It was the year 2001. I had just gotten a new "gaming" PC, which is to say I finally bought a computer with a dedicated graphics card and not some onboard chip that could barely handle solitaire. I had almost no knowledge of PC gaming outside of the slew of BioWare CRPGs, which I love to this day and are irreplaceable in my memory. I went to a GameStop, in a mall, and saw on the clearance shelf a game called Dark Age of Camelot. I had always loved Arthurian lore and things related to it, and playing online with other people seemed novel at the time. We had also moved in an apartment with actual cable internet.

When I installed that game, and heard that fateful loading screen music, the signature trumpet that would herald me opening DAoC for the next three or four years, I had no idea what I was in store for. To say I was addicted to the game is kind of an understatement. I lost girlfriends over this game. I came close to failing college courses because I couldn't get myself away from it long enough to do projects and homework. A twelve hour day in DAoC was a day well spent.

I had never played anything quite like DAoC. Everquest was the only other MMORPG I'd heard of at the time, and it didn't look very interesting. I had never played ANY game with other people over an internet connection, but I had spent the better part of five years chatting with people in forums and messenger, and now I could do it in a video game. A friend from some Baldur's Gate forum I was in let me join his guild, and I can still remember some of the people I met in that group, to this day. I couldn't tell you what it was that hooked me so hard, but my story is as common as anyone else's. The first MMO has a tendency to be the most addicting, the one you love and remember the longest. I suppose FortNite is a close comparison for today's youth.

There were a few things that made the game stand out. The player versus player stuff was new to me, and while I hate competitive gaming these days, the realm versus realm aspect, controlling territories, open field combat, and even the stealth ganking, all combined to give me something I'd never known I wanted. But even the PvE felt revolutionary. I can remember the first time I went to Dartmoor and fought Golestandt, a very pixelated dragon that not only wiped out hundreds of people with cheesy looking fire, but also lagged out my game hard enough that I had to turn the camera towards the floor in order to stay logged in. Relic raids, massive group efforts to steal one of the realm's relics from one of the other two realms, were also huge lag fests, but some of the funnest gaming moments I'd ever had. This was a time when there was no voice communication. You shouted text in chat in the hopes that someone would follow your orders. It was broken and stupid and messy and so much damn fun.

Eventually, as with all MMOs, I'd drift away to something else. When World of Warcraft came out, it had just enough different about it, and looked way better, that I migrated there and didn't go back to Camelot much. I recently, within the last year, downloaded the Phoenix instance of the game, which is a free way to play though without my old account which I assume has been lost to the sands of time. There was something novel about visiting the old areas, but it's a hard game to play these days, even with a lot of server boosts and hacks to make it feel more modern. 20 years ago the only way to level was to kill monsters in the open fields for experience. That is absolutely bonkers to think about doing now.

I'll never forget my time with this game though. Virt Songweaver was my name, Minstrel of the 50th Level in the Realm of Albion. God I was a nerd.