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I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers. Too many games require you to use matchmaking systems, which means it's very hard to build up a smal

I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers. Too many games require you to use matchmaking systems, which means it's very hard to build up a small community in-game anymore. You either have to rely on forming small parties with people you've stumbled upon one by one, or you have to seek out people from some much larger area like Reddit or Discord. It takes a lot of the serendipity out of the experience. Without a small community it becomes much harder to ensure you're not playing with people who make the game less fun by whatever metric you care about. I used to be an admin on a group of about 18 or so connected Counter-Strike 1.6 servers called T3Houston*. We ran modified versions of various Warcraft 3 mods which added persistent XP/leveling, as well as integration with an external item store and player database the owner maintained. Most of those servers were filled to the brim during peak US gaming times, and our forum was quite active. There aren't many games these days where you could do something like that. I discovered the community because one day I was just looking for a server with open slots for me to join. I was fairly skeptical of whatever a Warcraft mod would be like, but ended up enjoying it so I added it to my favorites. Eventually I got to know the regulars and joined the forum. Notably, the place felt far less toxic than the average server I'd join back then. I can completely believe this is just me looking at the past through rose tinted glasses, but it feels like the general toxicity has gotten worse at the same time as we've lost a lot of tools to manage it. * If anyone else here remembers the name T3Houston: hi! I'm Stealth Penguin

