So another thread on another forum got me wondering this question yet again. What's yours?
I first became aware of online gaming with Halo 2, now I didn't ever get to play this online because back then we probably couldn't afford the subscription, or we just generally didn't understand how it worked. I believe we did look in to it but in the end it wasn't achieved. During this time we had older consoles and even an W98 PC. While the PC could access the internet, we usually played offline games, installing from discs and all that good stuff.
I can't fully remember when the journey started and I can't be 100% certain that it planned out this way, although I'm probably 90% sure. The first time I got to experience online gaming was on Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory. This was early in 2005 and we still didn't have a great connection to the internet. I was plagued by the common network error message of the time but I never let it put me off.
Later on, one of the first times I got to experience an FPS in first-person mode was a mod made for Enemy Territory, it was called TrueCombatElite (still going today). It was an overhaul of the game and truly transformed the experience for me.
Not long after starting ET, I discovered Americas Army. What a time this was, the game was around 1GB but back then due to my connection, it would take me an entire day to download the game. Due to this I downloaded the game overnight, the first time I did this I made the mistake of letting my screen go to sleep. I woke up super gutted to find out that the download had failed, luckily it worked on the second attempt.
Console wise I don't remember, I believe it was some game on the PS3.
I have recently found the old ET website I signed up on, using my old and now inaccessible ntlworld.com email address and a very simple, basic password I used for everything. I joined Feb 25th, 2005. So by this time I would have been 14.
It was either this or possible early RuneScape but it fails my mind when I started playing this, I know it was before 2006 (this is when I switched to WoW)