AO was my first mmo, and despite it's shortcommings it's the only game except EVE that I've gotten really into and keeps coming back to.
As I see other oldtimers dropping in and out, I'm wondering how many times you have come back?
My AO career is something like this:
January 2004 - desember 2005 - Way too hardcore, 400 days /played, semiquit when I finished university and started working.
2006 - back quite soon, and played reasonably sensibly for half a year as I couldn't pull myself away. Decided to quit cold turkey and gave away any item of any real value on all chars. That worked. At least for a while.
2009 - summer, got back again and started levelling an old NT, as NT's where finally usefull both pve and pvp, and I could make a 220 setup that would be good but reasonably cheap.
2010 - Back for a while, now had a 220 NT and at least some money earned in 2009, so played a new enf to 195. Started planning the levelling of old chars, but got distracted by other games after a few months.
2014 - Wanted to play an mmo again, but no fresh ones that tempted me. Downloaded AO and got started. Surprised and encouraged to find the world quite active.