I first started online gaming in 2001, I ran a clan (Just Bring It) on Medal of Honour : Allied Assault, also hosting my own servers and then adding to my server hosting for Call of Duty 1 & 2, also hosted a few Teamspeak 2 serves, started playing Call of Duty 4 but I had to give up playing as I relied heavily on using a headset & hearing everything properly in game & with 4 came the introduction of Flash Bangs in game, they emit a high pitched noise which made my ears bleed, I can't listen past a certain pitch without it hurting, I have really sensitive hearing.

Then in 2008 I got addicted to Rohan : Blood Fued, running a guild (IceShards) for about a year, then joining the top guild (SoulMate) on the server. Eventually switching to a new server & running 1 of the top guilds on there (Flawless), but getting fed-up with YNK money grabbing from players, basically turning a really amazing mmorpg, with the best PvP which was supposed to be Free To Play, into a game that you have to be rich to win!!
****(explanation at the bottom if you're interested)
Anyway, I vowed to only play on private servers, even though YNK kept getting them shut down, still had some fun on them but I stopped playing about a year ago when I started my own business, a booking agency for DJ's, MC's & Producers & had to work hard. My ex managed to ruin the business (that I pretty much paid for & did all the hard work), by letting people down & running up huge debts, most of which I didn't know about (which I've only just paid off) and that put an end to that & the relationship! Didn't really feel like doing much of anything after that, now I'm just concentrating on getting my DJ career back on track & learning how to produce music & make my own tracks & remixes


***All the rich players bought really expensive weapons for £150 (£200) each in a 10 minute sale & then sold them on the game market at £600 - £750 ($800 - $900) each, then after bringing out those epic weapons they bought out 4 parts of an even better weapon, which cost stupid amounts of money for each piece & then you had to spend even more money on putting the 4 pieces together, which cost even more money if you kept failing, they did the same with armour, bringing out higher levels, which meant higher armour, made it impossible to get the full set of pieces by reducing farming percentages & even if you got the full set of pieces they made it impossible to put them together by making the forging rates really low, I quit after spending about £300 ($400) attempting to make 1 set of gauntlets (arm pieces) and failing every time, & I still had boots, tasset, armour & helmet to make, so I was looking at at least £1,200 ($1,600) to make end game armour and about another £1,000 ($1,400on getting myself a weapon, plus you have to buy costumes, several talismans, anywhere between 5 - 10 level 7 stones for your buffs, mounts, earrings & glasses which only last a month & about 10 different scrolls (which last 4 hours), just to be epic, so yeah you need to have a lot of money.
Private Servers are better, because you can level up quick, gear up quick, & go to war with your enemies & kick ass, & the admins give a shit about the players so you get more boosts & prizes & better rates on everything.
The only bad side is how long it takes the owners of the private server to avoid YNK shutting them down, some go on for months, maybe even a year but at least you don't spend a fortune & you have fun PvPing