spacecadet 1y ago
I was involved with the Quake/HL modding community in the late 90s and I fully agree! I hate matchmaking, but I get it too... but nothing compares to finding that dedicated server and joining regularly until you notice other regulars, and then you have friends... Shout out to #PVK and #Mastersword, great mods that had awesome dedicated server based communities.
ToDougie 1y ago
Played an insane amount of WC3 mod with you guys. Thank you for all the memories.
- rimunroe 1y ago
  Wait really?! Do you remember your handle?
  - dcherman 1y ago
    Can't recall if I played on your servers, but I know I played an unreasonable amount of CS 1.6, including on a bunch of WC3 servers when I wasn't playing on ESEA. If you happen to remember someone going by `nJs` - hi!
- Gunax 1y ago
  Im also chiming in to say i remember these servers. Frankly, i never liked the mod very much and only advanced a few levels. But i distinctly remember trying to kill enemies with some sort of lighting bolt move.
  - rimunroe 1y ago
    > i distinctly remember trying to kill enemies with some sort of lighting bolt move. I believe you were playing as an orc then
  - gronglo 1y ago
    I thought I'd never played it until I read your comment, which brought back a memory. I guess I must have played it at least once.
nullandvoid 1y ago
Similar story, running modded COD4 dedicated servers largely got me into programming. It's depressing the modern COD lobbies - chucked in with skill matched randoms on a small range of gamemodes, comms kept to a minimum so no one gets offended. Then don't get me started how 50% of playtime is spent loading / in lobbies so eye balls on store can be maximised - I'll pass.
- andrepd 1y ago
  Overoptimization truly squeezes the health and fun and soul out of everything.
time0ut 1y ago
I have so much nostalgia for that time period. Counter-strike was my introduction to how the Internet and TCP/IP worked. I built my first PC to play it. I learned linux to run servers for it. It inspired me and my friends to learn C to try and make our own mod. I made a website for my clan, self hosted it, and registered a domain for it. The community was incredible, partly because of the server browser, as you point out. There was also a massive IRC community around it that was way more cohesive than what exists today. So CS was also my on ramp to IRC and the technology communities there. I don't play a lot of games any more. Every now and then I'll try something. I have the GPU anyway and everything works great on Linux now. I found out there are third party server browsers for CS2 with modded servers. It is so tiny compared to the old days, but they exist. I played around on a couple around a year ago and had a good time. If you are feeling nostalgic, you should check it out.
- rimunroe 1y ago
  Counter-Strike was my introduction to actual programming! I learned to write AMX mods to help make administering our servers (banning cheaters and whatnot) mid-match possible without having to interrupt playing to open the console. > I found out there are third party server browsers for CS2 with modded servers. It is so tiny compared to the old days, but they exist. I played around on a couple around a year ago and had a good time. If you are feeling nostalgic, you should check it out. Thanks for the tip!
  - nonethewiser 1y ago
    CS was my intro to programming as well. Although for me it was in a very simplistic form - buy macros. It was something like this in the userconfig.cfg that would load when you start the game: ``` alias "buyak" "buy ak47; buy vesthelm; buy primammo" bind "F1" "buyak" ``` I guess this is more configuration than programming but as a kid it was a significant threshold still. It also delighted me that you could bring up a console in game. So cool.
    - rimunroe 1y ago
      The reason I made my mod was that I ran into the limit of how many keybinds I could remember or quickly access, plus I wanted to be able to make dynamic lists of players and whatnot
SimianSci 1y ago
In general I see this as an issue of gaming becoming more professionally run and maturing over time. Server Browsers make sense in a world in which members of the community are self-hosting their own infrastructure for others to play on. While a great way to build community, it can be a problem when it comes to player retention and competitive mechanics. Player retention can often suffer over the long-term as such communities establish boundaries and rules, eventually orienting around a small clique of individuals, increasing the friction for integrating new members into the community. Additionally, the competitive mechanics, which often draw a large amount of players, can suffer as player-run infrastructure can vary wildly in its connection, uptime, speed, etc. and bring a risk of unsanctioned modifications, cheats, and hacks, all negatively affecting the player experience. Overall, its a tradeoff, the community building aspects of player run servers can truly build colorful and vibrant communities, but this can be at the expense of overall player retention, trading a large and accessible playerbase for a small dedicated community. Most game companies choose the route of building and running dedicated server infrastructure. Which of course, internally run servers tend to be built with a set image that gets cloned each time more are needed, making each one indistinguishable and fungible. The only problem becomes assigning the players accross servers depending on which ones have available capacity, which is where matchmaking comes in.
- harpiaharpyja 1y ago
  I'm sure that's how companies these days justify their choices, but I don't see those problems as being inevitable on self-hosted infrastructure
- rimunroe 1y ago
  > In general I see this as an issue of gaming becoming more professionally run and maturing over time. I don't think anyone is confused about why this happened. It's obvious why a game company which is trying to make money in an extremely competitive field would prefer it. Having a good reason doesn't mean that there isn't reason to mourn the loss of what came before. Some things have improved! We should celebrate that gaming is more accessible now. It's been a long time since I've been kicked from a competitive shooter mid-match because a server crashed. > Overall, its a tradeoff, the community building aspects of player run servers can truly build colorful and vibrant communities, but this can be at the expense of overall player retention, trading a large and accessible playerbase for a small dedicated community. I don't run a business. I'd rather have a game with small communities of players which peters out over a few years than a game with millions of players for a decade+. Toward the end of a game's life player run servers allow the game to last potentially forever. The problem of games alienating newcomers is still a problem with matchmaking systems. Your community's average skill goes up over time once the rate of new players joining slows down. > Additionally, the competitive mechanics, which often draw a large amount of players, can suffer as player-run infrastructure can vary wildly in its connection, uptime, speed, etc. and bring a risk of unsanctioned modifications, cheats, and hacks, all negatively affecting the player experience. Games have handled this before with "official" servers or ones run by tournament hosts. I actually had fewer trouble with hacks on heavily moderated small servers because so many people knew each other and would catch onto cheaters quickly. Services like VAC help block repeat cheaters from joining in the future. I like having access to mods and to sometimes join a server and find something completely unexpected. I don't care much about competitive play, though I do like a fair number of e-sports-y games. I never had trouble finding vanilla CS servers back in the day.
bluefirebrand 1y ago
I miss this old internet and gaming experience so much I made so many friends by joining a lobby and just playing a game for a few nights in a row or whatever Now I don't know how to really connect with people online anymore or build any kind of community Discord servers don't seem like the right way, they are too busy and chaotic for me I miss making friends online and gaming with them
- OliveMate 1y ago
  I have close friends from a TF2 community server that's been dead for over a decade now, but I can't think of anyone I've met via random matchmaking since. Game servers are the perfect digital third space, it starts off with random players but as you log in each night, you see more and more familiar faces pop up and before you know it you're all regulars popping in to chat while playing a few rounds, learning more about your new friends and praying to god that you've got the godlike Finnish sniper player on your team. By comparison, modern matchmaking-lead multiplayer feels gentrified and - for lack of a better term - soulless. You're blindly shuffled between random players each game, and there's no way to properly build a connection with players or a community out of it. There's a vacuous and temporary nature to it all that just feels cold. Edit: also the fact that things like skins & sprays - player controlled ways of expressing themselves - have been neatly packaged by gamedevs and sold back to players at a premium. It feels completely antithetical to the player-led nature of what such games used to be.
- GloriousKoji 1y ago
  What baffles me is that Discord is basically mIRC with some extra features but the culture just isn't the same.
  - monkeywork 1y ago
    It's not a discord problem it's an online culture problem. People now are addicted to trying to find things to be upset about and put people on blast for - make an off coloured joke in the old days and you may suddenly find your new best friend, now it's being clipped and shared on twitter and some one is calling your boss to try and get you fired. It's not the tools it's the people
foobarian 1y ago
I loved that time too, as well as the time before it when we used to run text-based MMOs until Origin, Everquest, and Blizzard stole the technology and put a 3D UI on it :-)
chrisoconnell 1y ago
I used to play on T3Houston every once in a while! Great times!
- rimunroe 1y ago
  By any chance do you remember your handle?
- zoobaloo 1y ago
  I did as well! @rimunroe I don't remember my handle, but you took me down a nice little path on memory lane. The Warcraft mod was a little goofy, but as a younger kid who couldn't appreciate the hardcore competitive scene I liked the variety and silliness it brought. I spent way too much time finding custom skins online to keep things interesting. Good times.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
jokoon 1y ago
People would practice 5v5 and find an opponent team on irc around 2002 2004
- epolanski 1y ago
  #5on5 or #pcw on irc.quakenet.org Also, there were multiple tournament websites out there: ESL and another one I don't remember the name anymore, that hosted tournaments all time. I remember lan tournaments in Italy with more than 60+ Counter Strike teams like Smau 2002, and you had to bring your own computer nonetheless. It was really a golden age for gaming I swear. People that didn't live that think that gaming is better now are severely mistaken. Playing online videogames today is a solo experience, 20+ years ago it was the very opposite, even if you played alone you met people on the same hosted servers you liked, on forums, on IRC, in lan. Today it's really sad.
  - LostMyLogin 1y ago
    The CPL was big and CAL was amazing for non-pro players.
- LostMyLogin 1y ago
  #FindScrim #FindRinger was where my free time was spent in the early 2000's!
icar 1y ago
I also miss this. I used to be an admin of a popular Spanish community for Garry's Mod, TTT specifically. The whole community existed because we had our own server(s), and then added a BBS forum. It's impossible to do that anymore, afaik.
epolanski 1y ago
I legit miss early 2000s gaming. 1) People interacted, they truly did. Dramas, friendship, everything. Where? Quakenet, Forums. Every clan had their channel, some easily reached 1000+ people. 2) People genuinely played together in teams: CS, Day of Defeat, you name it. You had your clan and spammed #5on5 on quakenet. 3) Those clans actually met in lan! At Smau Italian Lan Party 2002 there were more than 60 Counter Strike teams from *Italy alone*. And it was a bring your own computer event[1]. I know it's part nostalgia but I legit think it is borderline impossible to have anywhere near the same level of interactions with people today. Reddit is just not a good substitute for legacy threaded forums. Discussions die fast, they don't even have the material time to develop meaningfully. [1] https://www.aspidetr.com/images/immagini/blu/varie/smau02_03.jpg https://www.aspidetr.com/images/immagini/blu/varie/smau02_03...
- doublerabbit 1y ago
