10 Old Video Games That Still Have Active Multiplayer Communities
Feeling nostalgic but fear empty lobbies? Here are ten multiplayer games that survived the years.
There’s something about old games that makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Perhaps it’s the memories of countless hours in the summer spent grinding enough XP to beat that final boss, or maybe it’s just the visual style of games developed under the graphical limitations of decades past. Maybe you have an old system lying around and want to get some use out of it. Whatever the reason — nostalgic or otherwise — sometimes you just have to kick that dusty box of old games to see what made them tick in the first place.
Of course, in today’s fast-paced multiplayer-obsessed world of gaming, it can be tempting to dabble in the online components of these games, only to be disappointed by a near-empty lobby populated by the lingering whispers of gamers who had moved on.
Thankfully, this isn’t the case for every old game. In fact, quite a few games from the past are still very functional, with large player-bases and even active online community discussion boards. These are the games that were played by all the cool kids at the lunch table, that still being played today.
10. Age of Empires II
It’s no secret that the MMORPG genre suffers from a severe overpopulation of games. And while that means players are spoiled for choice, it also means sifting through gigabytes of downloads and hours of garbage gameplay before landing on a good one.
In 2012, the genre had been flooded with pay-to-win, shoddily put together games that simply didn’t understand what the community wanted from an MMO This further incentivized players to either return to the already huge World of Warcraft or ditch the genre entirely in favour of more trendy multiplayer experiences.
Enter: Guild Wars 2, selling over two million copies within its first two weeks of sales, and amassing a consistent player base of half a million users within a year. And it’s not hard to see why.
This MMO sparked hope for the genre with its competitive PvP, great end-game content, compelling approach toward questing and transparent communication with its community to gather and implement user feedback. Guild Wars 2 was made free-to-play in 2015, by which point the game had sold over five million copies.
Eight years since release, the game has improved leaps and bounds ahead of what was already a good game. The recent implementation of mounts has also made a lot of the older content less tedious and more palatable. While the free tier has some limitations on what can be done within the world of Tyria, buying the expansions are technically optional, and much of the content can be enjoyed without spending a dime.