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[rawr359]

What is your best story to tell about your experience playing an online game? In other words, what was your favorite moment you've had playing a game with other people?

Question stolen from reddit. I figure you guys will have some good answers.

In case you don't understand my question (I get the feeling that I'm not very clear), here are some examples of answers.

Spoiler: First example story (click to show/hide)

"I can almost promise that I'll be the only one to mention this game here, but The Matrix Online. (crickets)

My friend and I beta tested and eventually played it for a couple months before getting too bored to even try. That game had a few fun mechanics to it but it just wasn't good in the long run, combat was shit. Anyway, we were doing a mission where you go to a very high floor in a skyscraper and download information from a terminal, then leave the building again. We fought our way to the top, really easy low level stuff, got to the terminal and started the download process. When that finished, as soon as we left that room, there was some random npc just standing there. We were staring at it in a "wtf" manner when it started twitching and freaking out, then it turned into an agent. We had never seen an agent before, ever. we were level 15, this thing was level 99. We started hauling ass with more effort than I've ever put into a video game, and he was actually chasing us the whole way. That was my favorite moment.

TL;DR: My first encounter with a top-level agent in The Matrix Online, surprised/scared the crap outta me. good times."

Spoiler: Second example story (click to show/hide)

My favorite happened to just happen yesterday actually. Playing battlefield bad company 2, I was having a shitty match on the harvest day map, and my team was getting a serious schalacking.

The other team had acquired two tanks and were pounding my team, so I respawned at the base, picked the recon class and loaded up a four wheeler with 3 c4 packs. Suddenly, a wild team mate appears, and throws me down an ammo pack. I loaded up the 4 wheeler several times and hoped on.

I blazed across the map and to my delight, I see both tanks sitting side by side in the field getting ready to take the radio tower base. I flew up and jumped off the four wheeler and let it coast right in between the tanks and hit the c4 button.

I blew up 2 tanks, killed 6 people in the process, and had the most awesome "holy shit!!" Moment I had ever had playing that game. We still lost, but it was worth it just for that moment.

Umiman's story here is a good example too: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=2699.msg44661

[Levi]

All my best moments were from the early days of TF2 whenever I did something completely insane that should not have worked (kill 8 people on the cart with an equalizer and then push it to victory).

I tend to prefer single player games though.

[rawr359]

Single player game moments would probably fit in the "How did you last *own*?" thread, if you've got some that you'd like to share. You can post them here too, I won't be that stingy.

[Frumple]

Infantry. I learned to type with relatively coherent sentences in short time spans. It also basically ended up teaching me how to spell and was the major cause of me passing most of my middle school english classes.

All of that had absolutely nothing to do with the gameplay or community. The first, well, that was just awesome -- to date, still one of the best top-down multiplayer games (especially re: its engine) I've ever played. Viciously large and chaotic team-based CTF/group combat, with multiple "zones", many of which were games unto themselves -- completely different playing style, graphics, everything. Can't really sum up what my favorite moments, were, though. Most of it can be summed up with 'grenade machinegun', 'grand tank auto X4', and bunkerbusters, which were rockets that shot through walls. Also 'moonwalking through combined enemy forces' fire, stealing their flag, and getting out alive'. That was a good day. Using a tractor beam to drag a tank halfway across the map via mod-spawned UFO was pretty nice, too. Zombie Zone, Combined Arms, Fleet... lot of incredible stuff happened. Even though I still play occasionally via SOE (it's free, and peak still tends to get a few dozen folks), damn Sony to all the hells for nixing what th'FreeInf folks were doing to the engine. LUA support, man, LUA support.

Community was one of the most gleefully self-antagonistic things I've ever had the pleasure of seeing. Think a lot of fairly intelligent people cheerfully tearing each other apart as a matter of course, then ending up on the same team the next round and happily turning on whoever was their former teammates. The raw hate of many of the people playing, and the speed at which that hate would switch targets, was, and still is, oddly soothing. Inf players as a general rule hated everyone not on their team currently, even if they were allies ten seconds ago. A strangle egalitarian and welcoming hatred. "You are one of us," the unending torrent of hate chat said to me, "You phallus-sucking whore monger^* good fellow, you."

^*Note: Usually said much more crudely.

Anyway, not a single story or anything. My years playing inf as a whole was my best online gaming experience, not any single moment thereof. Lot of great ones, there, but it's a holistic thing, yanno'?

[Starver]

Discworld Mud.  Many, many good things to say about it[1], but the out-of-context chatter on the night of the Eurovision Song Contest (with so many competing nationalities online, plus the only half-comprehending reactions from all the people from around the world who aren't being directly broadcast the event) is probably my absolute favourite interaction, if more a community matter than the game itself.