  LAN parties were welcoming on so many levels. Never played DnD? Come join. One time I recall was an isle of misogynist folk who haven't showered in days playing WoW. The smell... no comment and in one case I recall at one LAN where a delivery woman was scared to walk down the isles to deliver so she asked me nicely if I could. No problem, pizza is here boys. But within reason, they kept to themselves and were there to game. You kind of respected that and they respected you as you were there too to do the same. Outside of all that they were highly intellectual and I recall talking for hours about other highly intellectual topics: psychics, space mathematics, game characters. I didn't approve of their extremist views and you could tell something went wrong somewhere with their psyche but there was a mutual respect. Unfortunately I was too young (20's) to grasp the true vibe. I just got back from a goth music weekend this weekend and felt completely cold shouldered. No one was really welcoming and it was very alpha gatekeepery. Granted the audience were clique, everyone seemed to knew each other and the mean age would be 40-something but the attitude from some left me astonished compared to attitudes of some of the worse LAN gamers. If I can hang out with folk who are of such and yet unable to hang with those who are not, I couldn't figure what I was doing wrong. It left me sour for my first major goth event, a sub-culture I've enjoyed since 17; 36 now kind of makes me want to hand in the towel. Maybe I was craving wanting the LAN I once I enjoyed in my teens, but it was worse than that. It felt horrible being there by myself unable to connect with others. I left a day early. Yet all there for the same reason, music. I do believe gaming has a power to bring others together but online games now just feel half arsed and are more released for money rather than fun. Two different sects, yet the one you'd expect to be the worse turned to be more warm. It's weird to think that, but shrug. I really don't know what to think and has left me really perplexed.
jokoon 1y ago
Toxicity is what killed the game for me. I was really involved in how serious cs was being played in 2002 or 2003, but valve did not seize the opportunity. 5v5 is the best format. Even today, the matchmaking is horrendous and toxic teammates ruin the fun. When you solo queue, individual performance is ignored, so you must carry your whole team if you want to gain rank. The game is great but generates too much frustration for me.
- Lammy 1y ago
  > toxic teammates ruin the fun Relevant myg0t: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/171762 https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/171762 (2004, NSFW) This Flash was my introduction to Refused though so that's cool
  - doublerabbit 1y ago
    Vintage.
  - edm0nd 1y ago
    TIL newgrounds is still around
- vehemenz 1y ago
  Even though I played CS at the highest level for the time, CAL-i, I always thought the maps were too small for 5v5 and that competitive would have benefitted from 7v7 or 8v8. That was how pubs were, and the dynamics were better. I think 5v5 won out due to practicality.
  - 101011 1y ago
    Hey, I was CAL-i too! At least...that's what we told people in IRC :P
dbalatero 1y ago
I've been playing a lot of Half-Life 1 deathmatch on the few servers left for the last year and a half, and have been having a lot of fun!
HaZeust 1y ago
Same but for xTcR and Tw^2; better days.
anonwebguy 1y ago
I use to help run Quick Gaming and was a mod on Allied Modders. Great times, taught me a lot.
ofcrpls 1y ago
Lousiana Anti-Scripting Group - LAG was my family away from home while living in this distant country. The rules were extremely strict to allow for their kids to also play on the server which was run by a few, including a Nam vet, Phantom. Fun times.
TimesOldRoman 1y ago
Oh snap!!! I think I played on T3 for a LOOONG time in the early 2000s. I once even beat Machine once. I can't remember my handle...I've had so many over the years.
- miek 1y ago
  same, so good, so much wasted time also
strictnein 1y ago
> I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers. I miss GameSpy, the original application, not the service it morphed into later. It was so easy to find a server to play on, playing the levels/mods you wanted to play. Before that, I spent a lot of time (and money from my dad's credit card) on DWANGO. For those not familiar with DWANGO, you dialed in to their servers and then it acted like you were on a LAN. You could play games like Doom, Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, etc against other people. There was a main chat room to talk about what games you wanted to play. It was also a much nicer place to play, partly because you had to pay _per minute_ in each game. The price wasn't anything crazy, if I recall, but it definitely kept people focused on the game. Also met some good people and ended up working on a gaming site with one (MeccaWorld.com, on the off chance someone remembers that - I ran the Quake section) and started a company with them a decade or so later.
- styanax 1y ago
  > I miss GameSpy, the original application, not the service it morphed into later You drove me down nostalgia lane, looked in email and have my GameSpy receipt with unlock code. We paid $21.55 after tax in March of 1998 - my memory is really fuzzy but besides CS I think Quake III Arena was also popular at the time.
- wink 1y ago
  Interesting, we had something similar in Germany in the late 90s. Had to dial in with a client and they had a chat, newsgroups/forums and internal mail. - RivalNet http://web.archive.org/web/19980515163616/http://rivalnet.com:80/ http://web.archive.org/web/19980515163616/http://rivalnet.co...
LostMyLogin 1y ago
Thought I'd throw this out there, but server browsers are still around in CS2. There are a large number of servers populated around the clock with everything from surf maps, bhop, to even old custom maps from 1.6. It's still very much alive.
SirMaster 1y ago
CS2 still has a server browser... At least the matchmaking option is so much better at making real competitive matches with players though now too. I like that both options exist.
bigums 1y ago
I have so many memories as a kid have so much fun on these servers. You guys had the rogue with almost complete invisibility. I played dust2 WC3 mod so much, hiding in weird corners with a knife waiting for someone to walk around the corner hoping it wasn’t whatever class had 300hp. I owe much of my career in tech to counter strike. I learned to manage servers hosting clan websites, security and programming making the sites and “borrowing” designs from Clan Templates or whatever the company was that had the awesome animated flash headers. I remember learning about IDORs and SQL injection, before I even knew what it was called. I learned 3d modeling with MilkShape for custom skins and models. Made dozens of surf maps and a few KZ. The AMX Mod community was so helpful learning to program. I think it was Small to write mods. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. That was a pivotal moment in my life. I learned how to control a computer and found my passion.
billfruit 1y ago
Does not ranked matchmaking make for more competitive matches, a bit like if you play ranked in lichess it matches with someone of your own level, and you have a real chance of improving your own level over a period of time. There is seems to be lot of negativity against ranked ladders in the gaming community, but isn't that what would be best system to play with people of your own skill level.
- amonavis 1y ago
  Not everybody wants to play competitively, especially when it's a band of close friends who play almost exclusively with each other regularly.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
- o11c 1y ago
  Even disregarding the other comment, not necessarily. For anything but 1-vs-1, individual skill gets smeared into the non-enemy (ally for team games, or everyone for a free-for-all) average. Remember that cooperation isn't an individual skill (unless the meta is complete, I guess); it relies on knowing your specific partners. And besides ... it's perfectly normal for a task-oriented group to have people at a variety of skill levels. If anything, homogeneity is what's strange. This does change what interesting interactions happen, but by no means prevents them.
  - slowlyform 1y ago
    >For anything but 1-vs-1, individual skill gets smeared into the non-enemy (ally for team games, or everyone for a free-for-all) average. It's a bit more nuanced than that, CS is a 5v5 game yes, but at low rank it's a lot more depedent on individual skills. I love community game servers but a lot of time those are for fooling around and not much the competitive skills.
- rimunroe 1y ago
  > Does not ranked matchmaking make for more competitive matches, a bit like if you play ranked in lichess it matches with someone of your own level, and you have a real chance of improving your own level over a period of time. I don't like playing a game where I need to worry about ranking systems. It adds a layer which I'm just not interested in. It's fine if I die more often than other people. Some of my fondest memories are of watching someone much more skilled than me absolutely steamroll my team. If you're playing with people you know, a vastly more skilled player becomes a fun challenge for you to try and overcome together.
winrid 1y ago
You can still play this way. I still mostly play WolfET because modern FPS games are too stressful and too much work.
- kcaseg 1y ago
  Haha I remember almost crying when I was 12 because I couldn’t get a single kill in ET. Crazy that no one makes a modern ET clone, such a unique gameplay, it would be an instant hit, just add some buzzwords „mission based tactical shooter with classes and progression“
  - winrid 1y ago
    Nobody that plays it wants a modern clone. You can just play ETLegacy.
- LambdaAlaDelta 1y ago
  I reinstalled it recently but I got baited so hard at all the servers filled with bots. For a second there I thought, "this game is totally NOT DEAD". Sadly, I couldnt find any non bot filled server with a decent ping.
  - winrid 1y ago
    The FA clan servers usually have 40-60 people online mid day during my TZ. I get around 70 ping but whatever.
racemic 1y ago
I've lurked on HN for years, but I had to create an account just to respond to your post. I operated these servers – perhaps my handle is still familiar. I remember you for sure! I'm touched that you and so many others still have fond memories of that time. It was such a gratifying experience to build out that server network and the accompanying integrations that attracted so many and built such a great community. I miss the days in college when I had time to work on stuff like that just for the love of it. I hope you are doing well!
- dev0p 1y ago
  This kind of interaction is what makes me miss the "old internet" the most...
  - TimByte 1y ago
    People just made stuff for the fun of it
    - lukan 1y ago
      That still happens. You just have to look a bit more for it.
      - dc10tonite 1y ago
        Agreed. I think we probably even have better tools to search for things now, but there's just so much more that in some ways it's harder to find that kind of stuff.
  - sneak 1y ago
    We’re all still here. Build communities. Find, join, and support existing ones.
  - arkh 1y ago
    My intuition is it still exists. This "old internet" sentiment is due to the fact it was mostly academics in their world and geeks in theirs on internet at the time. Then it made it easier for everyone to use so everyone used it. But I bet there are still the same proportion of geeks in the population. Which are still socializing on niche area of internet. We don't see it because we're old farts and have jobs and habits so we won't be trawling what are the current young geek channels. It was forum, IRC, ICQ and their ancestors for us. It is some other things for them. The story about the group of teenagers embedding messages in the One Million Checkboxes database shows "the old internet" is still alive.
Arisaka1 1y ago
The other grossly understated downside of lacking server browsers is how the player nowadays relies on the system to match him with the "best match" they can get. This opens the door to all sorts of skinner box manipulations, such as the game shoving you into teams where the probability of you winning is low, only to put you into a match where the probability of winning is high. The ability to introduce randomization of reward around a layer of "skill issue" and plausible deniability for the matchmaker. Elo/bronze hell exists because even the worst players can just swing up and down their rank, whereas if you didn't had any other choice but play with whoever is in your local server (or LAN part, but I digress) then the only solution for you is to observe and adjust. I'm from Greece and, we used to have lots of LAN arenas before fast internet connections became accessible. I'd get my face pushed by skilled people, and while I'd feel bad about it, the fact that I was playing with my friends and enjoyed myself made it all tolerable. Eventually I gave up feeling bad having negative k/d ratios, and could finally spectate and learn from others. The result was me becoming good enough to join my local CS clan. We never became best in the country, but I have really fond memories both from chilling as friends and highlights from matches.
