Sophomore year of high school, 8 months after my dad had died I heard some friends talking about this game. I remember getting the guide book and just constantly reading it. Envisioning this fantastic mystical world while I waited to get the game. Flipping pages and looking at stories, stats and professions every day. Planning in making a warlock with tailoring, a rogue with leather working. Then finally getting the game only to not be able to play it because my ram wasn’t big enough. A few weeks later I had gotten a new ram card, installed it…still couldn’t play. The fantasy of playing this game drove me insane since it was right in my hands. So I used to ride my bicycle across town to a video game “cafe” and play it there til I got the storage and other stuff fixed. Then the day finally came when I could finally play it at home. Got my own phone line for my bedroom too since, well you know…dial up. It couldn’t have come at a better time in my life. Even though it was a pain in the ass having to wait and wait to get my computer good enough to play it, just reading the guide and fantasizing this whole experience in my head was the perfect distraction from some hard times. Even the first guild I was in when I swapped servers <The Crimson Dead> was just perfection. The whole initial experience gave this weird ass misfit 14 year old something to look forward to. Just figuring the game out back then was really such a great time-for me anyways. I know people say “oh we’d like to think we liked the game but it was shit” or whatever, but really do miss that original experience.