PSO v1 on Dreamcast.
after hacker tools were available to some, I made a friend who used tools benevolently n gave out rare weapons n items to some friends n I - I was just interested in tryin them out as shit like Spread Needle took the challenge, urgency, n need for teamwork outta the game. I was equipp'd mostly instead with one of the less effective rare weapons/armor/techs/items. I saw an open game with 1 person goin it solo, so - not yet having been a victim yet or even hearin about it - joined it to lend some assistance. the moment I transported to the stage - a shock tech knocked aLL meh HP out n my items dropped n dude silently came n scooped em up. I left n told friends of this, havin a laugh about it but 1 friend alerted our hack-tooLs buddy n dude came onto our ship server n assured me, "now I will go help this poor guy too" n came back with his equipp'd items n reimbursed me everything I lost plus more.
PSO v2 (which now charged a subscription fee) came at a bad time where I was in-between jobs so even though I picked up the game - by the time I secured yet another tech-support job... most of meh free time involved 'partying' with co-workers n I was so discouraged from Sega puLLin outta the console hustle that I played very little on consoles tiLL my PC (literally) blew up n I went out n grabbed up an Xbox OG, a Saturn n a JVC Genesis/Sega CD combo thing. then a mere coupla years later from that my apartment got robbed. got a laptop n was PC gaming ever since.
did some PSO Blue Burst on PC n was gonna jump on PSO2 the day it premiered on Steam... but didn't want an MMO's social obligations n DLC-expenditure temptations. *sigh* my only reaL MMO-ing in the 1st half of 2001...