TimByte 1y ago
Totally agree on the point about toxicity. Back then, when you kept running into the same folks, there was some accountability
999900000999 1y ago
There's a difference between being toxic within a community. The community can self correct, it can ban people. And if you don't like a community, you can leave at any time. Compared to being toxic anonymously. Unless you get banned by an algorithm, your free to just suck. However, I was in one CS clan where a girl gave out her real number to a random guy. Within minutes she was getting spam calls and other not great stuff. I miss my CS clan though. There was some tension and arguments, but that's inherent to any structure with people. Funny enough one of my mates couldn't believe I wasn't white over voice chat. It was like being in this magic world where race didn't matter. Good times. Edit: If someone wants to start an open source realistic-ish multiplayer FPS I'm so down. Invite only community servers. If you suck and cheat we will figure it out and ban you. None of this kernel level anti cheat junk.
- throwaway34564 1y ago
  Interested to have a chat regarding an open-source FPS. I know discord is a bad look, but just to get connected @joe3178
  - 999900000999 1y ago
    Realistically, we would need to raise like 10 million so we could work full time on it and buy quality art. Outside of that it's just a pipe dream. If someone who actually knows how to run a business, wants to start this up I would gladly work at half of my corporate rate. If I was a billionaire I literally would do nothing but fund to open source video game projects. And then maybe pull a Red Hat and monetize it somehow.
    - throwaway34564 1y ago
      A high-performance, multiplayer MVP would be the first order of business. No need for art so early. Remember fy_iceworld - that did not need much art! The question is, what to build it on. Godot?
      - 999900000999 1y ago
shawabawa3 1y ago
As a counter point I absolutely hated server browsers. Spending ages waiting for slots to free up on decent servers. Trying a new server only to find it had 100 shitty mods installed. Servers where the admins randomly kicked or banned people, or blatantly cheated Even just joining mid game was annoying Give me matchmaking any day
gxs 1y ago
The problem is with monetization Whenever/wherever a crowd of a certain size assembles consistently, you’ll soon have a giant corporation frothing at the mouth to monetize it Why let these people organize communities for themselves? How on earth would we capture metrics and sell them shit? This is why everything is awesome until corporations show up - social media is the perfect example I don’t mean to come across as some anti corporate lunatic, it’s just the reality of the situation
goosejuice 1y ago
I remember that mod. Quite fun. Along with surf, rats, ice world and all the other weird stuff from that era. Probably played on T3Houston!
sylens 1y ago
Absolutely. I talk all the time about how I miss server browsers. Perhaps similar to the self hosting movement, we will see a similar movement in gaming to reclaim multiplayer games. The fact that a game can "die" and become unsupported now if it fails to find an audience at launch is crazy - just let people run their own servers if they want! We also don't need content roadmaps for these games if you give the community modding and map tools.
aschampion 1y ago
Like all AAA media in the age of supposedly social media, games became hostile to self-organizing communities that sustain themselves, because they want a push model for consumption where the producers decide what you see, when, and whom with. It commodifies media into generic content, emphasizes short lived novelty, naturally structures around subscription (and increasingly fragmented and numerous ones), and as a bonus keeps all of your activity observable so you also do the labor of saleable data creation for them. Nearly all my worthwhile experiences in multiplayer games were related to permanent server communities (CS clan servers, 2fort2furious, SWG emulator servers, ridiculous minecraft servers that were effectively collaborative volumetric databases for external design tools).
dannersy 1y ago
I was an east coast player but still loved the T3Houston WC3 servers.
- rimunroe 1y ago
  Do you remember the name you went by on there?
Galaco 1y ago
I wouldn't be playing video games anymore if there were no more games with dedicated servers. Not from a moral standpoint, or from a competitive standpoint, but purely from the community perspective. My youth was spent on Counterstrike: Source playing zombie mod, and then for years mapping for Zombie Escape, as a way to give back to those communities that gave me so much. I was never a mic user, and didn't use in game chat a huge amount either, but over time those regulars would still greet me and say hello. I rarely play now, but even after 17 years, when I show up once a year or so I'm always welcomed back in by all those who recognize me and admins switch to some fun maps (or some less fun ones that I made...), and we have a short catchup on life. Certainly many of these communities are on life-support, and most are long dead, but in all those people who play in these communities are the remnants of the communities who had just a little contribution in shaping the person I am today. I'll never forget when one community held a birthday event for me; for 8 hours we played every map I'd ever made, and won them all, with a full 64/64 server for the majority. And I would never have experienced this if I hadn't happened to open Counterstrike: Source for the very first time, and my server browser's first entry just happened to be an early zombie mod server. Shoutout to some of the old ZM/ZE communities: Syndicate Gamers, Plaguefest, i3D, icannt, ZES, Unloze & many more. ZE drove my interest to mapping, which drove my interest in Sourcemod, which drove my interest in programming, which led me to my career, which led me to my wife. Thank you.
pruetj 1y ago
Wow, I played on your servers as a 9-10 year old. I lived in Houston and joined your server simply because they said Houston and I assumed my ping could make it there. I became obsessed with the WC3 mod. Handle was probably Coomie at the time. I still remember invisible humans, elves with evasion, orcs with massive nade damage, undead with life steal… good times. I didn’t know how to spell “ultimate” so it took me forever to actually be able to bind an ult to keyboard.
cynic_ 1y ago
These things still exists in CS (though not as popular in US but that's a reflection of CS losing popularity there) People right now are having the same community experiences in custom server, or with official Valve, or third party like FaceIt... From crazy custom mods to try hard competitive games. From time to time I stumble on some community servers when looking for a better DM warm-up server. Players and admin talking to each other like they were regulars, admin flying around in a batman skin killing a camper with lightning bolt, all the usual admin/community tools and more... also all the laughing, banter, playing songs and crap on the mic... Would you have tried to join in? Let's just face it we've abandoned and stopped seeking it as we got older.
nonethewiser 1y ago
Oh man, brings me back. That public server was pot smoker's lounge (PSL) for me. No AWP!
Oceoss 1y ago
Warcraft 3! My favorite game of all time. I got so addicted to it, one has to have self-control
throw0101a 1y ago
> I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers. Too many games require you to use matchmaking systems, which means it's very hard to build up a small community in-game anymore. It's been many moons since I was into gaming, but back in the RtCW [1][2] days there was a bunch of regulars that played on a server run my (IIRC) Charter. There were many servers in the browse list, and I'm sure many had a community of regulars just like we did. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein [2] A Linux client was actually released, which is what I mostly used. (Actually running it on FreeBSD's Linuxator.)
MrBrobot 1y ago
Undoubtedly I’ve seen / played with you at one point or another. I spent many years in these kinds of servers, because with active mods they weren’t toxic. You kept the cheaters at bay, and they were reliable places to jump in, frag and chat for hours. I used a handful of different names over the years, but usually bounced between variations of “Trigger,” “Asylum,” and “Shifty”. I miss the days you could bop into a server, meet a handful of people, end up on a CAL team with them, and find friends for the next few decades. Best case today, everyone in online games now might as well be a ghost. They’re just strangers in passing if they talk at all. And worst case - they’re overly toxic, loud, and abusing the mic. The only communities I belong to now are the ones I build myself and with friends I’ve made in real life - and we jump between games together now. I'm afraid that time we long for is gone now as we've all gotten older, busier, and moved on to other things. So long, and thanks for all the fish.
guardiangod 1y ago
Oh yeah I used to play on T3Houston all the time, back in ~2003 (as Undead). There weren't that many W3 mod servers that had a consistent player population. I lived in PNW though so the latency was always around ~80ms.
- rimunroe 1y ago
  Do you remember what name you went by?
sidewndr46 1y ago
The move is intentional, it's extremely hard to sell someone microtransactions if they find themselves a member of a tight knit community they enjoy playing a game with. If they are isolated and believe the only mechanism for advancement is microtransactions, they are much more likely to spend money.
opello 1y ago
I have fond memories of playing on those modded community servers once in a while, it was a nice variety in the world of rats and regular gameplay. While there is still some amount of it around in the Counter-Strike 2 era, there's a strong disincentive for joining random community servers when there have been client vulnerabilities that allow arbitrary code execution.
ghilston 1y ago
Warcraft 3 remains my favorite game to this day, simply due to the sheer volume of custom maps you could play. I can't explain how excited I was for the Reforged version of the game and how disappointed I was when it flopped. My favorite part of games is learning the mechanics and coming up with strategies. Which paired well with an endless supply of new game modes to try. I have been unable to find any modern game that is both active and has a series of custom maps. If anyone knows of any, please let me know.
- daymanstep 1y ago
  Does StarCraft 1 & 2 count? Brood war is still active in Korea
rimunroe 1y ago
If anyone else played on the T3Houston servers, there's a (mostly dead) Steam group which would be a solid place to reconnect in https://steamcommunity.com/groups/t3houston https://steamcommunity.com/groups/t3houston
butlike 1y ago
Absolutely. The unique flavor the admins of your server added were something completely special. As an aside. I always appreciated the street justice the admins would sometime enact. Running through the level with invincibility and godlike mods just gibbing everyone left and right.
astrobe_ 1y ago
This inspired me to check on Cube2: Sauerbraten. Still alive? Yep, barely. I guess some online games never die. In the case of Cube2, the game isn't really competitive (servers have no lobby, players can join and leave games anytime, even switch teams in the middle of the game sometimes when it's not the server itself that moves you to the other team on respawn in order to balance the game a bit) and it is one less toxic component of online gaming. People were having a break and talk about various topics in the chat while watching the ongoing game.
pluto_modadic 1y ago
what is a server browser? is it like how on disboard you can find discord groups?
- Linkd 1y ago
  Anything from a simple to filterable list of servers with names and player counts. Most importantly: it gives the player consistent and complete control of their experience vs an auto-match-making algorithm that randomly throws you into lobbies.
2w3e4r 1y ago
100% - local servers is what led to having lan events in your city, less toxic players and its just funner running into the same players. those were the good old days
yerp 1y ago
OMG. I also just created an account on this site after being in read-only mode forever just to say 'Hi'. We played together basically daily for quite some time in the early 2000s. I remember you and CamCam. My handle here is the same as it was in CS. I spent countless hours in college in this server leveling up every class to the max and trying to break the game with the 'spider man rope'. Great times!
- rimunroe 1y ago
  hi!!! If you're on Steam still feel free to add me: https://steamcommunity.com/id/stealthpengu1n/ https://steamcommunity.com/id/stealthpengu1n/ The rope mod was always one of my favorites. I think I asked rACEmic to add it. I have distinct memories of putting up votes in the server to see if people wanted me to enable it, especially in de_rats or de_jeepathon2k

