Rogue

Here I was thinking that over the past three years, the population of online gamers could only have increased since the last time I was online with a broadband connection. Yet lo and behold, after finally getting ADSL just over a week ago I discover that online gaming is as difficult as ever.

Follow up:

The main problem stems from compatability as far as I can pick up. First you have to find someone who has the same games as you do, which is quite a trial in itself when a great many of those comrades who are online via broadband do not attend LAN events as thus don't acquire games which are conducive to online play.

Then even when you have the same game, you still need to get everyone at the same patch level. Which can take a lot of time when you have to track down 200Mb patches. And then you have to try and hunt down NoCD cracks or mini(ghost) images to mount so you can do away with pesky discs, which is complicated when its not possible to find them for the correct patch level.

And even then it's not all peachy, because you still need to try and establish direct connections for 99% of the games to avoid the cursed online services (UbisoftOnline, AOL, GameSpy, etc) and a great many games just can't manage it. Some even go as far as to outright block it (yes I'm pointing at you Far Cry, damn your IP scanning ways).

And all this assumes that people can even agree on a game they all want to play in the first place. Yeeeeesh.

But at least CherryPopper went out and grabbed BF2, so I have someone to pwn with online. I AM THE Ub3R MEDIC!

So the moral of the story is... keep yourself open to playing whatever people suggest, it'll get you gaming quicker. Make sure you have a patch and crack resource you can go to in the event you need one quickly (mine are games.internode.on.net, fileplanet.com, megagames.com, and gamecopyworld.com). And if you think a game is good, then go out and buy it. I do.