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Gaming on a 56k modem, who actually did it?
- Thread starter A_Gorilla
- Start date
mysteriousmage09
Member
Warcraft II, Diablo II, Starcraft, Warcraft III, even WoW for the first month.
Edit: Counter Strike, Day of Defeat.
Edit: Counter Strike, Day of Defeat.
SteveO1683
Member
I tried but could never get it to work.
PastorOfMuppets
Banned
Ah yes, the days of HPB and LPB (High and Low Ping Bastards). Us HPB would have to lead our shots slightly in games like Quake and Unreal while the LPB's and their fancy college connections would just destroy us all with their fast internet.
I still remember when the multiplayer thing blew up and there was a rush of companies that tried to get people to pay to play multiplayer. Mplayer, Heat.Net, TEN etc. You had to pay them on top of what you were already paying your ISP per month to have access to server browsers, friends lists and matchmaking (sound familiar?).
In retrospect, a lot of gamers should really be thanking Blizzard for Battle.net and Diablo blowing up. Diablo being the killer app on a free gaming service really took the wind out of the sails of the premium multiplayer gaming services out there. The funniest part about all this was Games For Windows Live tried doing the exact same thing as those dead services almost six years after the last one was shut down. It's even more dumbfounding because Microsoft back in the day actually had a very good free multiplayer gaming service. Wasted many hours of Age of Empires 1 and 2 on the Zone.
And to get off on a tangent: Napster too. Napster is now so old that the current generation of college kids probably do not remember it. I remember downloading MP3s - one song at a time, on 56K at 3-4 kb/s. If I was lucky, I might even get to the holy grail of 5kb/s sustained. The pre Web 2.0 internet was a very different experience than the current one.
I still remember when the multiplayer thing blew up and there was a rush of companies that tried to get people to pay to play multiplayer. Mplayer, Heat.Net, TEN etc. You had to pay them on top of what you were already paying your ISP per month to have access to server browsers, friends lists and matchmaking (sound familiar?).
In retrospect, a lot of gamers should really be thanking Blizzard for Battle.net and Diablo blowing up. Diablo being the killer app on a free gaming service really took the wind out of the sails of the premium multiplayer gaming services out there. The funniest part about all this was Games For Windows Live tried doing the exact same thing as those dead services almost six years after the last one was shut down. It's even more dumbfounding because Microsoft back in the day actually had a very good free multiplayer gaming service. Wasted many hours of Age of Empires 1 and 2 on the Zone.
And to get off on a tangent: Napster too. Napster is now so old that the current generation of college kids probably do not remember it. I remember downloading MP3s - one song at a time, on 56K at 3-4 kb/s. If I was lucky, I might even get to the holy grail of 5kb/s sustained. The pre Web 2.0 internet was a very different experience than the current one.
we.are.the.armada
Member
Played Myth multiplayer like this - no lag at all maybe because it was an old game 
blizzardjesus
Banned
I played my 360 / halo 3 on dialup. piggybacked it into my imac and shared the internet connection. It worked really well, updates took forever.
Fun Fact: Bungie tuned Halo 3 specifically so that it would run flawlessly on dialup.
Fun Fact: Bungie tuned Halo 3 specifically so that it would run flawlessly on dialup.
perfectsil
Member
Descent, Warcraft on 14.4k modem, then 28.8k , then the two incompatible 56k standards (K56 and ?), and finally the standard 56k
breadtruck
Member
I played Duke Nukem 3D and Warcraft online with a friend all the time back in the day.
Never had an issue besides the initial slow connection to him.
Never had an issue besides the initial slow connection to him.
Vargavinter
Member
Everquest! Woop woop.
Delicious Waffles
Member
Only game I was able to play was RuneScape and it ran surprisingly well.
TouchMyBox
Member
Aww yeah, look at that shit.
Ah... the days of 5kbps downloads and 400 ping on a good day.
I played Quake, Unreal Tournament GOTYE, Counterstrike, Starcraft, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, Diablo (godly plate of the whale), Diablo 2 (sojs, 290s, 45/15s), and PSO on Dreamcast.
Most of it was okay but Diablo 2 had a rough start. After a few patches it became much more playable due to different ways it handled lag.
Warcraft 3 was funny though. Lag-outs were so common at that point I distinctly remember winning a few games I should have lost simply by putting a worker on a floating carrier and dropping them off on a remote location, waiting for the opponent to lag out.
I played Quake, Unreal Tournament GOTYE, Counterstrike, Starcraft, Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3, Diablo (godly plate of the whale), Diablo 2 (sojs, 290s, 45/15s), and PSO on Dreamcast.