spacecadet 1y ago

I was involved with the Quake/HL modding community in the late 90s and I fully agree! I hate matchmaking, but I get it too... but nothing compares to finding that dedicated server and joining regularly until you notice other regulars, and then you have friends... Shout out to #PVK and #Mastersword, great mods that had awesome dedicated server based communities.

ToDougie 1y ago

Played an insane amount of WC3 mod with you guys. Thank you for all the memories.

rimunroe 1y ago
Wait really?! Do you remember your handle?
- dcherman 1y ago
  Can't recall if I played on your servers, but I know I played an unreasonable amount of CS 1.6, including on a bunch of WC3 servers when I wasn't playing on ESEA. If you happen to remember someone going by `nJs` - hi!
Gunax 1y ago
Im also chiming in to say i remember these servers. Frankly, i never liked the mod very much and only advanced a few levels. But i distinctly remember trying to kill enemies with some sort of lighting bolt move.
- rimunroe 1y ago
  > i distinctly remember trying to kill enemies with some sort of lighting bolt move. I believe you were playing as an orc then
- gronglo 1y ago
  I thought I'd never played it until I read your comment, which brought back a memory. I guess I must have played it at least once.

nullandvoid 1y ago

Similar story, running modded COD4 dedicated servers largely got me into programming. It's depressing the modern COD lobbies - chucked in with skill matched randoms on a small range of gamemodes, comms kept to a minimum so no one gets offended. Then don't get me started how 50% of playtime is spent loading / in lobbies so eye balls on store can be maximised - I'll pass.

andrepd 1y ago
Overoptimization truly squeezes the health and fun and soul out of everything.

time0ut 1y ago

I have so much nostalgia for that time period. Counter-strike was my introduction to how the Internet and TCP/IP worked. I built my first PC to play it. I learned linux to run servers for it. It inspired me and my friends to learn C to try and make our own mod. I made a website for my clan, self hosted it, and registered a domain for it. The community was incredible, partly because of the server browser, as you point out. There was also a massive IRC community around it that was way more cohesive than what exists today. So CS was also my on ramp to IRC and the technology communities there. I don't play a lot of games any more. Every now and then I'll try something. I have the GPU anyway and everything works great on Linux now. I found out there are third party server browsers for CS2 with modded servers. It is so tiny compared to the old days, but they exist. I played around on a couple around a year ago and had a good time. If you are feeling nostalgic, you should check it out.

rimunroe 1y ago
Counter-Strike was my introduction to actual programming! I learned to write AMX mods to help make administering our servers (banning cheaters and whatnot) mid-match possible without having to interrupt playing to open the console. > I found out there are third party server browsers for CS2 with modded servers. It is so tiny compared to the old days, but they exist. I played around on a couple around a year ago and had a good time. If you are feeling nostalgic, you should check it out. Thanks for the tip!
- nonethewiser 1y ago
  CS was my intro to programming as well. Although for me it was in a very simplistic form - buy macros. It was something like this in the userconfig.cfg that would load when you start the game: ``` alias "buyak" "buy ak47; buy vesthelm; buy primammo" bind "F1" "buyak" ``` I guess this is more configuration than programming but as a kid it was a significant threshold still. It also delighted me that you could bring up a console in game. So cool.
  - rimunroe 1y ago
    The reason I made my mod was that I ran into the limit of how many keybinds I could remember or quickly access, plus I wanted to be able to make dynamic lists of players and whatnot

SimianSci 1y ago

In general I see this as an issue of gaming becoming more professionally run and maturing over time. Server Browsers make sense in a world in which members of the community are self-hosting their own infrastructure for others to play on. While a great way to build community, it can be a problem when it comes to player retention and competitive mechanics. Player retention can often suffer over the long-term as such communities establish boundaries and rules, eventually orienting around a small clique of individuals, increasing the friction for integrating new members into the community. Additionally, the competitive mechanics, which often draw a large amount of players, can suffer as player-run infrastructure can vary wildly in its connection, uptime, speed, etc. and bring a risk of unsanctioned modifications, cheats, and hacks, all negatively affecting the player experience. Overall, its a tradeoff, the community building aspects of player run servers can truly build colorful and vibrant communities, but this can be at the expense of overall player retention, trading a large and accessible playerbase for a small dedicated community. Most game companies choose the route of building and running dedicated server infrastructure. Which of course, internally run servers tend to be built with a set image that gets cloned each time more are needed, making each one indistinguishable and fungible. The only problem becomes assigning the players accross servers depending on which ones have available capacity, which is where matchmaking comes in.

harpiaharpyja 1y ago
I'm sure that's how companies these days justify their choices, but I don't see those problems as being inevitable on self-hosted infrastructure
rimunroe 1y ago
> In general I see this as an issue of gaming becoming more professionally run and maturing over time. I don't think anyone is confused about why this happened. It's obvious why a game company which is trying to make money in an extremely competitive field would prefer it. Having a good reason doesn't mean that there isn't reason to mourn the loss of what came before. Some things have improved! We should celebrate that gaming is more accessible now. It's been a long time since I've been kicked from a competitive shooter mid-match because a server crashed. > Overall, its a tradeoff, the community building aspects of player run servers can truly build colorful and vibrant communities, but this can be at the expense of overall player retention, trading a large and accessible playerbase for a small dedicated community. I don't run a business. I'd rather have a game with small communities of players which peters out over a few years than a game with millions of players for a decade+. Toward the end of a game's life player run servers allow the game to last potentially forever. The problem of games alienating newcomers is still a problem with matchmaking systems. Your community's average skill goes up over time once the rate of new players joining slows down. > Additionally, the competitive mechanics, which often draw a large amount of players, can suffer as player-run infrastructure can vary wildly in its connection, uptime, speed, etc. and bring a risk of unsanctioned modifications, cheats, and hacks, all negatively affecting the player experience. Games have handled this before with "official" servers or ones run by tournament hosts. I actually had fewer trouble with hacks on heavily moderated small servers because so many people knew each other and would catch onto cheaters quickly. Services like VAC help block repeat cheaters from joining in the future. I like having access to mods and to sometimes join a server and find something completely unexpected. I don't care much about competitive play, though I do like a fair number of e-sports-y games. I never had trouble finding vanilla CS servers back in the day.

bluefirebrand 1y ago

I miss this old internet and gaming experience so much I made so many friends by joining a lobby and just playing a game for a few nights in a row or whatever Now I don't know how to really connect with people online anymore or build any kind of community Discord servers don't seem like the right way, they are too busy and chaotic for me I miss making friends online and gaming with them

OliveMate 1y ago
I have close friends from a TF2 community server that's been dead for over a decade now, but I can't think of anyone I've met via random matchmaking since. Game servers are the perfect digital third space, it starts off with random players but as you log in each night, you see more and more familiar faces pop up and before you know it you're all regulars popping in to chat while playing a few rounds, learning more about your new friends and praying to god that you've got the godlike Finnish sniper player on your team. By comparison, modern matchmaking-lead multiplayer feels gentrified and - for lack of a better term - soulless. You're blindly shuffled between random players each game, and there's no way to properly build a connection with players or a community out of it. There's a vacuous and temporary nature to it all that just feels cold. Edit: also the fact that things like skins & sprays - player controlled ways of expressing themselves - have been neatly packaged by gamedevs and sold back to players at a premium. It feels completely antithetical to the player-led nature of what such games used to be.
GloriousKoji 1y ago
What baffles me is that Discord is basically mIRC with some extra features but the culture just isn't the same.
- monkeywork 1y ago
  It's not a discord problem it's an online culture problem. People now are addicted to trying to find things to be upset about and put people on blast for - make an off coloured joke in the old days and you may suddenly find your new best friend, now it's being clipped and shared on twitter and some one is calling your boss to try and get you fired. It's not the tools it's the people

foobarian 1y ago

I loved that time too, as well as the time before it when we used to run text-based MMOs until Origin, Everquest, and Blizzard stole the technology and put a 3D UI on it :-)

chrisoconnell 1y ago

I used to play on T3Houston every once in a while! Great times!

