My first real MMO was RuneScape back in 2002. Living on an Air Force Base, your friends tend to move away quite a bit, and around the time I entered high school this was starting to happen with more and more frequency. On my street we had a small crew of kids about the same age and we'd play games like Dungeons & Dragons in our garages, or hop in and play massive games of Age of Empires 2 using MSN's gaming service back in the late 90s.
However, one of my friends introduced me to RuneScape, which opened a whole new world for me to explore. I had heard of MMOs before this: one of my friends in my Band class was a massive Ultima Online and EverQuest fan, but unfortunately, I was never able to afford those games. Military families in the United States do not get paid enough for the type of job and sacrifice asked of them, but that's a topic for another article and site. As such, we couldn't afford a monthly subscription to EverQuest, let alone a PC able to run the game back then.
RuneScape was, and still is, free to play, and it scratched such an itch that I didn't know I needed scratching at the time. I had always loved multiplayer games with family and friends - this is the age where my love of fighting games really started to blossom - so stepping in Varrock for the first time and seeing countless other players wandering around, typing in the chat, trading gear and items, and more would bring such a smile to my face.
However, this was also a way for me to "hang out" with friends during the viciously hot Vegas summers, and it was the chief way I stayed in touch with friends as they moved away to new bases across the world.
For me, the most important aspect of an MMO is the "multiplayer" part of the acronym. Social interaction is what I crave from these games, whether it's hopping on with real-life friends to unwind at the end of the day or forging new friendships when I get lucky enough to have a good PUG for once. My most enduring memories of RuneScape, and then eventually the early days of The Lord of the Rings Online, aren't necessarily of the gameplay itself, but rather the time spent with friends on a Teamspeak server or using the in-game VOIP server talking about life while we forged Law Runes or chased down Goblins in the Low Lands.
For me, what got me hooked on the genre wasn't the games themselves, but the people who inhabited them. Every MMO I've played since those early days has been partly to recapture that feeling of community I felt early on. Warhammer Online, Age of Conan, and the countless others I've played were put on my radar partly because I had friends who were switching games, or I was part of a gaming group that picked their "next game." The Elder Scrolls Online was an MMO I started to play thanks to a podcast group I was part of that covered the game (and helped launch my career in the games industry).
For me, the social aspects of MMORPGs have kept me hooked on the genre. Even today, as more and more MMOs cater to single player playstyles, it's still one of the best ways to interact with other people in a game organically. It's that feeling of community that keeps me coming back, and keeps me looking forward to what the genre can still do, even as it morphs into a its more modern, streamlined form we've seen over the last ten years.
What about you, though? What about your first MMO experience has kept you coming back for more? Let us know in the comments below.
