[froma]

This is a subject that has come up, inadvertently, in a dozen other threads. Yet it has never been discussed directly. What is your history with gaming? It would be interesting to see how we all converged to waiting for Vanguard.

I picked up my first video game when I was three years old; my parents were foolish enough to buy me a Game Boy. I haven’t stopped gaming since. Growing up, I went through most of the consoles. I had a NES, SNES, Genesis, etc. I even played a couple games on my Macintosh Performa. I always liked role-playing games, but strategy and shooters were consistently in close competition. Needless to say, for many years, I went from console to console; Blockbuster was my best friend.

This all changed at the age of 12, when I discovered the world of Norrath. It was the first game that I had ever regularly played online and I was instantly hooked to the idea of gaming with so many people at once. I played EverQuest for about three years. My rogue was leveled to 60 in that time and I was having fun banging my head against all of the end game content I could get my hands on. At the rate that expansions were being released, I was never without anything to do. After enough expansions, however, I feel the game really imploded; it had just become too big. What I had enjoyed most about EverQuest was the sense of community. I spent a year or two looking for a new online home, but nothing had the same feel as EverQuest.

After uneventful stints with PlanetSide and Star Wars Galaxies, I settled down with a shooter called Tactical Operations. It was a mod for the original Unreal Tournament engine… the “Counter Strike of UT.” The community I joined was a ladder for North American players. It was completely different than the MMORPG crowd. It was fiercely competitive, full of “pwnz0rs” and “noobsauces.” I found it strangely entertaining. Following a short, but rather successful, run on that game, I returned to MMORPGs. City of Heroes would be my next conquest. I thought that this would be the perfect game for me. I had been a fan of comic books since I could remember. What could be better than a super hero MMO? After playing the game, I can tell you: anything. CoH was a great concept but it was walking a tightrope from the start. Without any actual licensing, the game had to make sure that it was not violating any copyright laws while still providing “traditional” superhero concepts (claws, capes, lasers and the like). I found that the game lacked the longevity of other MMOs because of this.

My next major stop was World of Warcraft. For a while it seemed like the new EQ. It had solid graphics, great game play and a huge following. The only real problem with this game was the fact that it wasn’t very challenging to any massively multiplayer online role-playing game veteran. This ended up being WoW’s ultimate downfall. I have seen many people leave the game with feelings similar to mine. Once I quit playing WoW, my search for a good game continued.

So here I am. Trolling forums and waiting for Vanguard. How did everyone else get here?