rimunroe 1y ago
By any chance do you remember your handle?
zoobaloo 1y ago
I did as well! @rimunroe I don't remember my handle, but you took me down a nice little path on memory lane. The Warcraft mod was a little goofy, but as a younger kid who couldn't appreciate the hardcore competitive scene I liked the variety and silliness it brought. I spent way too much time finding custom skins online to keep things interesting. Good times.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

jokoon 1y ago

People would practice 5v5 and find an opponent team on irc around 2002 2004

epolanski 1y ago
#5on5 or #pcw on irc.quakenet.org Also, there were multiple tournament websites out there: ESL and another one I don't remember the name anymore, that hosted tournaments all time. I remember lan tournaments in Italy with more than 60+ Counter Strike teams like Smau 2002, and you had to bring your own computer nonetheless. It was really a golden age for gaming I swear. People that didn't live that think that gaming is better now are severely mistaken. Playing online videogames today is a solo experience, 20+ years ago it was the very opposite, even if you played alone you met people on the same hosted servers you liked, on forums, on IRC, in lan. Today it's really sad.
- LostMyLogin 1y ago
  The CPL was big and CAL was amazing for non-pro players.
LostMyLogin 1y ago
#FindScrim #FindRinger was where my free time was spent in the early 2000's!

icar 1y ago

I also miss this. I used to be an admin of a popular Spanish community for Garry's Mod, TTT specifically. The whole community existed because we had our own server(s), and then added a BBS forum. It's impossible to do that anymore, afaik.

epolanski 1y ago

I legit miss early 2000s gaming. 1) People interacted, they truly did. Dramas, friendship, everything. Where? Quakenet, Forums. Every clan had their channel, some easily reached 1000+ people. 2) People genuinely played together in teams: CS, Day of Defeat, you name it. You had your clan and spammed #5on5 on quakenet. 3) Those clans actually met in lan! At Smau Italian Lan Party 2002 there were more than 60 Counter Strike teams from *Italy alone*. And it was a bring your own computer event[1]. I know it's part nostalgia but I legit think it is borderline impossible to have anywhere near the same level of interactions with people today. Reddit is just not a good substitute for legacy threaded forums. Discussions die fast, they don't even have the material time to develop meaningfully. [1] https://www.aspidetr.com/images/immagini/blu/varie/smau02_03.jpg https://www.aspidetr.com/images/immagini/blu/varie/smau02_03...

doublerabbit 1y ago
LAN parties were welcoming on so many levels. Never played DnD? Come join. One time I recall was an isle of misogynist folk who haven't showered in days playing WoW. The smell... no comment and in one case I recall at one LAN where a delivery woman was scared to walk down the isles to deliver so she asked me nicely if I could. No problem, pizza is here boys. But within reason, they kept to themselves and were there to game. You kind of respected that and they respected you as you were there too to do the same. Outside of all that they were highly intellectual and I recall talking for hours about other highly intellectual topics: psychics, space mathematics, game characters. I didn't approve of their extremist views and you could tell something went wrong somewhere with their psyche but there was a mutual respect. Unfortunately I was too young (20's) to grasp the true vibe. I just got back from a goth music weekend this weekend and felt completely cold shouldered. No one was really welcoming and it was very alpha gatekeepery. Granted the audience were clique, everyone seemed to knew each other and the mean age would be 40-something but the attitude from some left me astonished compared to attitudes of some of the worse LAN gamers. If I can hang out with folk who are of such and yet unable to hang with those who are not, I couldn't figure what I was doing wrong. It left me sour for my first major goth event, a sub-culture I've enjoyed since 17; 36 now kind of makes me want to hand in the towel. Maybe I was craving wanting the LAN I once I enjoyed in my teens, but it was worse than that. It felt horrible being there by myself unable to connect with others. I left a day early. Yet all there for the same reason, music. I do believe gaming has a power to bring others together but online games now just feel half arsed and are more released for money rather than fun. Two different sects, yet the one you'd expect to be the worse turned to be more warm. It's weird to think that, but shrug. I really don't know what to think and has left me really perplexed.

jokoon 1y ago

Toxicity is what killed the game for me. I was really involved in how serious cs was being played in 2002 or 2003, but valve did not seize the opportunity. 5v5 is the best format. Even today, the matchmaking is horrendous and toxic teammates ruin the fun. When you solo queue, individual performance is ignored, so you must carry your whole team if you want to gain rank. The game is great but generates too much frustration for me.

Lammy 1y ago
> toxic teammates ruin the fun Relevant myg0t: https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/171762 https://www.newgrounds.com/portal/view/171762 (2004, NSFW) This Flash was my introduction to Refused though so that's cool
- doublerabbit 1y ago
  Vintage.
- edm0nd 1y ago
  TIL newgrounds is still around
vehemenz 1y ago
Even though I played CS at the highest level for the time, CAL-i, I always thought the maps were too small for 5v5 and that competitive would have benefitted from 7v7 or 8v8. That was how pubs were, and the dynamics were better. I think 5v5 won out due to practicality.
- 101011 1y ago
  Hey, I was CAL-i too! At least...that's what we told people in IRC :P

dbalatero 1y ago

I've been playing a lot of Half-Life 1 deathmatch on the few servers left for the last year and a half, and have been having a lot of fun!

HaZeust 1y ago

Same but for xTcR and Tw^2; better days.

anonwebguy 1y ago

I use to help run Quick Gaming and was a mod on Allied Modders. Great times, taught me a lot.

ofcrpls 1y ago

Lousiana Anti-Scripting Group - LAG was my family away from home while living in this distant country. The rules were extremely strict to allow for their kids to also play on the server which was run by a few, including a Nam vet, Phantom. Fun times.

TimesOldRoman 1y ago

Oh snap!!! I think I played on T3 for a LOOONG time in the early 2000s. I once even beat Machine once. I can't remember my handle...I've had so many over the years.

miek 1y ago
same, so good, so much wasted time also

strictnein 1y ago

> I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers. I miss GameSpy, the original application, not the service it morphed into later. It was so easy to find a server to play on, playing the levels/mods you wanted to play. Before that, I spent a lot of time (and money from my dad's credit card) on DWANGO. For those not familiar with DWANGO, you dialed in to their servers and then it acted like you were on a LAN. You could play games like Doom, Doom 2, Duke Nukem 3D, etc against other people. There was a main chat room to talk about what games you wanted to play. It was also a much nicer place to play, partly because you had to pay _per minute_ in each game. The price wasn't anything crazy, if I recall, but it definitely kept people focused on the game. Also met some good people and ended up working on a gaming site with one (MeccaWorld.com, on the off chance someone remembers that - I ran the Quake section) and started a company with them a decade or so later.

styanax 1y ago
> I miss GameSpy, the original application, not the service it morphed into later You drove me down nostalgia lane, looked in email and have my GameSpy receipt with unlock code. We paid $21.55 after tax in March of 1998 - my memory is really fuzzy but besides CS I think Quake III Arena was also popular at the time.
wink 1y ago
Interesting, we had something similar in Germany in the late 90s. Had to dial in with a client and they had a chat, newsgroups/forums and internal mail. - RivalNet http://web.archive.org/web/19980515163616/http://rivalnet.com:80/ http://web.archive.org/web/19980515163616/http://rivalnet.co...

LostMyLogin 1y ago

Thought I'd throw this out there, but server browsers are still around in CS2. There are a large number of servers populated around the clock with everything from surf maps, bhop, to even old custom maps from 1.6. It's still very much alive.

