Retro shooters that still have a thriving or active online multiplayer community

[thetwaz]

Thinking about a recent comment I made about Unreal Tournament 99, which still has quite a lot of active and populated servers, what are your favourite retro shooters to play online, and do they still have an active online community? What mods or software do you need to play them?

For UT there is a fan made patch to download, but then it seems to pretty much work put of the original interface, which is cool.

Oldunreal's 469 Patch

 

[skramz]

q3 is stil pretty active last time i checked

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

Xonotic and Cube 2 Sauerbraten are fairly active.

 

[Tetronomicon]

With certain source ports, DOOM still has a fairly small but dedicated community of people still playing various modes.

 

[thetwaz]

With certain source ports, DOOM still has a fairly small but dedicated community of people still playing various modes.

Which ones are most active for it out of interest? I play a lot of single player sourceports in GZ Doom at the moment, but haven't looked at much else.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

With certain source ports, DOOM still has a fairly small but dedicated community of people still playing various modes.

Zandronum right? I'm not using ZDaemon.

But I wish there were more people on Odamex.

 

[Tetronomicon]

Which ones are most active for it out of interest? I play a lot of single player sourceports in GZ Doom at the moment, but haven't looked at much else.

Zandronum right? I'm not using ZDaemon.

But I wish there were more people on Odamex.

Generally speaking I use Internet DOOM Explorer (https://doomwiki.org/wiki/Doom_Explorer). I think it supports Odamex, ZDaemon, Zandronum, Q-Zandronum and Doomsday. Again, not a huge community but it's something.

That being said, I feel like the retro FPS genre was always more single player oriented. Even a game like Unreal Tournament has a whole campaign/story mode to it and I mostly just stick to that (along with the general deathmatch with bots mode). Multiplayer was always a bonus barring stuff like Quake III and Starsiege: Tribes where (aside from a tutorial) it was the only mode in the game.

 

[SeventhSon]

Team Fortress 2 came out 18 years go and is still active.

 

[TallGrass]

Any time I've checked, CounterStrike: Source STILL has a Crackhouse 24/7 server going

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

I think it supports Odamex, ZDaemon, Zandronum, Q-Zandronum and Doomsday. Again, not a huge community but it's something.

I really need to check what Q Zandro is and which branches of sourceport they are.

I'm not fan of Zandronum having a ton of advanced features because it feels less like Doom.

That being said, I feel like the retro FPS genre was always more single player oriented. Even a game like Unreal Tournament has a whole campaign/story mode to it and I mostly just stick to that (along with the general deathmatch with bots mode). Multiplayer was always a bonus barring stuff like Quake III and Starsiege: Tribes where (aside from a tutorial) it was the only mode in the game.

Unreal is single player yes but Tournament is almost a spinoff. Quake III Arena should've dropped the number imo because Quake IV is the actual sequel to Quake II.

Deathmatch has always been more or less an afterthought indeed, weapon balance is made for solo so in multiplayer they get op like how Doom's chaingun is an extremely effective automatic sniper when used right.

Team Fortress 2 came out 18 years go and is still active.

I think most wouldn't consider TF2 as "retro" but you're right.

 

[KenaiPhoenix]

DooM has an active community, new mods/maps comes out every month and online wise there is always a bunch of servers with people.

The same can be said for Haff-Life: I still play Sven-Coop from time to time and have a blast, the levels of shit post are off the charts.

I would also like to point out that OG Halo 2 (Not the MCC one) on Xbox, people are playing it every day.

 

[deceptionfalls]

Any time I've checked, CounterStrike: Source STILL has a Crackhouse 24/7 server going

only instance where a thriving crackhouse can be considered a good thing

 

[Netra]

The first one that come to mind was Unreal Tournament too, in 2020 I buy again because I lost my copy and to my surprise I found live servers.
It's good to know this one still is alive.

 

[Ikagura Ikagura]

The same can be said for Haff-Life: I still play Sven-Coop from time to time and have a blast, the levels of shit post are off the charts.

Opposing Force has active servers.

On the other hand I'm much less fan of Sven Co-op for a reason I cannot describe. Perhaps because it's more of a mod of HL rather than the game itself.

 

[thetwaz]

only instance where a thriving crackhouse can be considered a good thing

...Unless you really like crack.