I first saw it in Nintendo Power, and it looked really cool. They really did a good job presenting it. XD I was addicted to the game almost instantly and was on a mission to collect everything. After about a year or so, I lost interest, but would come back to it on occasion. My grandmom also played it, too, mainly for the fishing.
When I got Animal Crossing: Wild World, I knew nothing about this "Wi-Fi" thing, or what it did (that's far different now... XD ). A month after I got Wild World and Mario Kart DS, we got a Broadband connection and a router. It took me about three days of frustration to get my router all hooked up and working (stupid Netgear router, gave me trouble the whole time I had it), but I was finally connected. I really didn't care for computers back then, thanks to the frustration of Whendoze, and so I didn't do much with my computer other than look for friend codes and then pretty much let my computer set for awhile, unless I needed to look something up quickly. I started making more and more friends on AC:WW and became obsessed with it and one of the bigger Animal Crossing websites for awhile, until it got spoiled.
I had two towns in Wild World, one normal and one modified that I'd mess around on. I designed the town map for that website (which I was then staff of), and did other stuff using ARDS for awhile. Ultimately, I got bored when everyone I knew wasn't around NFWC.
After that, I quit that AC website and moved on to other things like web design and another AC website I was staff, and eventually part owner of. I was excited for Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and imported Dairantou Smash Bros. X and a Japanese Wii to play it on, and also later imported Doubutsu no Mori +. Doubutsu no Mori + is the game that came before Animal Crossing, many aspects of the game were different from Animal Crossing, but it was the same basic idea. After that, I finally found Doubutsu no Mori e+, which I found to be an awesome game, it's basically a combination of Doubutsu no Mori + and Animal Crossing, but with much more cool stuff.
When City Folk came out, I played for a couple weeks, but kind of lost interest quickly... =p I'm hoping to get back into in sometime soon, though. =3