I too am going to pick Everquest. There was something magical about that game. Brutal, frustrating but yet so rewarding. Loved my Enchanter and Thief and the names I picked for them continue to all mages and thieves in all other games.
Moo1 is a damn good choice. Such a simple design, so clean.
I gotta go with MULE, I know it is dated now, but between my 6 buds that I used to play with, nothing gave more “gathering” time. Most other games were solo or on-line.
If it were a series, then CIV, but as a game gotta go with MULE.
My son gave me Super Mario World when I asked him.
It’s pretty much the same as me hiking to the top of Half Dome and staying up there a few nights. It was amazing, but not sure I could do it again, but very glad I did. EQ at release, and for the first 6 months or so, was just brutally hard and I loved it lol.
It’s one of those things about gaming, players say they hate a bunch of things that actually ultimately make games more memorable and engaging. I get why people don’t like a lot of this stuff, but there is this weird balance where you are cutting off your nose to spite your face.
I never loved corpse rot. I think it was horrible mechanic that punished people with responsibilities. I would not go back to vanilla EQ for anything.
I do think the penalty for death should be challenging enough so people don’t just suicide off cliffs rather than walk the path and god don’t get me started with the rangers and hybrids sucking up all the XP… and you put one point in this other attribute so now you’re ruined at level 50 or whatever it is vanilla EQ wasn’t just brutal, it was unfair… but during the days before wikia and phones and heavy social media… a lot of people still on modem, it wasn’t just the game itself, which as magically and not streamed or record so a lot of what you saw early on was new for everyone, it was also like opening the door to the gaming world. You could play with people you didn’t know, from different countries, different sexes and different ideas all through typing and realizing you’re constantly playing at the same time as they are… then there were guilds and planning and despite the bickering, one guild has a total wipeout, theyr’e the biggest on the server, everyone knows who they are, and suddenly a couple of tiny guild and just random people in the area are getting together to try and save them. We had a Norwegian guild and a Japanese guild on our server, if I recall correctly, despite the language barrier, they were also part of rotations and helped with wipe-outs and big raids.
but corpse rot… no. punishing other players for having specific classes in their group, also no. You might as well just put a target on their back.
Probably original XCom.
Last five years is Subnautica - play it if you haven’t.
Yeah I think you hit on a key point for me. A lot of what made the game great is when it came out and how people approached the game. It felt to me that people played more “seriously” as in there was far less trolling and dare I say the general IQ of the population was much higher.
I played on the pvp server - and it was nothing like today’s pvp mmorpgs. Random PVP was rare at high level, it almost always involved some sort of guild politics or history. At that time it was all so interesting and new.
It’s been close to 20 years and I still remember so much of it.
I feel the same way about my first MMO, Asheron’s Call.
My first MMO was the arguably terrible Clan Lord, and I even got fond memories of that, compared to any of the other ones I played since. There really was a sense of wonder in that first time, but I guess it’s something we may have felt as a whole toward the internet.
My first taste of an MMO might have been Neverwinter Nights (AOL) and then Gemstone. I didn’t pick those because the lasting impression was as big but the text games were quite impressive for some time. I think Gemstone is still around.
If I had to pick just one, it would be Skyrim on PC with mods.
That’s interesting, because I played a couple of MUDs (on Minitel, har har!) before, but they didn’t leave me the strong impression my first “internet MMO” did. So much I had forgotten about them until @Nesrie mentionned text games just now. I think I may have doubted there were really other people playing, for some reason, while I wouldn’t if they were sprite? Not much logic in all this :/
I think my first MMO was Star Trek Online. I can be a late adopter sometimes.
I think I’d have to go with Thief: The Dark Project. I love The Metal Age but I much preferred the uncertainty of missions and the creepiness of The Dark Project. I was obsessed with Thief through school and it got under my skin and into my head unlike any other game. The lighting, the cutscenes, the sound and music, the unusual world, the gameplay, maps, difficulty levels, story and level design. It all just clicked. I even designed and created a good chunk of a fan mission with a friend before university got in the way and we fell out of touch.
I never did play the Gold missions, and fan missions are still being created today. I’d love to check them out at some point.
I had to think about this…I do have a relatively deep history in playing PC games starting from the mid-80’s. Although apparently not as deep as many of you. A lot of nostalgia and remembering many QT3 nights.
But I’ll take an unpopular stance and say LOTRO. I’ve been playing for 11 years, with a 2-or-so year break in the middle. Actions speak louder than nostalgia. I’m not re-playing Ultimas or Darklands or Gold Box Games.
LOTRO sure has its issues (especially lately), but it’s a huge world that is mainly consistent with the first fantasy universe I became aware of when young other than Chronicles of Narnia. It’s solo-friendly for someone like me who just wants a basically never-ending ongoing story. I don’t need PvMP or raids or whatnot, and I never had to deal with them. I never gave a crap about end-game and I’m still 2 years behind the latest content. That serves me just fine and to the game’s credit it leaves me alone to do that.
I’ve been on a LOTR kick lately (which usually happens when the weather turns cold) and really wish there was a good open world RPG set in Middle Earth, but it seems like LOTRO is my only choice, and it looks like there’s just so much F2P and MMO crap I’d have to put up with that I doubt I would even enjoy it. It’s unbelievable that a world as rich as Tolkien’s has such limited RPG offerings.
Unpopular? :) LOTRO is a fantastic game. I am literally logged in right now, on one of the new Legendary servers. This game has aged really, really well :)
I just ignore it. When you play casually, far behind the curve like I do, I’ve found it’s not needed.