[1] In a sort of "The pictures are better on radio" manner, I prefer textual MUDs to anything more WOW-like.  So much "You had to be there" stuff, as well, however.  It's easy enough to tell you things like "the Yetis kept attacking, and they kept sinking to the bottom of the river, as I half swam and half hiked closer and closer to the Hub", but it'd take a lot more explanation to put it in context.

[Astral]

[1] In a sort of "The pictures are better on radio" manner, I prefer textual MUDs to anything more WOW-like.  So much "You had to be there" stuff, as well, however.  It's easy enough to tell you things like "the Yetis kept attacking, and they kept sinking to the bottom of the river, as I half swam and half hiked closer and closer to the Hub", but it'd take a lot more explanation to put it in context.

This, but with HellHATEMOO. The kinds of things that can go on in that game, whether player or admin instigated, are amazingly hilarious at times. Not limited by the "have to spend two months making a model, animations and glowy sparkles just to make this work" thing either.

In terms of other games... TF2 is really the only shooter that I've played. Making friends and enemies (sometimes with the same people) as you blast them in Arena is lots of fun. Similarly, Warcraft 3 in its glory days was a huge timesink with custom maps, and Starcraft before that. While the communities left something to be desired, the Battle.net model made it pure, unadulterated awesome.

[alexwazer]

Single player game moments would probably fit in the "How did you last *own*?" thread, if you've got some that you'd like to share.

Since when does "best experience" = "owning"? Especially on B12 forum

The only online game I played enough to really have memorable moments from it is Final Fantasy XI. Most of my "best experience" would fit better in the "How did you last die thread?" however For some reasons, this is about the only game, besides DF, in which losing was fun... to me anyway.


My best experience wasn't really anything special. I went with a group a friends to Castle Oztroja to get a coffer key for someone who needed one, we met with other parties on the way who also needed something. Since we were looking for different drops, there was no reasons not to fight together so we did that. Everything went relatively smoothly for about an hour before one of the other parties got what they came for, but they stayed longer to help. After a while, some people had to go. We went from 13 players to 11 and then to 9. This wasn't a grindy exp party, so everyone came with whatever job (class for WoW and other clones readers) they had/wanted. It was far from efficient, but that was part of the fun: no preplanned fights or strategy, no routine, erratic yet adaptative combat, fighting 2, 3 or 7 enemies in a garbled melee mess, with healing/support jobs casting left and right, up and down; healing someone in the other party, silencing the enemy mage, buffing self, debuffing another enemy, etc. Many people frowned at the interface of FFXI because it was made for console, but personnally, I've never felt so much at home using these controls. So that kind of mess was what I really enjoyed.

Anyway, eventually more people left leaving only 7 players. Still more than enough to fight anything in the area, but not quite enough to continue the messy way. My group eventually got a key, so I escorted whoever it was that needed the coffer until we found one. We decided to keep going to help the last party who still needed... something. The group who stayed behind while we were getting the coffer almost got their asses kicked so they retreated in a safe area. On our way back, the one I was escorting let his invisibility drop without warning me, so we ended up with a small train of angry birds following us. Fun (with a capital F) also followed us. We spent the next 15 minutes trying not to die (or die again in some case). We failed. Failling was so fun that we went back 2 days later to help someone else

This specific moment really was nothing special in FFXI: we weren't hunting Gods or doing end-game stuff (although those are/were actually commonplace); we weren't doing anything that hadn't been done countless times before and after. However, most of the people involved had no personnal interest besides helping friends, everyone had fun worth 2 months of subscription and even death couldn't break this overall enjoyable experience.

[Toaster]

I have many fond memories of Tribes RPG mod. 

In one game (a modded version of the mod), a buddy and I tag teamed this annoying guy and killed him.  We took his loot, and built a series of cabinets over where it was spelling out "OWNED" from high in the sky.

Spoiler: Picture (click to show/hide)

Another character stealing a rare expensive sword from one guy and selling it back to him.

The feeling of adrenaline as I dueled one of the hardest enemies in the game face to face- shoving him around to break his concentration on his spell, and running when I heard the SFX of his nastier nukes charging up.

[Lord Snow]

Lineage 2, 2002/3

First of, i started playing in the korean beta. There was a pretty tight knit german community on. I ended up making friends with whom i still talk and play online and have met some of them in person too.
Not only that, but also the koreans there. It was amazing; completly wild from being called dog for talking english to one friendly helpful korean named *koreanname*II, whom i've spent days on figuring out that those were indeed ordinary I's rather than odd korean letters i was unable to find.

