For many gamers, the first foray into the expansive world of Massively Multiplayer Online games is a formative experience. For Mollie Taylor, that journey began not with the epic quests of World of Warcraft or the grinds of RuneScape, but within the brightly colored, pie-flinging streets of Toontown Online.
Taylor's first MMO character, a dark brown cat, emerged in 2005. She opted for the Disney-themed world over its more popular contemporaries, a choice she attributes to not being "cool enough" for titles like World of Warcraft or RuneScape at the time. Toontown Online, a game centered around combating greedy corporations and saving small businesses from an invasion of mechanical "cogs," offered a unique, albeit whimsical, digital playground.
One particular memory Taylor retains is a Halloween event that offered a limited-time black fur option for cat characters. Despite a desire for a more gothic aesthetic, she ultimately never acquired the black fur, settling instead for her perpetual dark brown hue. "Instead I forever remained as a dark brown cat, which isn't quite as goff," she notes.
Though the official servers for Toontown Online shut down in 2013, the spirit of the game lives on. Taylor has found a spiritual successor in Toontown Rewritten, a private server where she continues to play as a lilac cat named Coconut. She also muses that a character from Puzzle Pirates might have predated her Toontown avatar, though her memory of that experience is hazy.
Taylor's early gaming experiences, including Killer Instinct, Toontown, and Audition Online, have significantly shaped her approach to gaming and her current role at PC Gamer, where she now covers MMOs and other titles. Her early MMO adventures, however brief, remain a fond recollection of her gaming origins.