FFXI, purposely killed myself to de-level to play with friends 
My first MMO’s were Priston Tale and Knight Online back in 2001.
WoW popularized theme park MMO’s, SWG which was a sandbox mmo was nothing like wow, it contained a lot more griefing and meta gaming. The jedi class unlock and perma death for it was a cool feature, so was the crafting system which had one of the best ever.
I played Runescape for awhile before I came to WoW, that was like mid 2000s. Since then WoW’s been my only MMO though and I’ve never tried any others.
I’m a filthy casual. I’m good with that. I played wow since the end of vanilla mainly because I could play it casually with a lot of friends in college (50+). So to answer your question after 15 years of this game, I have not. But man, I’d be totally down for giving DND or some other MMO a whirl. For the most part I just don’t commit because I want to see something telling me it’ll be evolving/growing in the next 2-3 years
I played Furcadia and Second Life before wow because furry… they share nothing in common with this game though, you make your own stories and build your own worlds. A whole different branch of the MMO family tree (I only tried WoW because my tiger boyfriend was way into it back in BC… but he stopped playing in Wrath and calls me a nerd for not moving on)
I pvp on WoW and can confirm I didn’t last a day pvping in UO lol
Though in my defence I played on the Formosa server with 500 ms
I did not… but I know that WoW was made to appeal to casuals and bads. So if the dev team wants to get back to those roots they can go ahead and remove Heroic and Mythic modes from everything.
My PC gaming experience came from Diablo 2 on Hardcore Classic and lots of LAN Starcraft nights… so Blizzard of old had my trust and respect. When the hardcore character finally died… I knew it was time to move on and that Warcraft 3 game got some big open world RPG to play around in, might as well go there.
Started playing MMO’s on AOL’s Neverwinter Nights.
From there I beta tested and moved to server 107 on Meridian 59 (Still running on steam)
Made the transition to everquest, where a rare spawn was just that, RARE, and Raiding was RAIDING. a hundred players trying to take down a boss, and it was a CHALLANGE. And if you wiped, there was no re try, because the guild behind you was waiting as well, and the boss only ever spawned once a week.
Then went to UO and messed around a bit, Helped build one of the biggest guilds in SWG, and finally found wow.
Before WoW I played DAoC and SWG the most but also played a little FFXI, EQ, and UO.
I played Final Fantasy XI. It’s where I learned to love online games and hate grouping.
Vanilla WoW was a casual paradise by comparison and continues to provide a decent solo gaming experience for those with reasonable expectations.
UO and SWG
People that thought classic was punishing simply didn’t play MMO’s prior… Classic IS, in its own way, pretty tough compared to what we have now, but older MMO’s were simply a different animal altogether.
To give you an idea, in Asheron’s Call:
Death Penalty: Your corpse exists for 5 minutes per level you are, and retains several of your most expensive items (this was typically your armor or weapons). You were also penalized a ‘vitae’, similar to rez sickness in WoW, but it could be worked off quickly by killing mobs.
So not only did you have to go fetch your body… there was no marker on your minimap for where it was. Oh, and these penalties stacked…so if you died on the way to your first corpse, you now had 2 to fetch, and had even less armor to help you out. (this sounds draconian, but it was amazing)
Gear: everything was free tradable, there was no such thing as binding of armor or weapons. There was also no trade window, so me giving you a piece of armor meant placing it on the ground for you (or any scammer walking by) to pick up.
Banks - didnt’ exist. You created an alt mule, parked him next to some tree out in the woods, drop all your stuff, log off, log on as your mule, and pick it up, and hope no one followed you. Both this and the gear thing made who you know in game, and who you trust, very important.
There are a ton more details, how classes were completely freeform, and you could mix / match whatever ‘specs’ you liked based on points you’d acquire while you leveled.
The game was incredibly open, with not a whole lot of quests per se and absolutely zero gating, but plenty of ways for players to impact the gameplay of others for better or worse. It really was fun as hell to be part of, and wouldn’t fly at all as a title in the modern era unfortunately.
Anyhow, where was I…
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So whether or not it was actually considered an MMO, my first was Lego Universe. I was an engineer eheh.
Then Wildstar, but unfortunately younger me didn’t have the patience for MMOs until I got to high-school and my bestie introduced me to WoW.
Instead of farming PvE content you would be farming PvE players 
Yes.
Runescape 2005-2010
Lineage 2 2005-2008
Perfect world international 2008-2011
Tera online 2012-2012
Guild Wars 2 2014-2018
World of Warcraft -2016-Today
I feel it is also worth mentioning that with classic wow, leveling truly did take a long time to do, and even longer in the original release back in 2004. The thing is, there is always a best in mmo’s. I feel like if anyone wants to get those levels up in classic wow, just do what you can to communicate and guild group and chain spam dungeons. Dungeon farming is the fastest way to level in classic wow, but unlike current, it is less automated and stuff. You have to manually set the groups up.
This gives it a different dynamic, on top of having to walk to the dungeons you want to do. I feel this makes the game feel more alive and you feel more connected, which is why i try to at least discover instance portals as i am leveling up in retail. You never really know what you might find.
The leveling in classic wow to me reminds me of life based games of the 80’s and early 90’s. It completely hides the depth of the game, and makes it feel alot larger than it actually is. The original legend of zelda is actually a pretty small game if you look everything that is hidden up on the internet once you figure everything out. Or super mario bros or something of the like. The more knowledge you have, the faster and better the game goes.
Classic wow had all the min maxxers and the people who had perfected the heck out of the best optimal strats for everything. This makes it fun for some people, but for others it was not as fun. Some people just like knowing so they can level really fast, and were willing to get into classic wow, but hate leveling. It is a niche. It is pretty much the main part of the game you will be experiencing. Some people do not like this, and also don’t like the methods for leveling fast, or don’t think it moves fast enough.
I am one of those peeps with classic wow that, it moves to slowly for me for leveling up, but i am willing to work at it until i get their, and i don’t see classic wow going away any time soon. Less popular and populated as we see new classic wow clients pop up sure, but i think you will always have those communites that prefer some things that classic wow has that other classic wow clients wont have.
Before WOW, I was playing Final Fantasy XI.
Good Lord, people talk about a grind and all I can think is “artifact weapons, make one.”
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My first mmo was Earth and Beyond, a sci-fi mmorpg. That game was way ahead of its time.
Daoc/EQ/UO/AC. Played daoc the longest of them all because I loved that game but that company(Mythic) they were something. They really didn’t care about the players or their input. Despite that it had some of the best pvp I’ve ever seen in a mmo.