This is a fun and simple question that is also remarkably complex to answer, because there are so many different ways to answer it. When did I start playing MMOs? Well, on the one hand I started when I was in college, back in 2003. It would also be fair to say that I started in the earlier generation of MMOs, since I was playing Final Fantasy XI before it was cool (the joke is that it was never cool). Similarly, it’d be accurate to say that I started playing when I was 20.
I could also claim that I started playing in the pre-World of Warcraft era, or before free-to-play dominated the market, or back when “MMO” was synonymous with “MMORPG,” or using a number of different metrics depending on the conversation at hand and the point being made. So it’s a question with a straightforward answer, but also with a remarkably complex one. What about you, readers? When did you start playing MMOs?