Part of what ruined this is not letting players host servers. Back in the day most FPS servers were run by end users, and could form clans and communities with like minded players. The admins of those servers could set rules, and you could know what to expect going in. Hell the server NAME would let you know. Now you go to their servers, their sorting, random lobbies never with the same people, etc.
I adminned several clanservers for years for a couple popular FPS games. It wasn’t a perfect system and suffered from the same issues regular servers did along with some clans treating everything on the server as theirs - like game resources, vehicles, whatever. We ran pretty chill servers, but even our members could be guilty of some less than stellar behavior. If you were a newb and showed up on a random private server odds were that you were gonna have a rough time. If you were associated with another clan and showed up on teamspeak along with joining the server you were going to have a much better time.
That said, I think private servers were far better because they kept a lot of the tryhards on their own turf, and if you found a good server with chill players and admins, they often kept a clean house. But it could be difficult to find that server where you fit with the crowd.
Part of what ruined this is not letting players host servers. Back in the day most FPS servers were run by end users, and could form clans and communities with like minded players. The admins of those servers could set rules, and you could know what to expect going in. Hell the server NAME would let you know. Now you go to their servers, their sorting, random lobbies never with the same people, etc.
I adminned several clanservers for years for a couple popular FPS games. It wasn’t a perfect system and suffered from the same issues regular servers did along with some clans treating everything on the server as theirs - like game resources, vehicles, whatever. We ran pretty chill servers, but even our members could be guilty of some less than stellar behavior. If you were a newb and showed up on a random private server odds were that you were gonna have a rough time. If you were associated with another clan and showed up on teamspeak along with joining the server you were going to have a much better time.
That said, I think private servers were far better because they kept a lot of the tryhards on their own turf, and if you found a good server with chill players and admins, they often kept a clean house. But it could be difficult to find that server where you fit with the crowd.