Most of it was okay but Diablo 2 had a rough start. After a few patches it became much more playable due to different ways it handled lag.
Warcraft 3 was funny though. Lag-outs were so common at that point I distinctly remember winning a few games I should have lost simply by putting a worker on a floating carrier and dropping them off on a remote location, waiting for the opponent to lag out.
FloppyDelux
Member
I don't even know how.
this
+ Jedi knight outcast 2,Diablo 2, warcraft 3, starcraft ,warcraft 2, and some Dreamcast games.
OmegaTreeFish
Banned
Ah the days of 56k. Total Annihilation I played a lot of. Several rts's really.
Best were of course the fps games. Quake and UT mainly. Quake 1 was the craziest because everything accept looking would vizually lag. It was called quake slide. You had to turn left 2 seconds before you hit that left turn. It was amazing how you got kinda good at it lol.
When i first got broad band my mind was blown.
Edit
Oh and best gaming memories to this day are prob diablo 2 and PSO (On dreamcast). Loved those so much. UT still takes top spot of all time though. So many hours on my life.
Best were of course the fps games. Quake and UT mainly. Quake 1 was the craziest because everything accept looking would vizually lag. It was called quake slide. You had to turn left 2 seconds before you hit that left turn. It was amazing how you got kinda good at it lol.
When i first got broad band my mind was blown.
Edit
Oh and best gaming memories to this day are prob diablo 2 and PSO (On dreamcast). Loved those so much. UT still takes top spot of all time though. So many hours on my life.
terrisus
Member
I gamed on a 28.8k modem (we had a 56.6k modem, but our phone lines couldn't handle anything about 28.8k) from 1996-1998 or so when I got Broadband.
It was fine. But then, I was mostly playing MUDs.
And that's why you would have wanted to get a 2nd phone line for the computer.
It was fine. But then, I was mostly playing MUDs.
And that's why you would have wanted to get a 2nd phone line for the computer.
I mentioned my 56K gaming experiences earlier - but brothers and I would play 3-way Age of Empires II via this when in college:
You are thinking of the null modem cable. I remember my brother and I had one running from 1 room upstairs, out the window, and in to a computer room downstairs. 1. We weren't allowed to run a cable through the house, and 2. It was the shortest route.
littlegrasshopper
Member
Definitely, I also played Unreal Tournament and Quake. Good times. Loved the dreamcast.
SillyEskimo
Member
Same speed, same game, same problem. Well, except I was 22 at the time and it was not my mother.
I actually was messing around with the Internet in the mid 80's with my older brother. Well, it wasn't Internet proper of course, but DLing extremely simple stuff and sending stuff via a telephone and a Texas Instruments cassette tape setup. I don't even remember what we were doing, but we were doing something!
terrisus
Member
My mother was never really a "techie."
But, when my grandmother wrote us a letter because she could never get through on the phone, it was clear we needed a 2nd phone line.
The Praiseworthy
Member
Still can't believe that it preformed better than I expected XD
Haha! That's rad. Man if I grew up with a second line I would've never slept.
My mom would've also probably killed me.
BlackBuzzard
Banned
Yeah. I remember local multiplayer. Where me and like 5 or 6 friends would just go play something else on Playstation, while the 1 guy took his turn and made his moves. Remember 1 game lasting 3 days.
Diablohead
Member
My early online memories go like this:
Dad's good friend gives us a modem, first one we ever owned however it was old, slow and I think an american design with a smaller port then our phone cables would not fit into, so me and a good friend spent a day filing down phone cables to hook it up and it worked with our isp! was super slow.
Then I got a dreamast, my first real online adventure was now, first online game ever was chu chu rocket, quake 3 and PSO, euro DC had a 33k modem.
Shortly after that we got a new PC with a built in 56k modem, I bought unreal tournament, quake 3, red alert 2 and colin mcrae rally 2 over the year and played the shit out of them all at dialup speeds, I was rather good at leading railgun shots in quake 3!
Dad's good friend gives us a modem, first one we ever owned however it was old, slow and I think an american design with a smaller port then our phone cables would not fit into, so me and a good friend spent a day filing down phone cables to hook it up and it worked with our isp! was super slow.
Then I got a dreamast, my first real online adventure was now, first online game ever was chu chu rocket, quake 3 and PSO, euro DC had a 33k modem.