SirMaster 1y ago

CS2 still has a server browser... At least the matchmaking option is so much better at making real competitive matches with players though now too. I like that both options exist.

bigums 1y ago

I have so many memories as a kid have so much fun on these servers. You guys had the rogue with almost complete invisibility. I played dust2 WC3 mod so much, hiding in weird corners with a knife waiting for someone to walk around the corner hoping it wasn’t whatever class had 300hp. I owe much of my career in tech to counter strike. I learned to manage servers hosting clan websites, security and programming making the sites and “borrowing” designs from Clan Templates or whatever the company was that had the awesome animated flash headers. I remember learning about IDORs and SQL injection, before I even knew what it was called. I learned 3d modeling with MilkShape for custom skins and models. Made dozens of surf maps and a few KZ. The AMX Mod community was so helpful learning to program. I think it was Small to write mods. Thanks for the trip down memory lane. That was a pivotal moment in my life. I learned how to control a computer and found my passion.

billfruit 1y ago

Does not ranked matchmaking make for more competitive matches, a bit like if you play ranked in lichess it matches with someone of your own level, and you have a real chance of improving your own level over a period of time. There is seems to be lot of negativity against ranked ladders in the gaming community, but isn't that what would be best system to play with people of your own skill level.

amonavis 1y ago
Not everybody wants to play competitively, especially when it's a band of close friends who play almost exclusively with each other regularly.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
o11c 1y ago
Even disregarding the other comment, not necessarily. For anything but 1-vs-1, individual skill gets smeared into the non-enemy (ally for team games, or everyone for a free-for-all) average. Remember that cooperation isn't an individual skill (unless the meta is complete, I guess); it relies on knowing your specific partners. And besides ... it's perfectly normal for a task-oriented group to have people at a variety of skill levels. If anything, homogeneity is what's strange. This does change what interesting interactions happen, but by no means prevents them.
- slowlyform 1y ago
  >For anything but 1-vs-1, individual skill gets smeared into the non-enemy (ally for team games, or everyone for a free-for-all) average. It's a bit more nuanced than that, CS is a 5v5 game yes, but at low rank it's a lot more depedent on individual skills. I love community game servers but a lot of time those are for fooling around and not much the competitive skills.
rimunroe 1y ago
> Does not ranked matchmaking make for more competitive matches, a bit like if you play ranked in lichess it matches with someone of your own level, and you have a real chance of improving your own level over a period of time. I don't like playing a game where I need to worry about ranking systems. It adds a layer which I'm just not interested in. It's fine if I die more often than other people. Some of my fondest memories are of watching someone much more skilled than me absolutely steamroll my team. If you're playing with people you know, a vastly more skilled player becomes a fun challenge for you to try and overcome together.

winrid 1y ago

You can still play this way. I still mostly play WolfET because modern FPS games are too stressful and too much work.

kcaseg 1y ago
Haha I remember almost crying when I was 12 because I couldn’t get a single kill in ET. Crazy that no one makes a modern ET clone, such a unique gameplay, it would be an instant hit, just add some buzzwords „mission based tactical shooter with classes and progression“
- winrid 1y ago
  Nobody that plays it wants a modern clone. You can just play ETLegacy.
LambdaAlaDelta 1y ago
I reinstalled it recently but I got baited so hard at all the servers filled with bots. For a second there I thought, "this game is totally NOT DEAD". Sadly, I couldnt find any non bot filled server with a decent ping.
- winrid 1y ago
  The FA clan servers usually have 40-60 people online mid day during my TZ. I get around 70 ping but whatever.

racemic 1y ago

I've lurked on HN for years, but I had to create an account just to respond to your post. I operated these servers – perhaps my handle is still familiar. I remember you for sure! I'm touched that you and so many others still have fond memories of that time. It was such a gratifying experience to build out that server network and the accompanying integrations that attracted so many and built such a great community. I miss the days in college when I had time to work on stuff like that just for the love of it. I hope you are doing well!

dev0p 1y ago
This kind of interaction is what makes me miss the "old internet" the most...
- TimByte 1y ago
  People just made stuff for the fun of it
  - lukan 1y ago
    That still happens. You just have to look a bit more for it.
    - dc10tonite 1y ago
      Agreed. I think we probably even have better tools to search for things now, but there's just so much more that in some ways it's harder to find that kind of stuff.
- sneak 1y ago
  We’re all still here. Build communities. Find, join, and support existing ones.
- arkh 1y ago
  My intuition is it still exists. This "old internet" sentiment is due to the fact it was mostly academics in their world and geeks in theirs on internet at the time. Then it made it easier for everyone to use so everyone used it. But I bet there are still the same proportion of geeks in the population. Which are still socializing on niche area of internet. We don't see it because we're old farts and have jobs and habits so we won't be trawling what are the current young geek channels. It was forum, IRC, ICQ and their ancestors for us. It is some other things for them. The story about the group of teenagers embedding messages in the One Million Checkboxes database shows "the old internet" is still alive.

Arisaka1 1y ago

The other grossly understated downside of lacking server browsers is how the player nowadays relies on the system to match him with the "best match" they can get. This opens the door to all sorts of skinner box manipulations, such as the game shoving you into teams where the probability of you winning is low, only to put you into a match where the probability of winning is high. The ability to introduce randomization of reward around a layer of "skill issue" and plausible deniability for the matchmaker. Elo/bronze hell exists because even the worst players can just swing up and down their rank, whereas if you didn't had any other choice but play with whoever is in your local server (or LAN part, but I digress) then the only solution for you is to observe and adjust. I'm from Greece and, we used to have lots of LAN arenas before fast internet connections became accessible. I'd get my face pushed by skilled people, and while I'd feel bad about it, the fact that I was playing with my friends and enjoyed myself made it all tolerable. Eventually I gave up feeling bad having negative k/d ratios, and could finally spectate and learn from others. The result was me becoming good enough to join my local CS clan. We never became best in the country, but I have really fond memories both from chilling as friends and highlights from matches.

TimByte 1y ago

Totally agree on the point about toxicity. Back then, when you kept running into the same folks, there was some accountability

999900000999 1y ago

There's a difference between being toxic within a community. The community can self correct, it can ban people. And if you don't like a community, you can leave at any time. Compared to being toxic anonymously. Unless you get banned by an algorithm, your free to just suck. However, I was in one CS clan where a girl gave out her real number to a random guy. Within minutes she was getting spam calls and other not great stuff. I miss my CS clan though. There was some tension and arguments, but that's inherent to any structure with people. Funny enough one of my mates couldn't believe I wasn't white over voice chat. It was like being in this magic world where race didn't matter. Good times. Edit: If someone wants to start an open source realistic-ish multiplayer FPS I'm so down. Invite only community servers. If you suck and cheat we will figure it out and ban you. None of this kernel level anti cheat junk.

throwaway34564 1y ago
Interested to have a chat regarding an open-source FPS. I know discord is a bad look, but just to get connected @joe3178
- 999900000999 1y ago
  Realistically, we would need to raise like 10 million so we could work full time on it and buy quality art. Outside of that it's just a pipe dream. If someone who actually knows how to run a business, wants to start this up I would gladly work at half of my corporate rate. If I was a billionaire I literally would do nothing but fund to open source video game projects. And then maybe pull a Red Hat and monetize it somehow.
  - throwaway34564 1y ago
    A high-performance, multiplayer MVP would be the first order of business. No need for art so early. Remember fy_iceworld - that did not need much art! The question is, what to build it on. Godot?
    - 999900000999 1y ago

shawabawa3 1y ago

As a counter point I absolutely hated server browsers. Spending ages waiting for slots to free up on decent servers. Trying a new server only to find it had 100 shitty mods installed. Servers where the admins randomly kicked or banned people, or blatantly cheated Even just joining mid game was annoying Give me matchmaking any day

gxs 1y ago

The problem is with monetization Whenever/wherever a crowd of a certain size assembles consistently, you’ll soon have a giant corporation frothing at the mouth to monetize it Why let these people organize communities for themselves? How on earth would we capture metrics and sell them shit? This is why everything is awesome until corporations show up - social media is the perfect example I don’t mean to come across as some anti corporate lunatic, it’s just the reality of the situation

goosejuice 1y ago

I remember that mod. Quite fun. Along with surf, rats, ice world and all the other weird stuff from that era. Probably played on T3Houston!

sylens 1y ago

Absolutely. I talk all the time about how I miss server browsers. Perhaps similar to the self hosting movement, we will see a similar movement in gaming to reclaim multiplayer games. The fact that a game can "die" and become unsupported now if it fails to find an audience at launch is crazy - just let people run their own servers if they want! We also don't need content roadmaps for these games if you give the community modding and map tools.

aschampion 1y ago

Like all AAA media in the age of supposedly social media, games became hostile to self-organizing communities that sustain themselves, because they want a push model for consumption where the producers decide what you see, when, and whom with. It commodifies media into generic content, emphasizes short lived novelty, naturally structures around subscription (and increasingly fragmented and numerous ones), and as a bonus keeps all of your activity observable so you also do the labor of saleable data creation for them. Nearly all my worthwhile experiences in multiplayer games were related to permanent server communities (CS clan servers, 2fort2furious, SWG emulator servers, ridiculous minecraft servers that were effectively collaborative volumetric databases for external design tools).

dannersy 1y ago

I was an east coast player but still loved the T3Houston WC3 servers.

rimunroe 1y ago
Do you remember the name you went by on there?

