I don't know why people hated IX so much, I loved it. Maybe it was because it wasn't VII or VIII, or just because it was too "cartoon" like. Story wise I thought it was great.
Anyhow for mine it has to be Final Fantasy XI (before the Abyssea expansions). The game in its original years was amazing. I made so many friends then that I still have now, and I have memories of events that took place in different parts of the world. The game forced you to bring your A game if you wanted to complete the hardest content. There was no room for sexism in the game like other casual MMO's, if someone could do their job and do it well, it didn't matter race, gender, sexual preference, they were your team mate and you were there to do one thing, play a game, and do it to the best of your ability.
This game shaped my life, sure it did eat a good 10 years of my life, and I don't regret anything.
For those wanting to know about the Abyssea comment above. Square-Enix changed the content to a more "casual" gameplay style with the introduction of those expansions. Endgame was destroyed in one swift blow. You used to have tight groups of 30+ people working towards a few goals and helping everyone else along the way, now the game just become a Me, Me, Me game.
Favourite moment: There used to be a endgame world spawn that would spawn over multiple zones ever 21 hours or so called Dark Ixion. The JP timezone crew (most were AU/EU players) successfully held it in the JP Prime timeslot for 2 months making sure to kill it so that it would respawn in the same time allocation the next night. See the 21 hour respawn was to allow the boss to slowly drift through timezones giving everyone the ability to attempt to slay it. Did I mention that it was just 4 of us doing this, most multi-boxing characters. Other groups at the time would need 18 players to take it down. Fun times :D
I don't know why people hated IX so much, I loved it. Maybe it was because it wasn't VII or VIII, or just because it was too "cartoon" like. Story wise I thought it was great.
Anyhow for mine it has to be Final Fantasy XI (before the Abyssea expansions). The game in its original years was amazing. I made so many friends then that I still have now, and I have memories of events that took place in different parts of the world. The game forced you to bring your A game if you wanted to complete the hardest content. There was no room for sexism in the game like other casual MMO's, if someone could do their job and do it well, it didn't matter race, gender, sexual preference, they were your team mate and you were there to do one thing, play a game, and do it to the best of your ability.
This game shaped my life, sure it did eat a good 10 years of my life, and I don't regret anything.
For those wanting to know about the Abyssea comment above. Square-Enix changed the content to a more "casual" gameplay style with the introduction of those expansions. Endgame was destroyed in one swift blow. You used to have tight groups of 30+ people working towards a few goals and helping everyone else along the way, now the game just become a Me, Me, Me game.
Favourite moment: There used to be a endgame world spawn that would spawn over multiple zones ever 21 hours or so called Dark Ixion. The JP timezone crew (most were AU/EU players) successfully held it in the JP Prime timeslot for 2 months making sure to kill it so that it would respawn in the same time allocation the next night. See the 21 hour respawn was to allow the boss to slowly drift through timezones giving everyone the ability to attempt to slay it. Did I mention that it was just 4 of us doing this, most multi-boxing characters. Other groups at the time would need 18 players to take it down. Fun times :D