At the end of the korean beta, 3 or 4 higher lvl guys, me included, organized a bit of a field trip to Kruma Tower. We all died miserably, under the ironic eyes of koreans who were in there all day.
Hah, the glory of being newb.

[Nilocy]

Planetside. MMOFPS

I'll snazz this up a little.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Day break on Auraxis, my outfit had been fighting on Ishunder for two days straight along with the best the TR empire could offer on this forsaken planet we now call home. The fight had been going terribly, the NC and VS had amounted to an all out fight against the Republic. We maintained cavelock, allow us higher levels of technology on the final techplant that flew our banner on this continant. It was 150 of us forced into one base, defending the walls with everything we had. The constant threat of enemy artillery and aircraft strafing runs at the highest priority.

We had Anti-air Max units on the walls, locked down covering every possible approach angle with streams of flak. The bright morning had turned black from the amount of metal shards in the air. It was a nofly zone, but still enemy aircraft tried to pass our lines. The lucky few galaxy dropships that got through. Inserted cracktroop squads of NC or VS troops into our control center trying to take our technology benefits offline.

Command was convinced the best option was to sit out and wait for the NC and VS to recognise each other as the major threat, but we knew it wouldn't happen. They had us within their grips; push the TR off this continant and its free for the taking. We settled down for the longhaul defense. This relentless battle continued, with a few brave commanders attempting to rally tank platoons to reclaim the lands outside our sphere of influence. Some got close but it was impossible with the VS Magrider tanks patrolling dillegently around our base picking off the strays. In a fullblown tank fight we'd probably have crushed them with our sheer numbers. But in this situation where we were confined to one entrance all they had to do was sit and wait.

The courtyards IFF mined up, with spitfire miniturrets to guard against infiltraitor. We had this base, and we were damned sure we were going to keep it.

It all changed, the VS left the continant to pester our other undefended continants. This other continant they decided to attack was rather hard to establish a foothold, so we sent some of our best men and women to defend it against the unrelenting whored of purple and green.

This however meant that the Ishunder base was now undermanned against the terriflying powerful NC. The base was eventually overrun, we were pushed inside the base, defending the enterances like rabit dogs, unleasing everything we had at them when those doors opened. They had no chance of pushing in without a single coordinated attack. Sadly, that did happen.

They pushed the backdoor with a MAX crash. Large mechanised exosuits designed specifically for the purpose of acting like a wall on legs with gigantic shotguns. Our men at the backdoor shouting over comms for assistance. They were headed for the base generator. That goes offline? You lose power, you lose power no-one can spawn at the base anymore, no-one can change equipment anymore. You HAD to defend the generator or the base was lost.

The sheer number of maxes that came hurtling through the backdoor was just unbelievable. You couldn't field enough firepower so quickly to defend against it it was tht sudden. Straight for the generator they went. Within 20 seconds of "BD has been breached!" the harrowing message flashed up on everyones screens "The generator is under attack!". We were going to lose, after 2 days of defending it, repairing it, being a staging base for all of our amazing, but ultimately unsuccessful attacks it was in the hands of those dirty smurfs.

We retreated to sanctuary. Comm chat was awash with resignations for the night. They had had enough.

My outfit didn't think we did. We quickly rallied our troops for a last minute ditch to retake our base. The airpads spewing out galaxy gunships, galaxy dropships, attack aircraft and bombers. The vehicle pads spewing out our main battle tanks and mobile respawn points a plenty.

We organised it so both air and land would attack at the same time. Normally this works well, but our intel on the base says the NC had prepared for such an occassion. But we had a secret plan.

We tried to get as many Command Rank 5s who had Orbital Strike capabilities to get onto the same voicecomms so we coordinate a massive orbital strike attack on the base. This would hopefully destroy any lingering troops guarding the walls and any mobile spawn points within the base.

Normally one OS is easy enough to dodge. Two, not so much. Thirty-four? You just looked up to the sky in awe at the sight of your coming doom.

It was carefully timed to allow our air transports to insert their troops onto of the base after the orbital strikes had landed. We cleared the mines for the ground vehicles to get in, shut down the enterances and hold off the enemy forces at the local tower. AMSes (the mobile spawn points) deployed. We started the slow but sure progress into the extremely well defended but cut off Control Center.

The fight was tough, gruelling but we came out of it the victors.

We actually lost that continant in the end, the VS came back and raped up from behind. But we had taken back a base before it could swap hands to the dirty NC.

- Nilocy, TR BR24 CR5.

A little dramaticised, but this is what Planetside is like on a daily basis.