Anon is a nostalgic gamer

Team fortress 2

For me other than the lack of time it's the toxicity, if you have say one hour to play, do you really want to listen to some no-life cunt who has been playing all day screaming at you because they are tilted as fuck and need to blame everyone else but themselves? Well I certainly don't need that shit in my life.

I remember playing TacOps back in the day. Some Sundays were literally just me team speaking with the guys (and some girls) while sipping a beer and casually playing our doing team practice. I learned a lot about the different international cultures before I set my own feet out of the country.

You can still still be competitive, you just have to be a bit clever about it.

I recently started playing mobile shooters... in an Android emulator with a mouse and keyboard. Destroying touchscreen kiddos with a proper input device never gets boring.

Some games are even smart enough to detect the mouse and keyboard and only match you with other players using external input devices, like CoD Mobile. That's one of my favorites because it's basically CoD: Greatest Hits. All the best maps from the old games are there. And new modes come out every week. It's so much better than modern CoD; takes me back to the days of playing CoD4 and MWII on the Xbox 360 when I was a teenager.

Nothing wrong with getting older

So much scoutzknivez and iceworld

I am a bit younger so chicken & waffels and a few other CS:S servers were that for me. Also Day of Defeat Source was underrated.

Also, the minigame servers... The mini games people came up with!

1 person shooting cubes at platforms whole others had to stay up, The prison, Piratewars, Multigames (the original fall guys), Prop wars, The one where there were like different power ups behind walls and then have different abilities.

But also battlefront 2 was like that for me. SMD clan with its almost mythical figurehead. Glitching servers, shooting the shit with other people trying to find new glitches. Those were the days.

While matchmaking is good for some games like Rocket League, it has really broken a ton of communities. I think that's why there aren't really "clans' anymore, because people aren't together enough to organize.

I don't think urbanised is a good word to describe that alienation. The urbanism movement has as one of its key goals the creation of more vibrant local communities. It's more like suburbanism.

For years I had thought I got old and don't have friends who play games as much anymore but this meme made me realize it's that I wasn't making new gaming friends.

They've abstracted away the social element. It takes so much work now to make a friend. After a game ends there's perhaps a summary screen or lobby, so you can add another player to your friends list, but you have no way of discussing that with them. Anytime I get a friend request, I think, who is this? Why are they friending me

I knew most of the experienced bards on my EQ server in '03. Half the reason I bothered to develop my character was to try and keep up with them. Now pretty much the only thing that'll keep me playing online multiplayer is casino gamification, so I don't start.

Definitely describes my early Team Fortress Classic/TF2 time back in college. I'm actually still steam friends with folks from that time and I definitely still rock my "clan tag"! Sort of lame if kids don't have a chance at the same thing...

That was a big pull of WoW. You type "lfg" once in all chat and that could send you on a 20 year relationship with a guild with people who end up becoming your best friends.

yup, sounds like my experience playing Unreal 2:XMP back in the day

I'm playing a mobile game that's pretty much exactly like that first part.

Idk that was pretty frequent for me on TF2 community servers

Well the post is 6 years old so it's actually referencingthe internet 21 years ago. This kind of thing did happen back then. I'm remembering Halo 1 pc servers and recognizing names.

Naaah. I made like 40 longtime steam friends because of playing on the same gmod server. Was lucky to find a server that had the most insane creators on it. You went onto any other server, they used what we made on that one. Drunk Combine, tanks, jets (including working VTOL), we had artillery that worked the same way it did in World of Tanks. 95% of the players there were insane at Expression 2 - which was a scripting / programming language that let you interact with the physics of the game in awesome ways.

I put the best 750hrs of my life into that server. It was called "Unsmart's" after the dude that hosted it. Closed down after a few years when the people moved onto other games. There was a shortlived revival, but it was more of a "reunion" than anything else. Still have everyone as friends and could probably get them together by pinging the group if I wanted to.

It was pretty regular for me. You find a server and usually the people hosting were usually always in there. Especially if it was a clan. That’s how I got into ever clan I ever joined.

You join a server and get to know the usuals and become friends. Still play with people I met back with the OG call of duty came out. We still play games together today. Never met half of em in real life.

When is "back then" for you?

I played counter-strike during the beta days and team fortress when it was "classic" not "2"

I definitely had a handful of favourite servers (1-2 favourites, 2-3 backups) that I would play on and knew the regulars like an old country pub.

Now things are set up so that it's almost impossible to develop relationships with random folks online. Not just matchmaking but also more closed-off (hard to discover) groups on Discord etc..

CS1.6 and TFC was the golden age of online gaming and it's been downhill since then. Literally nothing has been improved upon and the community has become immeasurably more toxic.

We've lost IRC and dedicated servers and replaced it with matchmaking and Discord. Both objectively worse.

This absolutely happened to me in Battlefield 1942.

I also actively remember seeing someone from the same "clan" as you in a random free for all or capture the flag game. Always a great feeling.

My dad (would be 71 if he were still alive) used to play an online flight simulator WW2 game back in the late 90s / 2000s until he passed in 2012. He made a bunch of online friends through that game who he’d have long phone convos with outside of the game. My mom had to call them up to let them know he passed. I think he might of met a couple in person over the years too.

I was never a gamer, although during covid I put an emulator on my Mac so I can play PS2 and N64 games. Last night for the first time in a long time I played THPS2 on my Mac. I’ve beat the game multiple times but it’s just fun to play. Never got into online gaming.

I mean, we can have both. Community servers and official matchmaking servers.

But for the sake of money, community servers are gone.

Counterstrike Source was later and still had these tight knit communities on the gun game and surf community servers. There wasn't any matchmaking in the client either. And we voice chatted in game for the non-competitive modes.

I think Rainbow Six 3 might also qualify.

