[nissehulth]

I think Civ.Net was the first game I played on the internet against someone I didn't already knew. Could have been early 1996.

It wasn't the best gaming experience though. Each turn took like forever (well, minutes), after a few hours we had to pause the game and agree on when to continue the next day.

Still, finding an opponent "on demand" was something that did hint about what was to come later.

(well, there were BBS "door games" earlier, but not really "real time" in the same way)