That game had issues, no doubt, but it was a fun enough time that I actually was bummed out when it announced it was closing. Felt like it was taken away too soon.

Watching old recordings I have of Gundam Evolution... honestly I miss that game.

THEY'RE SENDING MY ASS TO WINDURST HELP

Rec Room wasn't as appealing to me as VRChat back then since it was a little more limited in what the player could do, but I admit there was a charm there that few other social games *had*. While it won't happen I'd love for them to at least give us the minigames to play offline/ with custom servers

God, Rec Room is shutting down, eh? I never did put much time into it, but it kinda feels sad to see that part of life going under as well.

What I'd give to have the space to do VR again...

I dunno, a lot of modern MMOs ditch much of their exploration in favor of dungeons and speeding new players along to the late game. It's kinda sad when I think about these older MMOs where getting lost was part of the charm.

It's not *just* number go up, it's exploring a world with your friends and possibly strangers. While I love FF14, one of my biggest issues with it is that it's a story game first, MMO second. You can't really explore. You can't run into DLC areas and die with your equally dumb friends.

Every now and then, I look at comments on videos of these old MMOs, see them talking about all the crazy things they'd get up to and how they'd log on with friends they met through there to go exploring virtual worlds. It's become clear to me over the years that the appeal of MMOs is different...

One of the more fascinating things about being so big into old MMOs is seeing all the private servers for games long dead, or what you've never heard of before. There's entire games out there that hold cherished memories to people you've never met, they probably still think about it now.

That would be because it’s free on OldUnreal now, runs better on modern hardware from the community updates too

Playing Unreal Tournament 2004 baked is actually kinda awesome. Maybe I should set up a server sometime and do this lol

And unfortunately in these days, there is basically no real space like this for kids... closest we had is Roblox and even that had plenty of notable issues *before* everything as of late.

Which... actually leads into another tidbit that I only recently realized. Maplestory was kind of the perfect game for kids. Social, and nothing in it was super mature. Not that it isn't still the case, but old Maple was also super simple with little to keep track of for casual play.

Screenshot of an oldschool Maplestory private server, Mapleroyals. A level 15 magician, Midemi, is standing in the forests of Elliana, with a Slime (lv6) and a Stump (lv8) on the right. In the top right there's something about a goby leech If you remember oldschool Maplestory, this probably sent you back.

While you were never really going to get *lost*, you'd always have new places to see. And the hidden maps were part of the fun there too. Could find yourself in higher level areas by accident if you poked your nose in places it didn't belong!

I still remember getting murdered by Lupin as a mage

I dunno about anyone else, but exploration is a major factor for me in RPGs. I don't have the greatest memory, so playing the Classic private server and being able to see all the nooks and crannies again was great. So to have that removed... unfortunately kinda makes the world boring.

Lately I've been playing Maplestory both modern and classic (via private servers) and seeing how things have changed. some thing have definitely gotten better while there's also a number of things that just feel weird in modern.

They took out exploration and diverse beginner maps for example...

It's a mild frustration, but I'll manage. I figure I might as well complete this map and have it be messy and amateurish rather than throwing the entire map away for issues expected of a beginner.

Also I guess the term Online RPG (ORPG) is missing in today's lexicon, given how often I hear things like Phantasy Star Online and Atlyss referred to as "MMOs". Which is especially funny in the case of PSO given at max you usually have like... what, 12 players? Not exactly "massive".

If there's anything that repeatedly does my head in with Quake mapping is how it feels like I'd have an easier time if I could merge vertexes like in Blender. Some brushes kinda go off the grid on occasion and I often struggle to figure out why or how.

It’s basic, simple and all that but man it is surprisingly fun to throw together the beginnings of a map… I’ll work more on it later today, add some weapons and start on the other floating islands

Honestly the way mapping was done in Quake is not too bad. It's fairly easy to understand in the end, with only a couple of confusion points (mostly on the entity level). I guess brushes were mostly removed from mapping in recent days due to their inefficiencies, but man I do love how it feels.

Learning to map for old FPS games is fascinating. It honestly looks more intimidating than it really is. It’s more just learning how to navigate than anything. Once you got that down, placing brushes around is pretty easy.

BSP is fun!

Maplestory music is fascinating. No other game that I've played has music that takes me back the same way as it does. Listening to Lith Harbor theme and immediately thinking back on making it to level 7 and getting on the boat to finally get exploring (and dying in Sleepywood misadventures)

But also I miss the days of community mapping... never fully knowing what will be on the server until you've downloaded the map. It could be something as chaotic and silly as mario_kart or a surprisingly competent map like de_losttemple. It's a factor I miss in shooters these days...

I have a special soft spot for older shooters. There's a certain casual chaos to them that gives them a timeless appeal. I'll always prefer playing on games where I can turn the server into a mess of bullets over more carefully curated experiences. I think that's just the kind of player I am.

Thanks to OldUnreal, I'm motivated to learn how to make maps for Unreal Tournament 2004 now. This might end up being a... fascinating learning experience because I remember the last time I tried to map for an old shooter the software did my head in. Though I am a lot older now...

To clarify, I'm not opposed to heavy violence in media, but usually I prefer it used as a means for horror (see Resi 2 remake).

I dunno I've always had a partial ick from how far modern MK goes with the violence. It's one thing for someone to explode into blood, another for someone's skin to be peeled off and their internals torn out. Mostly due to it being a reward/ show off kinda affair.

I'm reasonably excited for Invincible VS. For a couple reasons, but one is that I'm glad to see another darker vibe fighting game in the space. And it keeps the violence more on the cartoony, over the top side from the looks of things which is similarly nice.

I suppose in the same vein though, it shows how helpful even having one simple fighter can be, as the two shown here really latched onto Granblue Versus Rising. Not every game needs to be simple, but it doesn't hurt to have a little entry point to teach newer players either