Biggest step forward for gaming in the 21st century

[Chazore]

SvennoJ said:

zeldaring said:

I  think online gaming was good for just about everyone like how can someone say online gaming is negative experience. Just about every gamer I know enjoys online gaming. I mainly play single player but the online games I played were so addicting I had to stop.

It was a negative experience for me, still is, and now more than ever.

I came from LAN multiplayer which is vastly superior to online multiplayer. No lag, in the same space with friends. I started LAN gaming with Duke Nukem 3D and carried on until UT2004. So many great memories, so much fun! Just as good as couch co-op.

The rise in online gaming took all that fun away. No more effort to come together, rather play online with often shitty voice sound quality. When I got older friends didn't have the time anymore to play at the same time so you end up with random people, which is 100x worse experience.

My days of Everquest were so addictive since we combined LAN with online play. I was playing side by side with my fiancee, together playing Everquest and later WoW until we didn't have time for that anymore (kids arrived)

Anyway in the end the rise of online has brought more negative things (eternal patches, monetization, always online, decline in couch co-op games) than positive. I rarely game online anymore. I recently tried again with GT7 and it ended up confirming why I don't do that anymore. Lot of waiting, assholes online, disconnects, dealing with lag.

Online gaming is mostly a negative experience for me.

Yeah, not gonna lie, I feel like as big of a step as online was, it was never as good as LAN was, even today (imo).

I grew up on LAN parties, and the zero lag issues were what kept me and friends coming back to hook up our machines and spend a few nights gaming. Online gaming on the other hand actually caused us to slowly drift apart, and the lag certainly didn't help either. I also found myself playing less and less competitive PVP-based games, mostly due to the fact that not every competitive game came with fully dedicated servers, which meant we had to suffer under P2P connections, which meant more lag, or worse; gamers who induce lag on purpose to gain an upper hand.

While playing online in same games may be great for me sometimes, I would still prefer going back to the LAN days if I had the chance.

Also as a last note, online gaming allowed for a host of bad practices, like MT's, battlepasses, and the eventual slow death of LAN itself (barely any game these days supports it, let alone local split screen). LAN barely had any negatives, but online still does to this day.