinda kept to himself, didn't play any of the other games people were. He just sat there playing that one game. So I walked over and began watching him, I liked what I saw. Asked him what it was. He said "Star Wars Galaxies", at the time I wouldn't play a game with a monthly fee, I figured it was a rip off. But after watching him for about 30 min or so. I figured I would give it a shot. So I told a friend about it, we both picked it up and got hooked on MMOs.

We have about similar stories, except for different MMOs. Haha. Thanks for sharing!

One of my friends got into the closed beta of Asheron's Call, after seeing it for about 15 minutes at his house I promptly went and signed up on the waiting list!

Originally posted by Rafterman414

One of my friends got into the closed beta of Asheron's Call, after seeing it for about 15 minutes at his house I promptly went and signed up on the waiting list!

Did you ever make it into beta? Haha

I saw several bloggers post about WoW on their sites and how much fun it was. The only two MMOs I had heard about before that were UO and EQ, neither of which appealed to me at the time. Decided to give a WoW a shot and here I am, still having fun with MMOs.

1 word.        GAMESTORM

so yea. I started with one of the origonal online game companies. Kesmai Entertainment.

Before UO and after Meridian 69 & Realm.

Legends of kesmai is still being worked on. Rebuild form the ground up by a group of gamers Called LOKFreedom.

Very nice group been with them for years.  All origonal programming unlike the other first site.

I remember playing Aliens online and Silent death... the last is STILL my favorite game.

With mythic would put it back up since they now own both the game AND the EA servers.

 I heard about FFXI because I was a big Final Fantasy fan and followed everything Square did.

I wasn't going to play it at first because I didn't like the idea of it being online... but I couldn't help myself because it was a Final Fantasy game so I picked it up. 

Needless to say I had no idea it would change my taste in gaming forever as MMOs are almost the only type of genre I will play now.

I saw a babe on the front of an everquest box and decided to buy it back in 00 lol

MMOs ran ramped in my barracks in 2000 UO and Asheron's Call . . . those where the days.
 

After I found out that dragonball z text rpgs were on the internet I tried to find a good one because the first one I found was not very good. In my search there was an odd colored banner at the top of one of the pages with some hobgoblins and or some skeletons about to whack each other...this was runescape....i know, haha, this is where i stayed for four or so years.

DDO is filling my time atm, very nicely i must say, same name as here.

When i was 14 road the bus home from school. I was a skateboarder that hung with the more popular crouds, but not the jocs. I guess you could say i didnt like kids with classes.

There was the nerdy kid that road the same bus home as me. He allway had this folder full of crap and game magazines. One day i asked to use his magazine to kill time. I scaned through the pages, and asked what he played. He said "i play Everquest" He started talking about the game and how it was a massive fantasy world, with thousands of real life people playing. At this point i started to get a funny feeling in my gut. He showed me his folder, it had tons of hand drawn maps and random notes. I talked to this guy everday on my way home and became friends with him. I got Everquest a couple months later and that dude moved away. Let me tell you! that game was not easy to learn, and i would have quit if it wasnt for this crazy ass guy i met ingame, that would take me around and get me killed. I even  ended up with my own folder full of shit =)

Im an undercover nerd now i guess... Alot of my skater homies wouldnt believe that i played these games.

SonikFlash: Booby marketing does work! Just as much as Sanya talking about booby marketing. Haha

Daft: Don't worry, we wont tell anyone your secret. Thanks for sharing. For someone like me, its really interesting to hear background stories.

I forget what mag it was... i think it was the offical Playstation one. I read up on FFXI, before it came out. Me being a big Final Fantasy tool.. i mean fan, i really wanted it. I read up and up on it till it came in the States, and played it forever it seemed on my PS2. SWG would've been my first MMO, but my PC then was a toaster oven hooked up to a old CRT.

The first MMO I actually came across and played was Runscape. I was playing games on miniclip when I clicked on the multiplayer games tab, and came across this fantasy game named Runscape, among others like Puzzle Pirates and Club Penguin (which I also tried later, when I got bored with Runscape). Since I was quite interested in fantasy at that point in time, I clicked on it first, and I ended up sighing up for an account. I never suscribed to it though, since I was only fifteen at that point in time, and I didn't think that my parents would be willing to pay for it for me.

But it did introduce the idea of actually meeting and playing online with other people, and when I heard people talking about Maplestory and saying that it was an MMO, I downloaded it (was old enough to own my own laptop by that time) and never looked back since.

Only me and my cousins (they played WoW) were into these kind of games though... everyone else in my family are extremely suspicious of them for some reason.

I learned about my first MMORPG through a friend at school. He introduced me to Runescape.

I got my start into PC gaming with the original Fallout and Fallout 2 (unless you count a minor experience with Rise of the Triad on direct connect to a buddy of mine, on a 14.4 modem - eons ago).  Beyond that, late '99 boredom landed me in Half-Life.  Loads of TFC fun, followed by CS betas/retails put me into looking for other online FPS.  By '03 I'd been spending loads of time in Battlefield 1942.  I'd gotten a little bored, mostly splitting my gaming time playing with buddies on stunt servers (blasting jeeps across rivers with C4, flying around/over/through stuff, riding airplane wings, making videos etc.) or skinning vehicles.  I was just browsing around one night when I bumped into something regarding Planetside (was either mentioned on a vent/TS server, or forum).  Looked into it, signed up for CB, and a short time later was enjoying that bug-ridden mess more than anything else before it.  By the time PS was rushed into released (a true beta-in-a-box), then screwed their own game with Core Combat, my outfit was fed up and sick of SOE.

Long story short, the majority of us were up for a change, and the timing was incredible.  FFXI had just been released for NA (just looked it up - Oct.28 2003) which almost directly coincided with the release of Core Combat (Oct.27 2003).  Once we saw core combat's effect on the game, and after a lot of us had discussed it quite a bit, a large chunk of our outfit moved to FFXI.

So yeah, first MMO was Planetside, first MMORPG was FFXI.  MMORPG's definitely converted me from shooters.  This past year I've tried some more recent shooters, and they're all garbage that I've seen and tried(I haven't bothered with HL2).  I was spoiled on the likes of HL and its mods, Tribes 1/2, and BF42.  Amazing the steps backward that genre took in favor of instant gratifaction and flashy graphics.

Shiymmas: MMOs definately pulled me from FPS games, but I still enjoy all the fun and hijinks I had in CS, especially with RCON control. HAHA. I llama'd many people.