Galaco 1y ago

I wouldn't be playing video games anymore if there were no more games with dedicated servers. Not from a moral standpoint, or from a competitive standpoint, but purely from the community perspective. My youth was spent on Counterstrike: Source playing zombie mod, and then for years mapping for Zombie Escape, as a way to give back to those communities that gave me so much. I was never a mic user, and didn't use in game chat a huge amount either, but over time those regulars would still greet me and say hello. I rarely play now, but even after 17 years, when I show up once a year or so I'm always welcomed back in by all those who recognize me and admins switch to some fun maps (or some less fun ones that I made...), and we have a short catchup on life. Certainly many of these communities are on life-support, and most are long dead, but in all those people who play in these communities are the remnants of the communities who had just a little contribution in shaping the person I am today. I'll never forget when one community held a birthday event for me; for 8 hours we played every map I'd ever made, and won them all, with a full 64/64 server for the majority. And I would never have experienced this if I hadn't happened to open Counterstrike: Source for the very first time, and my server browser's first entry just happened to be an early zombie mod server. Shoutout to some of the old ZM/ZE communities: Syndicate Gamers, Plaguefest, i3D, icannt, ZES, Unloze & many more. ZE drove my interest to mapping, which drove my interest in Sourcemod, which drove my interest in programming, which led me to my career, which led me to my wife. Thank you.

pruetj 1y ago

Wow, I played on your servers as a 9-10 year old. I lived in Houston and joined your server simply because they said Houston and I assumed my ping could make it there. I became obsessed with the WC3 mod. Handle was probably Coomie at the time. I still remember invisible humans, elves with evasion, orcs with massive nade damage, undead with life steal… good times. I didn’t know how to spell “ultimate” so it took me forever to actually be able to bind an ult to keyboard.

cynic_ 1y ago

These things still exists in CS (though not as popular in US but that's a reflection of CS losing popularity there) People right now are having the same community experiences in custom server, or with official Valve, or third party like FaceIt... From crazy custom mods to try hard competitive games. From time to time I stumble on some community servers when looking for a better DM warm-up server. Players and admin talking to each other like they were regulars, admin flying around in a batman skin killing a camper with lightning bolt, all the usual admin/community tools and more... also all the laughing, banter, playing songs and crap on the mic... Would you have tried to join in? Let's just face it we've abandoned and stopped seeking it as we got older.

nonethewiser 1y ago

Oh man, brings me back. That public server was pot smoker's lounge (PSL) for me. No AWP!

Oceoss 1y ago

Warcraft 3! My favorite game of all time. I got so addicted to it, one has to have self-control

throw0101a 1y ago

> I will forever mourn the general demise of server browsers. Too many games require you to use matchmaking systems, which means it's very hard to build up a small community in-game anymore. It's been many moons since I was into gaming, but back in the RtCW [1][2] days there was a bunch of regulars that played on a server run my (IIRC) Charter. There were many servers in the browse list, and I'm sure many had a community of regulars just like we did. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Castle_Wolfenstein [2] A Linux client was actually released, which is what I mostly used. (Actually running it on FreeBSD's Linuxator.)

MrBrobot 1y ago

Undoubtedly I’ve seen / played with you at one point or another. I spent many years in these kinds of servers, because with active mods they weren’t toxic. You kept the cheaters at bay, and they were reliable places to jump in, frag and chat for hours. I used a handful of different names over the years, but usually bounced between variations of “Trigger,” “Asylum,” and “Shifty”. I miss the days you could bop into a server, meet a handful of people, end up on a CAL team with them, and find friends for the next few decades. Best case today, everyone in online games now might as well be a ghost. They’re just strangers in passing if they talk at all. And worst case - they’re overly toxic, loud, and abusing the mic. The only communities I belong to now are the ones I build myself and with friends I’ve made in real life - and we jump between games together now. I'm afraid that time we long for is gone now as we've all gotten older, busier, and moved on to other things. So long, and thanks for all the fish.

guardiangod 1y ago

Oh yeah I used to play on T3Houston all the time, back in ~2003 (as Undead). There weren't that many W3 mod servers that had a consistent player population. I lived in PNW though so the latency was always around ~80ms.

rimunroe 1y ago
Do you remember what name you went by?

sidewndr46 1y ago

The move is intentional, it's extremely hard to sell someone microtransactions if they find themselves a member of a tight knit community they enjoy playing a game with. If they are isolated and believe the only mechanism for advancement is microtransactions, they are much more likely to spend money.

opello 1y ago

I have fond memories of playing on those modded community servers once in a while, it was a nice variety in the world of rats and regular gameplay. While there is still some amount of it around in the Counter-Strike 2 era, there's a strong disincentive for joining random community servers when there have been client vulnerabilities that allow arbitrary code execution.

ghilston 1y ago

Warcraft 3 remains my favorite game to this day, simply due to the sheer volume of custom maps you could play. I can't explain how excited I was for the Reforged version of the game and how disappointed I was when it flopped. My favorite part of games is learning the mechanics and coming up with strategies. Which paired well with an endless supply of new game modes to try. I have been unable to find any modern game that is both active and has a series of custom maps. If anyone knows of any, please let me know.

daymanstep 1y ago
Does StarCraft 1 & 2 count? Brood war is still active in Korea

rimunroe 1y ago

If anyone else played on the T3Houston servers, there's a (mostly dead) Steam group which would be a solid place to reconnect in https://steamcommunity.com/groups/t3houston https://steamcommunity.com/groups/t3houston

butlike 1y ago

Absolutely. The unique flavor the admins of your server added were something completely special. As an aside. I always appreciated the street justice the admins would sometime enact. Running through the level with invincibility and godlike mods just gibbing everyone left and right.

astrobe_ 1y ago

This inspired me to check on Cube2: Sauerbraten. Still alive? Yep, barely. I guess some online games never die. In the case of Cube2, the game isn't really competitive (servers have no lobby, players can join and leave games anytime, even switch teams in the middle of the game sometimes when it's not the server itself that moves you to the other team on respawn in order to balance the game a bit) and it is one less toxic component of online gaming. People were having a break and talk about various topics in the chat while watching the ongoing game.

pluto_modadic 1y ago

what is a server browser? is it like how on disboard you can find discord groups?

Linkd 1y ago
Anything from a simple to filterable list of servers with names and player counts. Most importantly: it gives the player consistent and complete control of their experience vs an auto-match-making algorithm that randomly throws you into lobbies.

2w3e4r 1y ago

100% - local servers is what led to having lan events in your city, less toxic players and its just funner running into the same players. those were the good old days

yerp 1y ago

OMG. I also just created an account on this site after being in read-only mode forever just to say 'Hi'. We played together basically daily for quite some time in the early 2000s. I remember you and CamCam. My handle here is the same as it was in CS. I spent countless hours in college in this server leveling up every class to the max and trying to break the game with the 'spider man rope'. Great times!

rimunroe 1y ago
hi!!! If you're on Steam still feel free to add me: https://steamcommunity.com/id/stealthpengu1n/ https://steamcommunity.com/id/stealthpengu1n/ The rope mod was always one of my favorites. I think I asked rACEmic to add it. I have distinct memories of putting up votes in the server to see if people wanted me to enable it, especially in de_rats or de_jeepathon2k