I was browsing 4chan one day and I noticed a HnH thread. Not much was explained on what kind of game it was and I have seen several 'play this game" threads. I don't know why that thread caught my attention. The only explanation that the OP gave was what to do when you start the game to spawn at the OP's hearth. I then looked up the game and watched a few YouTube videos. Then I browsed the forums for a bit and read the wiki. I decided that I would give it a shot. I guessed that it would not be a good idea to use the 4chan poster's hearth secret because I had assumed that most of the people that would use his secret would be trolls, so I walked up that ladder and arrived in the world.
I spent a lot of time for a few days playing. I got addicted despite the lag and the constant griefing. I told my friends about it and only one actually tried it long enough to get hooked. Most of my friends didn't want to play because of the lag and some just didn't want to bother with the high learning curve.
I got others to play recently, but again, only one or two friends actually stayed out of around 8 who started with the rest. Their reasons was also because of lag. My wife saw me playing a few times and wanted to learn how to play, but she also quit because of the lag.
I mostly play with some people I happened to run into in-game and we started a village together. The couple of friends that actually didn't quit only play occasionally compared to me and we live in completely different timezones, so I'm usually asleep when they do come on.