Wasn't GalCiv released in 2003?

That was the windows version I believe the original GalCiv was released earlier on the OS2 platform.

15 years ago...that was 1994....

I was playing MUD.   That was the first MMORPG.  Text-based, open source, ridiculously fun.   The only computer game that ever actually enhanced my social life, even in real life.  Back then only the Computer Science majors had e-mail accounts or even internet access at all.  I basically paid an internet provider $9.95 a month for 2400 baud access to a UNIX account that you would telnet to. 

Wow...MUD! I remember those too. I used to pay $5.00/hour plus long distance charges for access to a unix shell account. Played a lot of MUD's. 

Hehe I was 3 years old back then

I bet I make all of you feel old

Don't worry, some people on this forum still are.

I was there, I still remember getting excited about my 2400 baud modem upgrade.  I was playing a game called Trade Wars.  MUD was there too, but I got into the space theme of Trade Wars.  That was when getting online meant connecting to a BBS service over dial-up.  Pretty amazing, I was once at 1200 baud, now I'm at 20,000,000 baud.

Yeah, time flies unfortunetly

I got online as late as 1999 and my first computer had Win98 so missed all that you're talking about. But then again, at that age I would not have been interested at all in textbased games. Hell, when I was 12 years old I didn't even like RTS. It was DOOM all the way

Those text games were actually a lot of fun.  It's sort of like the difference between reading a book and watching a movie.  A lot was left up to the imagination.  Another nice thing about those old text games was the more social online aspect.  Sometimes, you'd go into a game and end up mostly talking with your online buddies.   Since BBS systems were fairly local, there'd often be meets you could go to.

I remember the first time I saw Doom.  That and Wolfenstein were groundbreaking games for the PC.  I was amazed at the graphics they produced and ran out to buy a 3dfx Voodoo video card.  That was the first consumer video card that had hardware graphics acceleration.  Those games look like pong compared to the state of the art now, but at the time, they were pretty amazing.

How's this for dating myself:   I remember playing Eamon.   That's like the predecessor of MUD, and that goes back to around 1981.   All MUD was, was multiplayer Eamon.  Then later Ultima saw that and figured out they could make multiplayer Ultima, too, and the result was Ultima Online.  

What was awesome about Eamon and MUD both was that they were completely open source, and anyone with a modicum of programming experience could dream up their own worlds.   So you could pull from half your gaming community for talent to grow your universe and improve the game.   No worries about graphic rendering, compatibility testing, or any of that stuff.  There was no such thing as a "mod"--mods were the norm.  If you didn't mod, you didn't have a game.  I think I might have been 9 when I made my first dungeon.   My biggest problem then was, I didn't understand play balance--the game was always rigged so I would always win. 

You know what I'm disappointed about?   That they never made NetHack multiplayer.   The online community was totally awesome at improving on that, too.  It was like mixing Linux and D&D.  I think the closest they ever got to MP Nethack was Gauntlet or Legend of Zelda, but those simply didn't have the sheer wealth of "stuff" that Nethack did. 

Yep, this past year was the 15th anniversary of the original release of Galactic Civilizations. Amazing!