I remember how I got this game:
I played the demo, yes! An offline sp demo for a MMO!
With its own short contained story!
I liked it and played multiple times through it.
But paying monthly for a game? That wasnt really possible for me back then.
a couple of months later, I visited a firend. And he handed me over a sealed copy of the game.
He got it on his birthday and, surprised, didn't liked the idea of paying monthly for a game.
(little side joke: a short time later he started with wow^^).
So I've got my copy, took it home and read through the manual.
The massive lore-drop section of it impressed me. It wa sso intriguing to read through the history of the world, starting in the 2000s and going up the the 2800s.
So I imagined running around that city.
And then I took advantage of the "free trial month" or what it was.
It was really fun!
It transported the idea of a pen&paper game to the screen.
And many players were friendly and helping beginners.
There was that one guy, I teamed up with regulary, who was named after the game company "Psygnosis". We supported each other.
Another guy was just sitting in a bar in game and had even a beer in front of him on the table.
I questioned him why he is sitting here: He was resetting some skill points (which took time, because of a cooldown). So I just took a seat and had alittle chat with him (because I didnt knew what he was doing at all).
When the Neocron 2 was on the horizon, there was a "Farewell Party" ingame.
Many players gifted away stuff they didnt needed anymore (because the amount of items to carry over was limited).
There was a lot of going on and I stil miss it time by time : )
It even had a navigation Ray, comparable to the one of Dead Space!
Well ahead of its time!