I was too stupid to figure out how to get this to work in the late 90s so I just ran around the empty Half Life multiplayer maps by myself and it was quite unsettling after a few minutes, I felt like I was being watched or stalked.I didn't actually get properly into online PC gaming until 2006. What did I miss out on?
Really nothing. I've found games today that replicate similar experiences.t. Someone who online gamed since 2000 on PC
That is me with any sort of editor or engine tool. Eventually it sort of clicks
Halo 1 on dialup in 2001 was miserable. What you wanted then was LAN gaming. You missed nothing.
What the fuck are these anons saying? Online PC gaming was amazing, and far better than now. High server populations made the experience far more welcoming for noobs and less toxic overall. Unique server cultures were formed that accommodated every personality and whatever acute mood they were in. You would seed your favorite servers by joining and waiting for it to fill up, perhaps as you waited for another full server to open. The connection you felt to these communities doesn't even exist in the in-and-out matchmaking era, and so the dignity is lost. The playerbases were of exceptionally higher quality because to even have an Internet connection back then, you could be assured that everyone else online was a real person like you with a bare minimum of technical ability and awareness for how to behave online. Cheating was less of an issue in the pre-matchmaking era of online gaming, and you knew they would be banned by a server admin. Creativity, ingenuity, and passion was apparent in all the new modding tools, maps, and skins being made by the community on a daily or near-daily basis. You never see this anymore in the post-matchmaking era. There was a freedom that allowed players to unleash their love and vision, and developers would oblige with new server commands to make certain things easier, or by sponsoring tournaments for the organic competitive communities, all without tainting the vanilla public experience like games do now when they're designed around 5 vs 5 slop from the get-go. It was incredible and innovative too, you had stuff like Roger Wilco, an early VOIP software getting made years before it was brought to consoles in the form of Xbox Live.
