i'm internet famous

[broken robot]

What is league of legends and why is it so popular among 18-22? Seriously every undergrad I know is playing that game. Is it because it's free?

I guess I'm more old school. Grew up seeing people get cussed out on starcraft and counterstrike. I think the reason anyone of the younger generations is a good typist is because they have to play a game and type insults at the same time. Makes you really quick at typing, though that doesn't count spelling judging by the massive analfabetismo.

[The Comrade]

i played it because i had friends who played it because it was free. i imagine that's how it grew.

and yeah, i became a great typist because of cussing people out in broodwar.

[broken robot]

Probably the hardest though was counterstrike cause you had to press one extra key (y->public, u->group) before typing haha. Damn it's been a while.

Also I love how allies always turn on each other in these types of games. No honor among thieves, or nerds in this case. Brutal.

[Spider]

[broken robot]

Haha yeah, voice chat can get annoying. Quake over dialup? Good times. I remember trying to play Team Fortress on 56k, usually it went pretty well. By that point though the real nerds were starting to get DSL.

[Spider]

Remember during that transition though, you'd have 20 people at a 200-300ms ping...and then you'd see some asshole connect at like 40 ping. LPB (Low Ping Bastards) were culling us like deformed chickens for quite a while.

Mostly I remember the broadband thing getting big a bit after Quake 2 came out. By the time Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament went live, broadband was pretty dominant.

Dialup made us really good at leading targets though. Having to account for the flight time of the projectile and the firing lag...being able to tag a moving target at a distance was satisfying stuff.

[broken robot]

Haha, I lived in a permanent state of high ping. I forgot what was "smooth" or "real time." It was my reality.

Anything below 200 was low for me, usually around 300 for sure. It got annoying though with Counter Strike. Team Fortress was just absurd enough--with rocket launcher jumps and machine gun wielding mad men--that you could still play with not so great ping and have fun. People had fun being dicks back then, running up as spies and shanking people or jumping their little 3d models up on each other in a corner before getting wasted. It was a time of innocence.

Unreal Tournament was pretty much impossible on 56k, though good times were had on our school's LAN network before we all got banned for using it for "noneducational purposes" (such bullshit, piloting a redeemer rocket is an exercise in multitasking).

[Spider]

We got busted for having Starcraft tournaments on the school network. Back then you could set up an entire 4v4 LAN match with a single game disc.

But ya...old school rocket jumps, and slow moving rockets that had actual flight time, so you could see them coming and dodge them...which of course led to epic circle strafing rocket fights. Plus the games moved so much faster...and if you took damage you had to retreat and find a powerup, rather than just hiding for a few seconds....added a whole level of tactical thinking to everything.

It was the golden age of the FPS genre. Oh well.

[The Comrade]

quake 3 was a seizure inducing mess of f**k. thank god games aren't like that anymore.

[broken robot]

Yeah, what's this new self-heal feature? Be a real man and grab your randomly spawning med packs. Agreed about rocket strafing. Redeemers weren't that hard to dodge but the explosive radius was massive.

4v4 sounds awesome. Some of the most epic battles were had on 3v3 shared maps in Starcraft. I once played a game where three of us dominated the other players, we had all three races (I was zerg). I'd built a nydus canal to the other side and we tore them a new one. Then this Protoss asshole unallied us right as we were about to win! I started building a base on the other side, me and the terran guy allied with the guy from the other side who hadn't been defeated. We organized a "rescue" mission for the terran and regrouped on the other side and then attacked our former 'toss ally. The game took probably about three hours. Wish I had that replay. We were all laughing because the backstabber--who strangely hadn't uttered a word the whole game--unhooked his connection and lagged out.

Playing with friends on LAN though is just so much more fun with all the back and forth that goes on.