by catalyticCthulhu Sat Feb 12, 2011 5:46 am
I wasn't a die-hard fan of TEE-EFF-TWO, so I am not an authoritative voice on this one at all(but almost anything else..... ;)). I enjoyed most of the updates when I would actually sit down and play some.. But this community slowly but surely losing its overall tenacity as far as actually playing multiplayer games put a damper on my own personal zeal towards playing games like this.
I only really enjoy playing TF2(and to a lesser extent DODS, though I can enjoy myself pubbing that fairly often) with good (albeit online) friends. This crazy bunch of assholes gave me some of my most cherished gaming memories(though to be fair, years of hedonism have left me drawing blanks and seeing blurs when I go much further back than the weeks after the Church of Norris fractured).
Moving on, this touches on an aspect of the philosophy of games. Online games have an inherent double-edged sword when it comes to keeping things fresh. It is a great service to the gaming community when a developer freely updates a game that they have already even spent their profits from initial sales on their hookers and blow. Regular bugfixes, anti-cheat measures, and the king of it all.. new content is fantastic. The downside is the game evolves and the loving thoughts you have for your game can suddenly become merely memories.
Unfortunately you will have to accept this fate most of the time. Remember a game for what it was to you, not what it may be today. MMO's are especially harsh with this reality. Anyone who played a first or second generation MMORPG at launch is all to familiar with how much harder, time-consuming, and ultimately rewarding the game was initially and now you have some prepubescent punks whining because it took them more than 34 seconds to get to the other side of a zone on account of the devs raising the level requirement for the fastest mount(or something similarly ridiculous =P).
My favorite MMO to date is Dark Age of Camelot. I played in beta, then bought the game. I ended up getting a coworker who was a huge D&D nerd when he was in high school to buy a PC solely because I showed him DAOC and he fell in love with it. I made a ton of friends in game and slowly watched the game change into something almost unrecognizable. DAOC eventually even opened up special servers that were essentially old versions of the game. It didn't have the newest expansion(that added a lot of gimmicky stuff to be a bit more like WoW to some degree), it reverted back to the original PvP(RvR, as it were) zones instead of the brand new ones everyone complained about, and a few other things.. I made the right choice.. Not to even try it..
For you see no matter what, I will not relive those fond memories of a game that no longer exists like it did then. My long-winded, ranting point is.... Enjoy your games while you can, cherish the memories, and keep looking for that next great high....