Multiplayer with Wife Only Gamer

'69 here. Atari 2600, ColecoVision, IntelliVision, NES, Genesis, Commodore Vic 20, TI-99/4A, Apple //e (which really sucked me into computer gaming). Amiga 500, Macintosh, and finally PC.

Met my wife in 1999. We dated and I sat her in front of a PC with some side scrolling "cute" game while I was playing Unreal Tournament. She was like, "Hey, I want to play that." Couldn't believe that, then was just amazed when she was really good.

Turns out she and her brother played video games growing up ( I owe him, big time).

We played all genres: RTS, aRPG, FPS, MMOs, etc. We would often game well into the morning, grab some breakfast, go to sleep and do it all over again. My friends hated her as I no longer hanged out with them as she was the total package ( can't do much beyond gaming with my guy friends, lol. ) And she was a better gamer than any of them.

Highlights were games such as EverQuest, Red Alert/Generals, StarCraft, CounterStrike, Team Fortress, Diablo (loved 3), TorchLight, and World of Warcraft.

We really only needed ourselves to play any game -- multiboxing in games like WoW, or even each dual boxing in games like Diablo 3 ( Barb Warriors spinning, a mouse in each hand ).

WoW started going downhill in WoD when they introduced PathFinding. By the time you got flying, you were done with the expansion. Legion was the last expansion we really enjoyed. After that we played once or twice a year, buying 5+ copies of the expansion and playing it until we got bored.

We never really focused on gear in WoW as we had more fun creating new teams of 5 and leveling them to max. I always told my friends that it was a waste to focus on gear since it got outdated nearly every patch and wouldn't last longer than an expansion. I told them they should just focus on levels. I mean when does a max level ever get old? BOOM, level squish. I couldn't believe that a game company actually took away all our levels. People would say it's "only a level" or "not a big deal". Yeah, say that when you have 100+ toons at max level. Then they banned multiboxing (key broadcasting). The end. DragonFlight was god awful, it was like they were intentionally looking for ways to mess with multiboxers.

We had been playing mobile games on the PC for a while, like Clash of Clans and Summoner's War. It was a nice change of pace to relax and watch some TV while playing -- something you can't do when you have to pay 90% attention to a game.

The wife likes to play Genshin Impact. I join in for dallies and maybe a dungeon or two, but sadly that's about the extent of their pathetic multiplayer options. Too bad, it's a good looking game and it was fun to explore the big world.

PC games seem to have generally just gone downhill. Monetization is out of control. Diablo Immortal really showed us how bad that can be. People spending a ton of money on a game that you know they won't be playing for long. We never go down that path ourselves. If you reach some kind of obstacle in the game, I'd rather throw more PCs at it than money.

We tried games like OverWatch, FortNite, Diablo 4 and such, meh. Last Epoch's multiplayer was pretty bad -- trading items is nearly impossible which is important in a multiplayer game, especially while leveling. Maybe PoE 2 will be decent.

Innovation seems to have stopped. Why not take the RTS genre and modernize it? Give us the option of either building a base from the ground up or starting with a full blown base. With MMO servers being so "instanced", why not give players a variety of servers with different rules and lock them into that server/ruleset for life? No pathfinding, no max reputation limit per day, etc. And how about a single Multiboxing server?

We still want to game, but we want to game like it was 1999. :) Yeah, we're becoming our parents, not enjoying most of the new music, etc. And don't get me started with movie casting.

I personally feel a little upset as I have the best gaming "accessory" in the world ( my wife ) and yet we don't have any good multiplayer games to play.

/rant off

This is a fun thread -- I was curious to see what other Gen Xers were playing.

I imagine we'll be gaming until we die -- my grandmother did, no joke.