I was the main marketer for “weird, different games” to my friends, back in school. I was the one that first found out about Harvest Moon on PSX and recommended it to another friend, he loved it - mind you, this was back in 2004. In 2006, I got 3 into World of Warcraft, I even printed a “beginners’ guide” I made myself just to help them understand the game.

Two games that I experimented from word of mouth were Tibia and Ragnarok Online. The former I gave up the same day - there were like 10 players for each rat in the sewers, the respawn took forever and you were supposed to grind them until you reached level 7, which would take over a week of real playtime at that rate.
RO was an interesting situation, the dude who first started it was bragging about having lots of hours to play, when I disdainfully replied “Why pay when you can just play for free”? He didn’t like the reply, but we didn’t get along anyway, so I took every chance to jab him, and he did the same to me. Anyhoo, I went online, looked around for a private server and started playing, free of charge. The others didn’t join in.

During school and college, none of my friends were interested in RTS or even turn-based strategy games. I already knew about Civilization thanks to my dad. In the internet years, I always lurked around some talks about strategy games and that’s where I found Supreme Commander, which is still one of my favorites. Total Annihilation is still on my “to-play” list.