Back in 2017/18 I recall a few Call of duty clients like iw4x, iw4play, repziw4, alteriw4net Rocket V2 (mods which allow for a dedicated server client/browser to connect to, think of it like valve’s community servers) having Indian servers and they were decently populated as well.
Back when teamspeak/skype was more common than discord is these days.
Can’t believe it’s been 8 years almost now, it used to be alteriwnet? Repziw4 and some other codmw clients. Even I had a small little isnipe server on iw4x which a german friend of mine helped me run at his home in berlin lol. Seeing such talented reverse engineers and developers from the US and throughout different european countries (with most of them in college or still in highschool) being able to code and create such unique mods, even open source them at times, gah! a part of me wanted to be like them and I got inspired to start learning python in 2018 after having spoken to one of the devs asking how he started, even did some .gsc scripting (all gibberish to me now) and promptly enough my PC decided to die ending that thought.
A funny video back then, where a bunch of users of repziw4 got mass banned for using hacks. Admins decided to prank them by saying they would unban them if they made an apology video. Apology videos were made but the unbans were not.
These sort of pub servers or community servers on CS 1.6, TF2 and CSGO (CS2 also has a few now I believe) were really fun back in the day. I can see why most corporations would much rather have most of their monetisation channels and the multiplayer side strictly under their control (I’ve seen this start after the release of GTA online, cs go in 2013 etc) but it does take the natural fun out of multiplayer games where the only cost you had to worry about was the internet bill you paid per month. Ranks? What’s that? Just hit the tilde key to open the console in iw4x and type unlockall. Guns locked behind a level? Commandscript in console lmao. CS2 still has these servers but it’s been pushed so far behind the main screen of the game, most people don’t even discover it unless they try to seek it out themselves.
This is also why I’m behind supporting such talented modders/devs to crack the modern multiplayer games and create a seperate dedicated server based client for the sake of protecting and preserving the games. Another 10 years and battlefield 1 probably won’t have it’s servers up and running anymore and EA won’t give 2 shits about it. In the same manner, there is a dedicated client for battlefield bad company 2 but I’m unsure how that is doing currently. Honestly it seems the newer fanbases don’t really care much about the fact that their games may not be sitting there for them 10 years down the line. Once the parent company decides they’ve cashed as much as they could out of a game, they’ll pull the plug without thinking twice. Tech has become so homogenous.
On the other hand, there’s more people with access to phones and in turn access to mobile games. But those type of games are just so sterilised.
