00's, the Decade of Easier Games (Wall of Text)

[blizzid]

Believe it or not... there was actually a group of elitist Quake players who considered Quake III a dumbed down version of the original. (Same goes for Quake 2 vs Quake, but even more so.) The fast weapon respawns meant you couldn't control a map the same way, the railgun was dubbed a skilless noob weapon... there were all kinds of complaints. There were also a lot of Team Fortress players who considered Team Fortress Classic to be severely dumbed down compared to the original. (Team Fortress was originally a mod for Quake.)

This sort of elitism has been around for as long as competitive gaming.