My first time was a blur. Memories of it are bittersweet because I know I can never quite recapture that magic, that spark. I was seduced by the newness of it all. I was touched liked never before. Why didn’t anyone tell me it could feel like this? That it could feel this good? This right?

It was with a dwarf named Reaban.

My introduction into massively multiplayer role-playing games is a familiar tale. Ask your guild mates, and they’ll likely share similar stories. Each of us has a special place in our heart for that first title. Despite the fact that almost all of us abandoned our introductory MMO, we think back only with the fondest of memories.

All you have to do is look in "general chat" to see that the honeymoon is over. Whatever game or digital universe we are in now is not making us as happy as that first one we experienced. People complain of class and faction balance, glitches, and poor drop rates. No one seems to enjoy MMOs like they used to.

It’s not really that current game’s fault that we’ve become harder to please. It’s not as if the newer releases aren’t as good as the older ones. In fact, they’re better. That’s why we moved on to them. Yet, we still feel unsatisfied. Why?

I’m afraid the fault lies with us.

What can we do? Where did it go wrong? How do we regain that loving feeling?

While we can never recreate our idealized past we can certainly have more fun with whatever we are playing now. Here are some tips on how to make the most out of your online-gaming experience.

1) Avoid the naysayers

General chat is poison to a healthy MMO relationship. It is filled with flamers and trolls fighting over nothing. People are there to piss each other off and act like middle-school boys that just learned how to curse. If players are actually talking about game-related topics, they rarely have anything nice to say.

It’s funny how these individuals can affect us and how they can color our opinions. If you read negative comments all day, it’s only matter of time before you find something that you agree with. It could be a glitch that bothers you, a certain class that you hate, or a long line into a PVP arena, but someone somewhere is bitching about something that you would agree with.

When this happens, try your best to not comment on the subject in question. Don’t become one of them! Just ignore the conversation and move on. It only takes one little complaint in general chat before you find yourself trolling the forums and calling a game’s developers racist toward gnomes and telling everyone that you are unsubscribing. Nobody wants to be that person.

I’m not saying ignore a game’s faults. That’s just silly. If a title has so many things that make it not fun, then don’t play it. However, if you are still having good time, the only person your constant whining hurts is you.

2) Enjoy the journey

If you have played an MMO for any extended period of time, you’ve, at least once, rushed toward a goal. All you cared about was reaching the endgame, getting that new mount, or finding a new armor set. You might have uncovered a giant glowing sword or a flashy new space car, but you ignored the ride to arrive there.

Now, I know these games are about achievement, getting to the next level, earning the best sword/gun/gun-sword, or whatever. It’s easy to forget that the most important part about accomplishing a goal is how you do it. Getting to the end should be the fun part. Downing a boss should be more rewarding than the Codpiece of Sundering Force that it drops.

We get shortsighted easily in MMOs, but at the risk of sounding like a cheesy and geeky Hallmark card, I say take a break and smell the digital flowers. Or, if you’d prefer, I'll sound like a geeky Ferris Bueller. Life in Azeroth moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop to look around every once in awhile, you’ll miss it.

3) Try to love the whole game

This just sounds stupid, huh? It’s like simplistic marriage advice from one of those atrocious magazines at the supermarket. Love the whole man -- his Ninja Turtle collection and all. But much like a divorcee, we find we long for the flaws of our old flames.

My first MMORPG was EverQuest, and I loved it. I'd wake up at five in the morning to get a few hours in before school. What I miss most about that game were some of its biggest faults. The mere thought of shouting "train to zone" still brings a smile to my face. The idea of waiting forever to take a boat to another continent makes me seize up in nostalgic bliss. This sort of stuff would never work in the today's games. I’d hate to have to loot my corpse to get my items back or waste my time crossing a giant digital ocean. I’ve got stuff to do, people to meet, and enemies to slaughter. But that doesn’t make me miss these quirks any less.

What we often miss the most about the titles we abandoned are the parts that didn’t work. The broken bits were somehow endearing.

Again, don’t play it if it’s not fun. Don’t be a masochist. Just don’t let little issues tarnish your enjoyment.

In the end, MMO gamers are a jaded lot. We are notoriously hard to please. It’s difficult for us to remember that our surrogate universes were created for us and that they are constantly being tweaked and altered to make us happy and keep us playing. When we log in, the least we can do is let the little things go, take a step back, and remember that we are supposed to have fun.