April 2006. Joined the game with a group from WaW tournament (massive organized battles in Forgotten Hope mod for Battlefield 1942). I didn't care about the game or know anything about it, I just joined to support my WaW friends who were at war and made a cry for help on the forums. They had run into some trouble with ODN and I joined with the express mission of nuking PopeHope.. We became known as the WaW rogues but when my mates got added to a permawar list and left the game I was given clemency because I was tiny and had no idea what was going on.
Exactly a year later in April 2007 I was raided because I was unaligned. I had previously been spammed with countless recruitment messages that I ignored but this time I needed protection. One recruitment message stood out, I joined TOP and remained in the alliance for the rest of my playtime. Turns out until that time, TOP only accepted people from the Paradox forums and had a brief experiment with active recruitment. They discontinued that program shortly after it began, and I ended up being the only member of Paradoxia who had been actively recruited through mass in game PMs.
I don't play the game anymore, but I check in every once in a long while because it was part of my life for around a decade. I still have my original nation, it's just not active.