- Reiginko
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- Exalted Mythic Member
Oh man. I don't think there has ever been a "golden age" of b.net. I suppose when the site first came online, before Myth TFL came out, it wasn't too bad, but that was because there was no way the community could actually participate in the site.
Then Myth came out. Bungie.net took on its second role - metaserver for Myth multiplayer games.
The Myth bungie.net community was a little like the b.net forums are these days, but just a little less active. This was made up for by the fact that the bungie.net server was effectively a chat room. As a result, we got all the crap we have here, at pretty much the same rate; there were just fewer people spouting it. Even worse, the rooms weren't structured like the forums are now - there was no off-topic room on bungie.net. This meant that a lot of the crap was stuff nobody cared about - for example, the fact that the paper was too sticky to roll a stick of marijuana. Nobody wants to hear about that, especially when they are screaming about how nobody seems to want to get on with the business of playing a game of Myth.
There were just as many immature people around, and although it was harder to cheat in Myth than it apparently is in Halo 2, there were plenty of TR0 SPKRS around to accuse you of cheating everytime they lost a game. Sooner or later, the gametypes lost any semblance of diversity - BC Tro was all there was to play, since all the eight-year-olds somehow thought that this was in some way fun. How wrong they were.
Sooner or later, Bungie tried to rectify this situation with the addition of unranked rooms on bungie.net. This meant that people who actually wanted to enjoy themselves (who'da thunk it?) and somehow build some sort of community around Myth could extend their repertoire beyond trow on trow fistfights. The unranked rooms did act as a kind of haven from the unbearable nature of the ranked games. But of course, some of the immature people also realised that there was perhaps a little more to Myth strategy than "WUT U CHT MY TRO KIK U HAHAA". So they began to infiltrate unranked games as well.
Myth 2 sort of had the same effect as Halo 2. People complained that the fact that archers were now accurate, in that they could hit a target at a distance of more than two meters, and that the dwarf bottles actually exploded now and then, "noob-ified" the game. Sound familiar? It should.
The situation was perhaps made somewhat worse by the fact that Myth 2 shipped with Fear and Loathing, the editing tools. Very soon, there was not a game to be found should you not want to play yet another tiresome game of WWII. It was unbearable for people who didn't want to wait six days downloading the plug-in (this was in the days when V.90 56k modems were new and exciting, and broadband was just plain showing off).
Still, I must admit that the old Myth iteration of b.net was a lot more fun than the new hotness. For a start, you could get the satisfaction of summarily obliterating the troops commanded by the more irritating members of the community. Somehow, the ability to click "Unleash Ninjas" just isn't the same as seeing your duff convert an oncoming army of thrall into so many pieces of bloody pieces of flesh and armour, flying across the beautifully rendered terrain. Of course, the experience could be a little diluted by the fact that immediately afterwards your view of the action would be somewhat obscured by in-game chat messages along the lines of "WUT NO U CHTR DUFF CNT KIL TRAL I HAV FILMZ HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA". But then you could just block that individual's chat messages from that point onwards.
Actually, I take everything I said back. Those were the good old days. Anyone for some BC Trow?
- Reiginko