Shortly after that we got a new PC with a built in 56k modem, I bought unreal tournament, quake 3, red alert 2 and colin mcrae rally 2 over the year and played the shit out of them all at dialup speeds, I was rather good at leading railgun shots in quake 3!
terrisus
Member
Our desktop was in the living room, and my mother wouldn't let me be on it between 10:30 and 6:30, since she was a very light sleeper, and I would wake her (even though the living room was a decent distance away from her bedroom).
Needless to say, quickly enough my sleeping schedule adjusted itself to exactly 10:30-6:30 so that I could make full use of computer time.
Unfortunately, since I have a sister (and we had a friend of mine living with us in 1998 as well), I had to split computer time with others until I got my first laptop in 2001 - by which point we had broadband, and so I put an external PCMCIA wireless card into my laptop so that I could connect wirelessly to the router.
The Shadow
Member
It gets a lot of flack but it wasn't too bad. The worst thing is if you only had one line in the house and mom or little sister picked up the phone to make a call. That pretty much ended the connection.
I pretty much played late at night to avoid this which meant I fell asleep in math class way too often.
Duke Nukem 3D with a group of friends was totally worth it though.
Played pretty well with 16 players on 28k, and 32 on 56k. That voxel engine technology...
Also the only time ever where I was in a clan.
Played Delta Force in 1998 on 56k. Fantastic first person shooter, which was very ahead of its time. Long open areas, many game modes (conquer mode, deathmatch etc) and realistic with projectile dropping over long distances and so on. Moved to CS afterwards and could use a lot of what I learned from delta force.
I used to play this on a Pentium II laptop running at 320x240 resolution. My ISP was AOL lol.
All I did was snipe and knife people, and they would accuse me of cheating but that was far from the truth, heh. Great game, had tons of fun with it. It's a shame the sequels were no where near as good.
LiquidMetal14
hide your water-based mammals
This was my first very serious time sink online. Are the DF1/2 Xreme servers still up?Played Delta Force in 1998 on 56k. Fantastic first person shooter, which was very ahead of its time. Long open areas, many game modes (conquer mode, deathmatch etc) and realistic with projectile dropping over long distances and so on. Moved to CS afterwards and could use a lot of what I learned from delta force.
All the time:
1. Starcraft - this was probably the most playable game since it did not rely on quick reaction times or individual packets as much as shooters.
2. Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight - occasionally played on the Zone, but usually just did direct modem connections with friends. I don't know how many times I had to yell: "No one pick up the phone!"
3. Half-Life + Cold Ice mod - one of my favorite early mods for Half Life was Cold Ice, it was basically a mod that just added lots of crazy destructive weapons, and everything had a blue/winter/ice theme. I remember playing this on 56k and if I got under 200 ping, I was happy. Since several weapons created multiple explosions, it could be quite the lag fest. But it was still fun.
edit: lol Delta Force, yeah I played that too. I remember people would just use the M249 SAW and snipe people across the map, I think there were hacks people used. Anyway you could usually pick moving people out in that blurry voxel mess, and the M249 was accurate enough to just snipe people.
1. Starcraft - this was probably the most playable game since it did not rely on quick reaction times or individual packets as much as shooters.
2. Dark Forces 2: Jedi Knight - occasionally played on the Zone, but usually just did direct modem connections with friends. I don't know how many times I had to yell: "No one pick up the phone!"
3. Half-Life + Cold Ice mod - one of my favorite early mods for Half Life was Cold Ice, it was basically a mod that just added lots of crazy destructive weapons, and everything had a blue/winter/ice theme. I remember playing this on 56k and if I got under 200 ping, I was happy. Since several weapons created multiple explosions, it could be quite the lag fest. But it was still fun.
edit: lol Delta Force, yeah I played that too. I remember people would just use the M249 SAW and snipe people across the map, I think there were hacks people used. Anyway you could usually pick moving people out in that blurry voxel mess, and the M249 was accurate enough to just snipe people.
Crimsonsky
Member
I'm sure many of us thirty+ did. We had to, there was no choice. AOL subscription and everything, heck there were many people who were on 28.8 playing Starcraft. We've come a long way in a relatively brief amount of time. You kids are lucky.
Kali/Bnet Starcraft wars were great.
That was the best reason to upgrade.
"Look Dad, you either pay for a second phone line, or we get cable internet" Of course that was only an option once broadband was actually available in your area.
TheGreyHulk
Member
I played StarCraft and Warcraft 3 on 56k for years. The only game I could play online that didn't suffer from huge lag. So fun.
Battlefield 1942 though, not fun at all. Too much lag
Battlefield 1942 though, not fun at all. Too much lag
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