Then again, nothing will ever compare to the Rocket Arena 3 scene where every kill was due to skill. You're a complete noob who got a few lucky hits with the rocket launcher? Skill. The other guy jumps in front of you just as you happen to pull the trigger? Nice air rail, well played. I never saw anyone ever complain about losing.

That community was just so refreshingly positive and welcoming, probably because there were no stakes. A match was over in maybe thirty seconds and then you'd watch until your next turn. And that was it.

In modern competitive games people have a ranking and they feel stressed when a game goes badly because they might lose precious Elo. This goes to the point where you get yelled at by your own teammates for not knowing the meta because they can't make it to the next rank if you pay like it's a game.

Cpm mids for days

I've been playing it VR lately. Feels like old times. There's only a handful of players, of course (unless you play with flatscreen people which is possible, but too scary for me).

honestly for the amount of people on those servers, i've had surprisingly few bad experiences, everyone is always either roleplaying or just being ridiculous and it's always a great time. 10/10 would recommend holdfast

Cannot upvote this enough. That nostalgia OP is on about is alive and well in holdfast.

There's some rose-tinted goblin welding goggles there.

Pugs for 5-mans used to be a huge pain in the ass. Especially for lower-level dungeons or for DPS classes (and especially the boomkins, the fury warriors, and the ret pallys).

Remember spamming city chat, LFG BFD?

And if you were a warlock, you were expected to run all the way there (remember not getting mounts until 40?), and wait for two other people, so you could summon the last two?

I haven't really played much since TBC, or at all since LK. LFG was a huge improvement. It had flaws, for sure...it did break the community a bit, as you said...but it made the game playable for people who didn't have hours to commit to getting ready for a 5 man dungeon.

WoW FEELS super fragmented right now.

I mean, when they finally gave in and released Classic I had no idea they would release 10 different versions of it. But that's mostly a different topic.

The shattered world of the main game is the big problem, cities and raids and events that exist only conditionally, like Undercity and Ny'Alotha with the attatched invasion.

Being able to meet and talk with players you can't trade with or craft for, whether they're Horde while you're Alliance, or they're from an unconnected server to yours. When you tell the latter they can send you a personal crafting order for the sword they keep asking for in Trade Chat, they can't.

And as a Blacksmith/Miner main, I get to experience the shattered state of instanced zoning more regularly, every time I fly out to get ore, with several ore deposits simply disappearing as I approach them or start mining them. I see them from the other side of a fracture in the world. When I cross over, the illusion fades away.

Isonzo is the newer one. I haven't played it in a few months, but it's similarly small but I never felt close to anyone there.

I play Squad fairly frequently, and it's got a similar feel to what the OP is about. You choose your server with a server browser, and it's frequently got a lot of the same people there all the time. There's some servers that are more casual, and they end up cycling players more so you don't recognize anyone. The more experienced focused servers draw from a much smaller group though, and they play more consistently.

You ate being isolated so no one will miss you when the government/corporations/they/whoever get you

Joining a modded Minecraft server you'll always make friends eventually because after like 20 hours of being onine with the same people they'll eventually wonder what you are working on and ask to come see your base. Its a great social game.

Man, Jedi Outcast was when my noob ass would get relentlessly kicked on saber duels. Good times as I was taught some common online decency

Before that...QuakeSpy.

Quake kicked ass and defined my childhood and my adulthood. I was like 10 when that game came out.

I wanted to play that game so bad but my dad was hogging the phone line all the time!

So...I did some reading online. Found out how to build a simple network. Went to the computer fair and got some network cards that did 10BaseT or 10Base2. Went to RadioShack and got some coax, bnc ends, and terminators. Installed WinRoute on my dad's computer. Set it up to share his internet so we could both be online. Set it up so his computer would automatically dial when I wanted internet if he wasn't online yet.

Nearly 30 years later and now I'm a Network Architect.

Lmao. Been on both sides of this.

Ready gaming fires away in this Kraber g200 montage!

Do you still actively play? I used to play a lot a few years ago. I've been debating getting back into it but I'm not sure I have the patience to relearn the combat and I'm sure those who still play are monsters at this point.

Well, tribes 1 is also a 26 years old game, so would go under the first part.

Did you try the new netcode test? Just saw the discord announcement today

Had the same experience with AssaultCube last year.

Jesus, fuck, that's still around?

Yes, I find this too. Especially if you play on the same servers.

I don't think it's necessarily rose-tinted glasses, but rather not the experience that everyone had.

I was never super social in servers, so I didn't make random friends or anything. Even for me though, servers contributed to a better overall experience.

Much less toxicity: assholes just get kicked or eventually find their fellow assholes on the 'asshole server' that you know to avoid.

Much easier to have a chill/casual atmosphere: you can hop in and out, so nobody feels 'trapped' in an unfun game. Additionally, since you often jump into games that are in-progress, people tend to care less about winning or losing.

Easier to play with friends of different skill levels: every server would be a mix of skills, so joining with a mixed-skill party doesn't throw everything out of balance. Since people don't care as much about winning/losing it's much easier to fuck-around with your mates without anyone getting upset.

Matchmaking on the other hand is more convenient, but in my opinion a net loss for most people.

Obviously both approaches had advantages and disadvantages, but OPs experience was definitely possible if you had the patience and luck to find a good community/server. But this also means there is a certain barrier because you have to do some work to find a good community/experience and can't just click one button to start.

And there are still modern games that have server browsers and they mostly tend to be less toxic imo, in part because people tend to know eachother a bit better and in part because servers generally have harsh rules, so toxic players often get kicked quickly.

And this is also where the disadvantages come in because there are admins who just kick anyone they don't like for whatever reason.

That’s more because few people seriously PvP in FFXIV, so you naturally end up randomly queued with the same people repeatedly.