A good friend of mine played the game, I'd often be over at his house playing it with him or simply watching him play. The novelty was phenomenal to me at the

A good friend of mine played the game, I'd often be over at his house playing it with him or simply watching him play. The novelty was phenomenal to me at the tender age of 12. Here was a chat room, and a game, all rolled into one. I'd never seen anything like it. I wanted my own account. It would be a few years until that happened. When I was 15 I started with an annual subscription for 49.99, playing on my mother's computer at first after assuring her it wasn't a virus. This was before the launch of DAoC, so maybe early 03? The game still had a relatively active population (500-750 players near peak hours, something I would scoff at today and declare dead. relative!) After the launch of WoW in '04 the regulars became less regular and eventually the population was under 200, then 100, etc. It had 25 players online last time I got nostalgic and installed it to hear the startup tune. Anyway, I had a great time with The Realm Online. I loved it. I made friends and liked talking to them. So I stuck around and watched it slowly wither away, at least until 2007-8 or so. It was clear that the "developers" who purchased the rights to the game had no interest in developing the game any further. I still think The Realm Online would do fine in the F2P space, stuffed full of microtransactions. The turn based combat would be perfect for a touchscreen. Apparently it's coded in a dead language invented by Sierra, so I'm not holding my breath. It'd be nice to see a private server, at least. Over the years I made many friends, some of whom I still regularly play games with. I imagine many folks had a similar experience with their first MMORPG, whenever I see people talk about Runescape or WoW, I always think of The Realm and my time with it.