The last bit is what killed world of Warcraft for me. When it changed from a world with the same people in it everytime, to automated group finders combining every possible world anyone could be in.
Not only will you never see those people again, for a while it was literally impossible to talk to them or friend them.
When they put out classic wow again, they updated it to have all these “new quality of life” features.
Thank god for private servers.
dude, I miss lineage 2
we have successfully urbanized online games. the days of a small town feeling in new online games are over
This basically describes my experience with counter strike pre-1.6… like 1.3 thru 1.5, circa 2002-2005. Lost thousands of hours of my youth negotiating knives-only rounds and doing stupid totem pole camping on de_dust while 1 guy on the other team tried to AWP everybody. Am I old?
Nothing wrong with getting older
Except for my knees
And my back!
nice observation by anon.
i miss making friends in games and couldnt quite put my finger on why matchmaking was much worse and unfun than old multiplayer and this is it.
One of the last good public multiplayer experiences I had was DiRT 3. Simple lobbies, small player count, people randomly joining and leaving and everyone was chill. You’d occasionally get that guy who was stupidly good, perfect lines through every corner, and the entire lobby would try so hard to keep up. Loved it.
One time I stumbled into a lobby where the host was “hacking” but instead of cheating for an advantage, he was selecting weird car class and track combinations for the entire lobby. Stuff that the game wouldn’t normally allow. Shit like trailblazer cars on rallycross circuits. So much fucking fun, one of my favorite memories from that game.
That must’ve been what, 4, 5 years ago? DiRT 3 released in 2011, so…oh my god DiRT 3 came out 13 years ago…
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Nostalgia might be pushing a bit hard here. Even playing obsessively on relatively small games on a limited number of servers for hours every day, I never got to recognize people just by being there. Occasionally someone would friend you, but otherwise, you knew people for 4-5 rounds at a time, and then never saw them again. Internet, even back then, was a big place.
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.
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.
That first bit is a pretty accurate description of a lot of early online gaming.
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 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.
long live (classic) EQ :)
I’m playing a mobile game that’s pretty much exactly like that first part.
“but my community used to be made out of 12 people!”
Well too bad. That’s why you’re here on Lemmy now. You dislike strangers and love familiarity. I on the other hand love strangers and chaos. That’s why I was on Reddit.
I mean, we can have both. Community servers and official matchmaking servers.
But for the sake of money, community servers are gone.
Enshittification is very real, but also, some games just aren’t feasible as community servers. Lol?
Which aren’t? League could be fun of there weren’t a ladder and competition being the only thing people care about. You could do fun things like Aram but like, all sonas or shacos. Something wacky. Oops all fiddlesticks. Any shooter is going to work for community shooters, mods and CS proved that… Shit even MMOs have private servers with tweaked rules .
My point is mobas aren’t really that feasible with community servers, are they?
There’s still a bunch of customs. Most are private.
I really don’t understand what one sees bad with a central server, because the function those community servers served is now served by discord servers, basically, to which you can go to find gaming company at the drop of a hat. But there’s not the same limitation of “oh we’re not on the same server”, except for ofc zones which still exist, America, Europe, Asia, etc.
Oh “even mmos”? Those have existed since I can remember. And I started online in about 2003.
Why’d you’d want a private server for League for example?
This is everything I meant to convey with my “lol?” but I realised it wouldn’t be conveyed and still did it because I was too lazy to write this
How can you question if you are laughing out loud? What does it even mean?
Leagues of legends is a game.
Why wouldn’t it be? You can already make custom games with pretty much anyone.
Yeah, custom lobbies on a central server. Which is what I think is superior to community servers.
And I don’t think so, like many other people expressed in this thread.
The biggest advantage of self-hosting is that the game will be forever playable even if the company that makes the game goes belly up.
I HIGHLY recommend Holdfast: Nations At War for the same experience nowadays. There’s usually 1-2 full 150 player servers running in the browser, and you start to recognize the slaughterers and shitters over time.
It’s a Napoleonic era musket shooting game with locational open VC that gives bonuses for teamwork and line-firing. Recently I’ve been talking mad shit in a ridiculous accent matching whatever faction I’m playing at the time, and people are now recognizing my name, which is kinda warming :)
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
Honestly it’s fantastic, hearing other people’s Voice Chat by default (you can mute people) results in amazing moments of both heroism and clownery.
Even when there’s that occasional shitwit taking advantage of unmoderated VC, I’ve noticed just calling them out and mocking them has a great chunk of the server join in on dunking on them.
Great game, great community, VC makes it fantastic.
It’s the same sort of spirit with Chivalry.
“HAVE AT THE”
halberd spins intensify
“ARRRRRRGGG”
Cannot upvote this enough. That nostalgia OP is on about is alive and well in holdfast.
Quake ]I[ was the last real multiplayer game.
Fite me.
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.
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).
Yup. Matchmaking is very lonely.
I used to roleplay as a pirate, pickpocket, swindler, and ladies man; laughably incompetent at them all, under this username in a tiny, indie RPG called Rubies of Eventide. I was never a strong player, but I got a reputation for funny in-game banter. Playing a different kind of person enabled me to punch above my weight in social skills.
There’s this guy so damn good with the Kraber on Titanfall l 2 Northstar on my server I never was able to kill him …
Ready gaming fires away in this Kraber g200 montage!
