This is a great question. After 2000, the internet really started taking off in China, and huge numbers of people began playing MMOs in internet cafes. Naturally, with that many players came a lot of social controversy — the "internet addiction" panic was a real thing back then.

On the console side, we never had an official way to buy them. A ban on console sales was in place, so everyone just picked up grey-market machines with zero after-sales support. If something broke, you had to figure it out yourself. Even the local game shop owners had no real way to source genuine games.

Looking back, though, those rough conditions actually made for some pretty interesting stories.

I never experienced the golden age of MMOs firsthand — I've mostly gotten my sense of them from videos and old forum posts. To me, they always felt less like games and more like social platforms, where the point was teaming up with people to grind quests and raids together. But being competitive at them demanded a massive time sink, and plenty of titles also asked for real money. Once competitive online games took off, MMOs stopped being the default online gaming experience, though they've kept a loyal following ever since.

I got into console games about 20 years late. Looking back at that era from the outside has led to some funny moments — I've had veteran players assume I was around 40, when I'm actually only 27.

What was the main game you were playing back in the 2000s?