Yea, more of a mud then a mmo but 1st one I played was Island of Kesmai, then UO, then EQ,
…mmmmmm <3 whitewolf rpgs…
yes ffxi at NA release, still my fav mmo , still sub and play today!!
I remember dabbling a bit with EQ, but the two I actually invested time in were Star Wars Galaxies (pre CU) and City of Heroes/Villians. Once SWG died I made the switch to WoW.
DnD is way better than any MMO. Literally once you go in you’ll never want to play RPGs ever again. I found my DnD group over 4 years ago. It’s so much more fun as a game because you’re playing a character.
This has become really important during the pandemic. I miss people, and D&D is one of the ways we regularly bonded. With sites like Roll20, Astral, and Foundry you can play online and it’s almost as good as being around a real table.
MU Online
Ragnarok
Lineage 2
Argentum Online
Knight Online
I never played EQ1, but SWG was my first MMO and then I tried both EQ2 and WoW at around the same time (I forget which I tried first). From what I remember EQ2 and WoW were about equal in terms of difficulty, though for a variety of readings I preferred WoW and haven’t played EQ2 since 2006 or so. SWG was such a different game that it can’t even be compared, at least not until the New Game Experience era anyway.
I played Ragnarok Online on a low rate private server for years, it’s a korean grindfest MMO and at the time it had no quests to level your character, you would grind mobs for hours for a level or two, and there were 99 levels to get, 50 job levels, then you ascended and started all over again with less xp % per mob than you got before, for 99 more levels, and 70 job points.
Painfully the levelling wasn’t the hardest part, killing monsters and getting gear was all nice and good, but you needed slots on that gear so you could slot in monster cards, and ever mob had a card in that game and they all did either very powerful effects, or almost nothing. All cards had a 1% or lower droprate, and you would need boss cards or MvP cards too, which had lower drop rates than normal, and you would usually need more than 1, as almost every piece of gear could be slotted.
But we’re not done, you have your gear and your card, but you could UPGRADE your gear, so +1 +2 etc. But the gear had a chance to break past certain points, so if that shield you farmed for 4 hours last night breaks at +7 when the max is +10, that’s too bad, go get another.
PvP was fun though, and there was a creative mix of builds and playstyles within jobs you could do, it was fantastic for mixing your playstyle up. And you could share your gear between characters so it wasn’t SUPER alt unfriendly.
Does Second Life count? A friend convinced me to hang out with him in SL. I didn’t really see the point and was happy when he took my suggestion to try WoW a couple of months before TBC came out. Is Second Life even still a thing that continues to exist?
EDIT: it’s not strictly relevant to the topic but I’m wondering how EQ handles levelling through all 15million of its expansions in comparison to WoW’s recent levelling changes.
I never had the pleasure of playing EQ, but I remember when Vanilla wow was launched it was advertised as being a way more casual friendly game than EQ ever was.
It was also designed in such a way to reach a lot more mass audience of players because the system required to run the game wasn’t that intense.
When I read about the different Korean MMO’s on the market I am thankful we don’t have grinding to those levels just yet, or the paid shops that accompany them.
I played swtor that was my first mmo march 2012
FFXI upon NA release was my first, then EQ2 and a few others before WoW, and countless others afterward.
I remember coming to Wow early in 2005 after a break from Everquest. My impression of this game and player base was softcore non gamers. Every answer had to be provided before a solution was looked for. It just evolved from there into a larger version of the same thing. I felt the game was cartoonish and silly. Cartoonish games are for Earthworm Jim, not epic fantasy adventures.
My boss just went on about how awesome WoW is, and ill never get to 50. It will take months. He hooked me. I was 50 just shy of 2 weeks without looking at a website or video. He didn’t know what he was talking about just excited about something new. This game has never been hard or hardcore, instead timers and content skipping is the form of intrigue? Right now is the first time I have ever attempted to participate in end game seriously in WoW. Only because I am injured and at home.
Hell levels Example: 1 bub of xp, (1/20 or 1/25)? of a level . Farming Velius spider camp in a zone for 6 hrs = 1 bub.
Prior to WoW, I played FlyFF (my first MMO) and very briefly Rappelz. Since then, I’ve played: WoW, FFXIV (original and ARR), SWTOR, GW2, Tera, Rift, BDO, Aion, ESO, Neverwinter, AoC, Runescape, RO, Wildstar, Warhammer Online and probably a few others that I don’t remember off the top of my head.
The hippies in the 70’s would call that a sell out man.
Yes. I started playing Lineage II during open beta in April 2004, which was my first true MMO.
And yes, it was much more punishing than vanilla WoW.
As far as the original question, no. I have tried other MMO’s apart from WoW such as ESO, FFXIV, and more, but none hold as much interest as WoW does to me at least. No before WoW I was and still am a single player gamer. Have been since 1999, and I only have really “dedicated” myself to an extent to WoW since 2018. WoW is just one of the many journeys I have experienced.
At the time on your on your Pentium two UO was pretty refined.
WoW was the first MMO I played. EQ was the first I heard of. And what I heard of EQ made me go, “Ugh, not for me.”
The reviews of WoW gushing over the ability to solo and reach level 5 in an hour are still out there,