RO: have played it for some 5 years, started it by request of my real-life friends at an international private server. We had fun together, leveled up ourselves, competed (friendly) against ourselves and helped each other (at that time I really liked doing research and trying to think of builds and how to use my wizard more effectively). Soon I got into my friends' guild, and later on went into War of Equipments/Waste of Energies. At that time, I used to play in cyber-cafes/Lan houses at weekends, and if we got tired of leveling up, we would play something else (GunBound, DotA).
We didn't mind much hopping to other servers and redoing all/most of our characters/equipments, as long as our real-life friends were together (they've also increased in number). But then Lineage 2 came (actually, the boom of L2 p.servers), and diverted efforts from some of our most dedicated members. Also, other members had real-life issues that reduced their availability.
Eventually, people got tired of redoing their characters by the 6th (or so) server, even with the relatively stable community. At that time, most of our original crew wasn't even there to serve as a motivation for me to continue playing, and said motivation had dimmed further when I stopped fighting the game's design. To put it shortly, spending some 34 +8 Staves of Piercing trying to get one or two of them to +10, failing them all due to bad luck, and having heard from the same Mastersmith that helped me try to overupgrade them, that he was able to get 2 +10 Staves of Piercing from 10 Staves of Piercing. This was when I played RO for the last time, after realizing that luck affects the damage you do/take, the drop rate of items (as resources), the crafting success rate, the upgrade success rate, the slotting success rate, status effects success rate. Playing ability is then left as a secondary factor (while playtime is rewarded, even with said luck factor), or else the best players would all scare the others away, and reduce the number of people that could be interested to play the game, and the community.
L2: my second most played MMO, I liked soloing my way to level 50+ (at a low-rate p.server). Like the case in RO, this game got me hooked due to important updates (RO = new items, new classes; L2 = new features), besides having friends playing it. Liked how a properly buffed character could defeat someone who was 10 levels (60 vs 70) above, how certain classes could come out of 1vs.1 matches with full HP:
someone at the pvp arena after dying: how much HP do you have left?
orc friend: I'm full
someone: you're joking, right?
friend: *gives him a party invitation so that he can see his hp*
someone: .....
(I think that person later asked how did he get his hp, my friend then explained that his class can sort of regen his Combat Points easily. His class was more like a support one with some nice offensive skills and defensive ones, that had to be played consciously. My friend told me on other occasion that, in a deathmatch pvp event, as soon as said event started, every high-level player there looked at him and ganged up on him first :p)
Quit playing L2 due to some of my friends' request to join them in a new RO p.server, played that one for a while and then got tired.
note about Touhou: I think I got to know this series around 2006 or 2007. I even played IN's Extra stage with my friends watching me play, they said that they thought the game to be too difficult. Even got a friend of me to play IaMP, I was (and still am) a beginner at it, he later on decided to try to learn or improve at Melty Blood ( D: ) and I've not seen him ever since, he stopped coming around, dunno why. Later on, my close friend who I've shown IN Extra previously could watch me play through Dodonpachi until when I Game Over'd in stage 5. He would even care to see in which year this game was made, in the title screen. "This game is from 1997. Wow!"
current hobbies: GGPO/2DF (on occasion), MAME, other stuff (Facebook games, flash games, etc..)
