Multiplayer games that you enjoyed but are dead now

[snoek]

Bad Company 2

 

[Tweed]

Tremulous : those huge labyrinthine space station maps full of secrets paths, shortcuts or lovely details. Wonderful asymmetric gameplay - Alien vs human. Nice variety of play styles in each team. Had some weird community maps by the end. One of the earliest indy success I can think of. Ball of fun, and somehow very comfy.

I loved the shit out of Tremulous until the Gloomers started shitting things up. I'd had enough when I realized I'd been squelched by a player for telling them to "cry more" because they wouldn't stop bitching about losing and how unbalanced the game supposedly was (not my fault if you can't stop a painsaw rush). The only person who could have handed out admin would have been R1CH.

 

[anvi]

Vanguard Saga of Heroes, I liked it about as much as EverQuest. Made by a lot of the same people. But an evil corporation who hates PC gamers called Microsoft fucked them (and us) during the process so it all fell apart. They ended up releasing it unfinished and buggy and it was all a big disaster. But I loved playing it, I had a new PC at the time so the performance issues most people had were not a problem for me and the bugs I could live with because I liked everything else so much. Most people had zero patience for it so quit in the first few levels and the game limped on for a while and eventually closed. There is an emulator project trying to bring it back and they are awesome but they don't have access to the original database so they have to kind of remake it themselves. So even about 10 years later it still far away from being like the game was when it was live. So it's kinda dead, but being slowly resurrected over the years.

I really love this game though... The music and graphics and atmosphere, amazing classes. I love beating some of the high level dungeons. It sucks so much for me that this game was so mistreated. And to see megabucks corporations making their own new retarded MMOs while this masterpiece rots on a harddrive. I guess I could mention the original Everquest, that's dead too. P99 is the nearest thing and it's not really near. The official servers are a million miles away from the original game so that original game is basically gone forever.

 

[anvi]

I loved the early Unreal Tournaments, sad they died out. The fps I loved the most though was the original Team Fortress which was before Valve. It's such a great game but the Valve Team Fortress stole the idea but it's not as fun for me because of the shooting mechanics. The original was based on Quake so had rockets that blasted people across the room and there was an extra skill to bouncing people around and meant that often you were shooting all angles, up in the air and stuff. Playing the Halflife version in comparison seems retarded, everything is on a level plane, you hardly move the mouse. You probably need just as much skill because you have to be very accurate, but without bouncing people around it felt lame to me. Also the original game had amazing grenades which have always been the thing I liked the most in fps. The Halflife version nerfed or removed them. It's a huge downgrade to anyone who played the original, but like Betamax and whatever else, the best product doesn't always win.

The original game came back in various forms over the decades, there was a Quake 3 Team Fortress and standalone version made by some fans or something. I played them all, loved them all for years. But they had low populations even back in the day, because everyone flocked to the Halflife versions. The only multiplayer fpss I liked as much as that was Duke3d and the Tribes games. They all had kind of tragic histories too.

 

[Gostak]

TF?
Weapons Factory UT was where it was at for me! :D
Cyborg Demoman Engineer Gunner Infiltrator Marine Recon Sniper Pyro Medic
The skills, weapons, grenades of these classes and how they interacted, it was all so well designed and playing it was damn fun at that time.

 

[Hag]

Tremulous : those huge labyrinthine space station maps full of secrets paths, shortcuts or lovely details. Wonderful asymmetric gameplay - Alien vs human. Nice variety of play styles in each team. Had some weird community maps by the end. One of the earliest indy success I can think of. Ball of fun, and somehow very comfy.

I loved the shit out of Tremulous until the Gloomers started shitting things up. I'd had enough when I realized I'd been squelched by a player for telling them to "cry more" because they wouldn't stop bitching about losing and how unbalanced the game supposedly was (not my fault if you can't stop a painsaw rush). The only person who could have handed out admin would have been R1CH.

When was it ? I wasn't reading the forums so I missed all the drama. I simply recall that after the announce of the 1.2 testing things got slower (community split ?) and slowly the server list shrank, with an increasing number of user maps of variable quality.

 

[gamerguy]

Vanguard Saga of Heroes, I liked it about as much as EverQuest. Made by a lot of the same people. But an evil corporation who hates PC gamers called Microsoft fucked them (and us) during the process so it all fell apart. They ended up releasing it unfinished and buggy and it was all a big disaster. But I loved playing it, I had a new PC at the time so the performance issues most people had were not a problem for me and the bugs I could live with because I liked everything else so much. Most people had zero patience for it so quit in the first few levels and the game limped on for a while and eventually closed. There is an emulator project trying to bring it back and they are awesome but they don't have access to the original database so they have to kind of remake it themselves. So even about 10 years later it still far away from being like the game was when it was live. So it's kinda dead, but being slowly resurrected over the years.

I really love this game though... The music and graphics and atmosphere, amazing classes. I love beating some of the high level dungeons. It sucks so much for me that this game was so mistreated. And to see megabucks corporations making their own new retarded MMOs while this masterpiece rots on a harddrive. I guess I could mention the original Everquest, that's dead too. P99 is the nearest thing and it's not really near. The official servers are a million miles away from the original game so that original game is basically gone forever.

Dude, I dunno anyone that played that game. I played on a pvp server as a warrior and had a blast. (Clonk)

I started playing after they took out the leap or charge warriors had... but I could still put several attacks in one macro and pretty much one-shot anything I could get close too.

There was this loud AF druid that would one-shot people... I loved exploiting someone's invis bard song and would go druid hunting. I miss real world pvp in an uninstanced world. Group pvp in pve context. Even EQ2 did some fun things with pvp till they gave up.



There was a big problem with enough content. There was a cool armor set quest, but after that it was all empty zones. Just unpopulated really. Unfinished.

If the rumors are true, it all went up someone's nose or vein. If you remember, attacks were supposed to all be tied to your next swing and weapon speed, but it never came together... the game was redesigned right before release. Whoever had to clean up that mess made it work! It was a bit imbalanced pvp and buggy.


It's a pity... the 'chunking' wasn't that great, but the zones loaded, and everything was beautiful, especially the gear and how it fit together.


Shame.

 

[anvi]

I wish I tried that server! I did PVP in early EverQuest and it's the most exciting thing I've ever done in gaming. So sad we can't have something like that today. Vanguard had even more potential. Shame what happened! The development history is pretty interesting, they tried things and changed the design in development. Like at one point you could target individual body parts. They simplified some things like mages could react to the enemies and counterspell them or convert the spell into a buff or something. All that was supposed to be more reactive too.

I liked that you could learn spells from enemies in some parts of the world. And there were some synergy bonuses between some classes, so instead of just spamming a combat routine people would be better off doing to suit the party. I liked the dungeon which you couldn't get inside unless you overheard an NPC say the password and then you had to type it to get in. And the dungeon with crystals that drain your mana if you stand too close. Lots of nice ideas. But yea so unfinished. :/