I signed up and played 76 after the first release—you know, the one with only like 3 humans.
It was my favorite experience. Empty, beautiful, peaceful and very exciting. The ambient music is my favorite of the whole series and it really set the tone.
I liked the feeling that you and a few other people online were the only real human survivors and the bots and mutants were the only things left in the world.
That changed after people complained… I quit after some changes were made. I logged in recently and now it’s full of generic NPCs and bullet sponge enemies. Not for me anymore.
I guess I’ll never be able to go back to that feeling right after release. It really was something else.
Anybody else play the game right after it was released?
I played it for just a few hours. I recall that I stopped after killing a few roaches as part of a quest, but I stopped and thought to myself, “Wait… why am I doing this? What’s my goal?”. I was over an hour in and honestly couldn’t tell you, so I dropped it. Then later they made it free to play, so that was money well spent on my part.