this post was submitted on 26 Nov 2024
1265 points (99.6% liked)

Greentext

4502 readers
948 users here now

This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.

Be warned:

If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 35 points 6 days ago (8 children)

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.

[–] Sylvartas@lemmy.world 31 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Idk that was pretty frequent for me on TF2 community servers

[–] Corgana@startrek.website 3 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago)

I had basically one TF2 server I would play on because that's the one I knew the people. It was like the community basketball hoop. If people weren't playing then sometimes I would text a friend and try to get a game going or more often than not just try again later. It felt natural and low-stakes. This meme hits hard.

[–] brachypelmasmithi@lemm.ee 3 points 5 days ago

Hell, it still is pretty frequent for me to see a couple regulars on the TF2 servers i play on

[–] 108@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] Maalus@lemmy.world 11 points 5 days ago

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.

[–] Siethron@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Online gaming in 2004 indeed had much less people available overall. On the FPS front, it was mostly Counter Strike and Battlefield 1942 I guess.

[–] fuzzzerd@programming.dev 1 points 4 days ago

For me it was counter strike and day of defeat. Guess I was fully on the valve train.

[–] el_abuelo@programming.dev 9 points 5 days ago (1 children)

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.

[–] PugJesus@lemmy.world 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Mid-late 2000s. Roughly 2005-2012.

[–] el_abuelo@programming.dev 5 points 5 days ago

Yeah....that was the end times.

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 8 points 6 days ago (1 children)

This absolutely happened to me in Battlefield 1942.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, the early BF games were where I found servers that were communities. We'd even host events like stunt flying or trick shot challenges where we'd throw a pssword on the server for a few hours so nobody could troll us.

Or for certain days of the week, we'd be running the Desert Combat mod. It was a different time in online gaming.

Another thing I miss from those days is friendly fire. I get why it had to be removed, but it allowed for big, overpowered thing like artillery strikes and naval bombardment that were as likely to wipe your own team as help without coordination.

[–] vithigar@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Oh man. Desert Combat was incredible.

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago

I love that they basically just hired the Desert Vombat team to make BF2.

Though the AC 130 in Desert Combat is still my favorite game vehicle of all time.

Mobile, pilot-able spawn point for the entire team with awesome air-to-ground weaponry that had to be defended by fighters.

It could fly over an emeny base and rain troops and death, but if it got shot down or the pilot wasn't amazing, it was a huge liability.

[–] tweeks@feddit.nl 5 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] inv3r510n@lemmy.world 4 points 5 days ago

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.