My brother showed me Warband in 2010? I think, and as soon as I saw the massive multiplayer battles where every single fighter was an individual player I was hooked.
In 2011 he showed me crpg, we would play together sometimes. He stopped later that year, I quit for a while when he did but then I came back because no other game scratched that itch for me. Not even native warband was as good anymore after playing crpg. The character progression and being able to spot a player across the battlefield and know it was them because of their trademark set of gear... Working your way up from being a peasant cowering behind a wall near a combat god, becoming a shitty bamboo spearman to try and poke and help out the guy in plate, finally buying my first horse (rouncey) and a light lance after what felt like weeks and weeks. Managing to get kills sometimes even though I didn't know how to couch the lance or what couching even was.
After that I played an archer and then an xbower, I had played for an embarassing extremely long time before I actually got good at melee combat with 4D weapons. 5 or 6 generations as a ranged player, and then I loomed a knife instead of a real 1h weapon because I wanted a sidearm to go with my +3 xbow and +3 bolts. It was a
long time before I did anything other than wiggle and spin in melee combat.
