Big one for me is Starsiege: Tribes. One of the raddest online shooters of all time especially with the insane mods people made for it. Someone even made a jank-ass fantasy RPG with that engine that was kind of amazing.
I adored the multiplayer in Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood and severely miss it. One of the most unique MP experiences I’ve ever had. So many interesting mechanics, great map and character design, and a lot of terrifically exciting matches.
Chromehounds, I absolutely loved the mech building system in that game, the persistent online war, and the mechwarrior-esque combat. I never had any hopes of a sequel, and I guess that's only reinforced now that From Software is just a Souls factory.
I still think about Rubies of Eventide every so often, which was an MMO that was running right before the WoW boom. Was the first MMO I heavily engaged with besides Runescape, just a bunch of fond memories running around with guild mates in what felt like an incredibly expansive world at the time.
GunZ: The Duel. Lost a ton of hours of my early teens to that game. Flawed as it was, there's still nothing quite like it. It's very similar to Smash Bros. Melee in the sense that the entire reason it had so much depth and had a high skill ceiling is entirely because of glitches.
Definitely SOCOM II, though I understand that game would not work today. I miss that experience full stop.
Yeah, same with original SOCOM. Halo 2 was another one that was missed, but more due to all the memories. Was still playing these games until the end, not regularly, but would definitely jump on for an afternoon or with friends for a night every few months with until the servers shutdown.
LOTRO. It's not technically dead, dead but it's pretty much been put out to pasture and with Amazon allegedly developing a new MMO in the universe, it's only a matter of time until it shutters for good.
The game was awesome when it first released but then gradually got worse and worse with each expansion. They tried really hard to chase WoW, while failing to realize that the reason a lot of people were into it was for all the ways it wasn't WoW.
Warhammer 40K Space Marine. They just did right by that game, and the multiplayer was fun as heck. Too bad they waited too long on a horde/survival mode. A damn shame.
Tribes 2 (especially on paintball servers) and Soldier of Fortune 2. So many good memories.
For a really obscure one, there was this game from around the mid-aughts that involved a big group of players controlling rolling penguin balls that had to roll and glide to the end of the course, think a battle royale version of that minigame from Monkey Ball. I'd love to see that come back.
Edit: Oh, and Blood. The MP came back for a bit when Fresh Supply was released, but that lasted like a week. Shame.
@dirtybirdy: Damn wtf happened with Hawken? I felt like it never officially released. Was always so close to reaching 1.0, in my memory, at least. Seems similar games came out and just ate its lunch.
i didnt realize how much I missed Socom 2 until this thread.... more recently I wish Titanfall 2 had more players online, probably my favorite FPS online.
@development: It had a tumultuous and twisted path. The original developer closed up shop but then the game was rescued by a different company with a lot of promises to the PC community about ongoing support. They then ported it to consoles and promptly shut down all the PC servers, it was a bit of a shit-show. I've always hoped someone will reverse engineer the netcode and get an illegal server up and running.
Drakan, Monkey Island, Shogo, Gabriel Knight, No One Lives Forever, Black & White, Dungeon Keeper, Populous, Sacrifice, Giants Citizen Kabuto, GunZ the duel and a true new RTS that captures the spirit of what made Warcraft & Starcraft great.
Earth and Beyond. It was one of my first mmo experiences and I was obsessed with that game.
City of Heroes. I'm playing the fan servers that popped up recently and am enjoying myself. But there's just this feeling in the back of my head that it's going to come crashing down at some point so I can't get into it full.
C&C Renegade. I miss the multiplayer. It was amazing and no one has ever done something like it since. Which makes me sad beyond belief. It wasn't just about shooting. The strategy of sneaking into the bases while the enemy is being distracted and blowing up the right building. Or making a last second detour because you know you're not gonna make it and at least you can get something. The way team work was necessary. Playing defensively while other team mates try to do above so you're countering all the things you would be doing on offence. Learning the map strategies and how to counter them is what made it. They are still drilled into my brain all these years later.
Shadowrun 360: a super fun shooter, with awesome fantasy elements. Playing as a sword wielding, teleporting troll never got old.
Nosgoth: another great multiplayer game that was torn apart for trying to use a license from a well loved single player series. The art style was great and the playstyles for the vampires have yet to be beat by any of the other hero shooters.
War Of The Vikings: a pretty simple sword fighting game but with very satisfying combat and just enough depth. It's up close combat really reminded me of playing the original gears of war online.
My 360 - I know not everything on it is shut down yet and fingers crossed with the continued backwards compatibility of the Series X there will hopefully be a few games out there that get continued support. But I miss just turning that thing on, seeing countless friends online and having the ability to choose what game in might hop onto online with someone. It was so painful to just watch that friends list get less and less active as everyone (except me) on there moved over to the PS4 - only two got an Xbox One which was no help in the early days where there was practically no backwards compatibility. I'll really miss those boom 360 days more than even my formative gaming years.
Aw yeah, Nosgoth was quite cool. Honestly didn't even know about the whole Legacy of Kain tie until it went down, i just thought they came up with some really interesting classes. Not many teambased games let you fly around the area, swoop down to catch an enemy and drag him away from his teammates before dropping him down. Or stalking from the shadows and then suddenly poucing on enemies. Honestly the only game that sort of approaches that game is Natural Selection 2 with it's aliens v humans combat but that was still very much an indoor game with limited ways to approach the enemy.
Also a shoutout to Age of Mythology & the Impressions Games citybuilders (Zeus, Poseidon, Caesar, Emperor). Historical citybuilders with a nice layer of mythology on top is very much my thing.
When I was in college, our favorite games to play were Tom Clancy's Rainbow 6 (the original), Command and Conquer: Red Alert, and Starcraft. All three were great LAN games and being in a dorm with T1 internet (which was fast at the time) was the perfect setting for nightly multiplayer matches in any of these games.
So many ridiculously complex systems. Building sets of implants just to boost your treatment high enough to get into other sets of implants all while running around Bor begging for a buff to boost the amount of space for other buffs you need to beg for, so you can slap on different implants, just to get that damn Bellum Coat on at 160... Ah, good times.
It's still up, but I don't think I can go back to it now. Maybe they'll do something special for the 20th anniversary next year.
I wonder if they ever figured out exactly how that offense/defense slider worked.
Not really that much into SW but that game was awesome.
Yeah :( My first MMORPG and I was blown away by visiting player cities, their communities and browsing their shops. Cantinas full of people socializing. I guess your first MMO is probably always your favorite but every MMO I've played since always has most of the world instanced off and with no day/night cycle. Just not the same - doesn't feel like an alive world like SWG did.
City of Heroes and Super Monday Night Combat. I spent so many hours playing CoH and it was my first real introduction to online games. Convinced my parents to let me get it, then realizing it had a subscription meant that I had to pay for that too. It was all worth it.
SMNC was just fun and it deserved better than the raw deal it got.
Not really that much into SW but that game was awesome.
Yeah :( My first MMORPG and I was blown away by visiting player cities, their communities and browsing their shops. Cantinas full of people socializing. I guess your first MMO is probably always your favorite but every MMO I've played since always has most of the world instanced off and with no day/night cycle. Just not the same - doesn't feel like an alive world like SWG did.
I mean I'm not a total MMO expert but I believe the genre has went against that kind of player building stuff hard.
I also loved that feel. i remember just being new to the game and I ended up just happening across a player village and they were nice to me and took me in. I was the medic and handled that part of thing for them. It was a cool sense of community I haven't had in a game since.
It was not a great game technically but that stuff was special to it.
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