What was your first Online gaming experience?

[Misanthropic Monster™]

When I was around 11 or 12 I discovered Ragnarok Online right as the open beta for the US servers closed down so they could get ready for the full launch. I was really hooked by the idea of being able to play a game online with other people live and I was so bummed that I missed out on it. I loved the way the cute anime style graphics looked. I used to lament that I couldn't play so I'd download sprite sheets and make my own character and like put them in screenshots of the game lol. I even used to load up the client program and click play knowing full well it would tell me the servers were down just in case maybe, just maybe, they happened to switch them on to test and I could get in hahaha.

Anyway, when they servers did open back up I immediately got on and was hooked. I played so many hours and would go around town just chatting with random people. It made me so happy to "exist" in a fantasy world where I could chat and make friends and then decide to go out and fight monsters.

I still play Ragnarok Online today!! The game is still super popular and there are lots of private servers going. Usually every spring I'll get the itch (since that's the time of year I discovered it) and I'll boot up the client and log in.

Oh man I used to love RO! I have some really fond memories of playing that game, I think I mained dancer if I remember correctly. I liked being able to switch between support and fighting. I felt like RO was a really underrated game even back in the day as not many people I knew had heard of it or played it.

[Lucera]

When i first got real, unlimited access to the internet i was 14 or 13 years old. It took a good while for this to happen, because at the time ISP services used to be pretty expensive, and Brazil for a long time only had easy access to dial-up internet which was painfully slow.

But anyway, i remember the first online game i've ever played was a mobile game called "Raptor Online RPG", a online RPG (i wouldn't really refer to it as a MMORPG lol) with velociraptors carrying mechanical things on their backs that carry guns. And it had jetpacks too. Lots of jetpacks too... It was nice.

Recently i tried to play the game again, and i found out that it was somewhat dead -- the only servers that had more people were the moderator-owned ones, but the creator also had added ads. I assume this is what killed the game.

Back in the day the game used to be full with players, it was so fun... It saddens me to see how things are going nowadays.

I understand that game devs need and should make money if they want to, but i also can't help but be a bit bummed out about the ads. I've been thinking about trying to archive the game in some way... But that'd be pointless since the game is almost dead nowadays.

[Slix]

When I was very small, probably 8 or so, I joined Neopets. A few years later I was visiting Pokemon websites, like Pokemon Crater (remember that one!?). I also played Runescape for a bit, when I was about 10 or 11 I think. It's really interesting thinking about the old games that worked on super old hardware compared to what is required now, and how responsive they felt back then.

[Emmy02]

My first experience watching someone else game online was seeing my dad play duke nukem/ doom online as a really little kid. My first personal online gaming experience was playing poptropica on the house computer, I also played a lot of toontown.

[mike]

i was really young when i was introduced to the internet, the first ever online game i played was the world of jumpstart! a lot of the memories i have of it are very vague but i very vividly remember spending hours in the green bouncy house and the ant maze. i was young enough that i wanted to stick around other players, i was too scared to be by myself in an empty 3d world. it unfortunately shut down last year i wish i could've played it again to relive old memories.

[DeltaFrost]

While I absolutely LOVE games like ToonTown, Club Penguin, Wizard 101, NeoPets etc. - all of the iconic ones in the responses here, I have to give a special shoutout to the PS2 MMORPGS: particularly EverQuest Online Adventures: Frontiers. My family also played FF11 on the PS2, but I never really took to it as a kid - I think it was too complicated for me.

It's still crazy to me that my first experience with MMOs was through the Playstation 2. As a kid I honestly thought all MMOs were just going to release on console. Obviously, that did not end up happening, and these were some of the only MMOs TO have a big release on console, aside from FF14 also doing so in the future, following after its predecessor.

I distinctly also remember not really understanding the other characters were real players. I didn't really think about that until you guys brought it up in this thread. I did to some extent understand I think, but without really feeling any 'empathy' for the other players unfortunately: what I mean by that is that I used to join people's groups as a 'healer'... and very much just let them die while I ran off doing other things nearby, because I thought they were just characters to run around with.

[SleepyCalaban]

Technically my first online gaming experience was discovering Poptropica on the public library's computer. When I discovered online games my mom let me use her laptop when I was younger to play Poptropica and I soon found Animal Jam after which I feel was my more true first online gaming experience since I didn't understand how seeing other players worked on Poptropica at the time. I loved to role play on Animal Jam a lot and I had made a bunch of friends most of which don't play anymore and gradually disappeared, along with the role play community on there all together. I honestly miss the childhood wonder of it.

[Emmy02]

I did actually find the flash game you're speaking of malice! It's on flashpoint actually but it doesn't actually load into the oatmeal art game you're talking about. It's called Play With Me Sesame! One of the games built into Play With Me Sesame is the oatmeal art game with Bert! It just gets stuck on a loading screen forever.


(Image taken from a random google search.)

No way, I had vague memories of this game, I can't believe you found it!
 

[Audball]

@Emmy02 I'm glad I could bring back some good memories for ya! I love finding things for people. Last time I did that was for a friend trying to find some easter egg cheat code in one of those PlayStation 1 cheat code disc thingies (like action replay or codebreakers if anyone remembers those.) Good times!

[dream]

I played Medal of Honor: Allied Assault @Audball! Also remember ToonTown. I have a lot in common with @Misanthropic Monster™; fond memories of Diablo 2 LOD, Starcraft, and Counter-strike too. Unreal Tournament, Quake, Tribes. Also, @CyberCat2000 reminded me I used to play Yahoo Spades and Yahoo Pool quite a bit. Definitely with you @Nikodile on Warcraft 3 and Runescape. Was right there with you with WoW, @Junebug.

Some of the first games I remember were Cosmic Osmo, Myst, YouRuleSchool, Escape Velocity. But in terms of multiplayer, it likely was Command & Conquer (the original; 'Tiberian Dawn') via GameRanger. An AOL friend and I played together. It was mind-blowing to me that my opponent was a human, not my computer. We both just turtled and hung out, too polite to attack each other. Around the same time was Quake Team Fortress (Quake 1). The realization that each character running around was a real human somewhere in the world was mesmerizing. Was still dial-up in those days. Fun times.