Do you remember when and what was your first experience with online multiplayer gaming?

For me it was Quake back in the summer of 1997. I had a 28.8 kbps modem and the Swedish edition of PC Gamer published an article on how to use "Quakespy" (before it became Gamespy) to find servers and connect to them. Ah, the thrill of the first successful connection and... hmm, no people. Am I really playing online? Let's start over from step one...

Ah, the thrill of the first successful connection and what is that I hear? Shooting and screaming. Not like in the singleplayer game, this sounds different. Are those... people? Wow, this is really happening, I can not believe those guys are ACTUAL guys running and gunning!

In my first evening playing Quake I did not know anything about the game engine with all it's config files and console commands. I was one of many with the name "player" because I didn't know how to change it. I also did not know how to chat with other players until I spent some time on a server with just one other player who kept trying to talk to me. Eventually he caught on and described how "T" opens up the chat interface. He also explained that I have to write my name to change, which I didn't fully understand how. For the next few games I would join a server and the first thing I did was write my name in the chat!

The most memorable thing from those first few nights was how I ended up on a fully packed Deathmatch server where one Canadian gentleman by the name "Bailer" was very talkative. We were both the worst players on the server and decided to team up, ie not shoot each other. This alliance only lasted about an hour until he had to leave, and that is the last I ever heard from him. Somehow this is one of my lasting gaming memories, however small and insignificant.

That QuakeSpy article sounds interesting. It would be cool to see it translated and put on the interwebz. It seems like an interesting timepiece.

(Currently listening: Boards of Canada - Old Tunes Vol. 2)

Quake 1 or tetrinet.

Quake 1 was also my first experience with online multiplayer. It was towards the tail end of 97, and I was also on a 28.8 modem, using QuakeSpy, which incidentally came with a PC gamer CD. I was terrible at the game, but I still found it to be really fun. The console commands +mlook & sv_aim were already known to me though, so I could actually use my mouse for aiming.

Worlds Away on Compuserve probably, which was a fun little MMO back in the day.
After that Diablo I guess, where the second I went online some guy approached me and dropped some kind of ludicrously overpowered item in front of me and told me to take it.
I told him I'd rather play the game and earn my equipment upon which he instakilled me.. resurrected me.. instakilled me.. resurrected me.. and so on for something like fifty times.

My first multiplayer experience was..... on gamespy playing starcraft:) I had a 56k connection and a really outdated pc for its time but I had a blast! That's when I learned that turtling only really works in campaign mode with the computers AI:)


Side note:
I still turtle:D

dota and wow on ps. my 1st actually ro, but back then i'm not quite hook up only try it for couple of times, but these 2 simply addictive

Very first Diablo game.

Most notable ones for me, in chronological order : Yahoo pool.. Conquer Online.. World of Warcraft.. Warframe.. Best memories from WoW over them all.

I was drunk, I was curious, and I.....wait.....you mean gaming.

Ooops.

I'm still a virgin!

(That will probably bet taken the wrong way following tinyE's post, but anyway...)

Surprised no one else has mentioned this, but my first online game was Everquest (the original) I had read a review on it in one of the gaming magazines that really got me psyched up so I ran right out and bought the Kunark expansion (which had just come out that week)

I decided to be a Troll warrior as a first class, thinking that they were pretty tough and harder to kill, so a good 'learning" class/race.

I made my toon then hit the button to join the Fennin Ro server. It was really exciting and I found myself in an underground tavern. There were only a couple people standing around, so I ran up to one and started asking him questions like a little child asks his parents. i was starting to get annoyed after a few minutes though when this guy just kept saying nothing... then it hit me... He was an NPC.
It took a while to find my way out of the town (it's a cave) and to encounter a REAL person! this guy was an experienced veteran too! He was level 12! After he finally taught me how to /whisper and a few tricks, he presented me with a set of Leather armor and a worn sword! It was infinitely better than the rags I had started with, and allowed me to "OWN" the nearby snakes and rats...

The next day I couldn't wait to get home from work, I called all my friends and virtually demanded that they buy it NOW and get into this whole new type of gaming. Most of them did, and we had a great time for the next few years, at least until the planes went live... that kind of ruined it for the smaller guilds and casual players.

Since i had played Dark Age of Camelot, diablo, City of Heroes, LoTRO, Champions Online, and the biggie WoW (from beta to Cata)
Currently in a bit of a void with them though as I haven't found anything that really draws my interest, or can maintain it. I was looking forward to the Elder Scrolls online, but a few people I know got into that beta and said it was terrible.

I feel for all you people who have only gotten around to try playing online in the past five years. I bet all you have seen are a bunch of people killing you over and over without saying a word, except for that one guy who complains you're too easy to kill (and how easy your mother is to bed and heil hitler etc etc).

It wasn't always like that. Online gaming wasn't mainstream entertainment for dudebros and 12 year olds borrowing their mothers' credit cards until the latter half of the 00's.

No, douches have always been around.
They were around in BBS days, MUD days and early online days such as in Ultima Online.
The anonymity makes us all more daring.

Yep. It was a MUD in the early 90s. We had a deal with one of the librarians at our university - she would lock us in for the night, and we had the terminals (with network access) for ourselves. No one of us had network access home, even modems aren't an option when you're living on a campus with a single phone socket for 13 apartments.

For people who are too young to know what MUDs are, think about a multiplayer text adventure. For people who don't know what text adventures are, go buy the Zork trilogy, GOG sells it. ;)

I remember trying to expand the world a bit, but ultimately the technology was too clunky for what I had in mind. I also remember choosing a very similar name to someone else in the MUD, because I had no idea that features like "global chat" or "whispers" existed. People confused the two of us all the time, and the other person really hated me at the end.

Years later, it was weird to see multiplayer gaming taken over by shooters. Just running around and shooting each other seemed so boring compared to playing and creating stories in a living online world.