I never was much for multiplayer, but I did dabble and dip my toes, and I feel there was a Golden Age of Multiplayer; when you could just join a server, stay for a couple of games, and then bounce.

I feel that golden age ended when it stopped being Deathmatch/LMS and became about a plethora of annoying objectives.

So instead of "Haha, Good Game", it became, "Hey Chucklenuts! You didn't defend the briefcase!" Except instead of "Chucklenuts", it's a racially charged epithet.

Between these times, some idiot decided that voice transmission was a good idea.

And then that degraded further when the metagame itself became a game due to the consequences of continual updated play modes; when a company could start to manipulate the player in to experiencing Fear of Missing Out. (FOMO)
Instead of being able to charge in with your favorite nailgun, you had to "earn" it .

So when did you decide to pull the stop and get off the multiplayer partybus?

For my personal opinion, I'd say my bus stops right around the realm of the original Unreal. Silence is golden, the physics are silly, and the trash talk is largely automated.

Be that it may, I imagine many of you are open to the idea of LAN or even Couch multiplayer, instead of dealing with John Q Random.

What do you mean...stop?
I never started online MP.

I played Utopia for a number of years and formed genuine attachments with my team mates, but it was too demanding on my time. At some point, I was playing more for the other players than my continued interest in the game and it was a relief when I stopped.

After that, I knew that my days playing those kinds of games were over. I actually worked on an alternative online multiplayer game for a number of years that was to be less demanding on people's time, but I stopped (I discovered that I'm a bit hopeless with the user interface design and art part of games).

Otherwise, I played Jedi Knight II online for a couple of months, but a lot of people considered it almost like a social club and were *rsing around half the time rather than play the game and that took away from the experience for me.

I didn't pursue it much after that. I also played Starcraft online a bit with strangers and I got pwned quite a bit by what seemed to me like professional grade players (probably the kind that play in tournaments for money) and was interested in learning some of their moves (for my satisfaction as opposed to any ambition of doing that for a living), but they usually got bored with me after 3 games or so, so it was a bit of a pointless exercise. The skill gap was just too large to maintain their interest.

While I do play a few (2) games online and tried out some more in the past.

For the most part when Skill/Time >>> Gear became a thing outside of MMOs.
And that was back in the days of Call of Duty 4.

Ever wondered, why again lost to a guy with a G-36 - well, it got the Damage of the AK-47 (or was it 74), that got very low accuracy and the accuracy of the M4, that got low damage. And it got a more easy to control spray.
And you need a higher rank to unlock it...

Same for G3 vs M14, both got the same stats, but the G3 jumps randomly after each shoot, while the M14 just moves up by the same amount every time.
Guess who got the upper hand in the fight and which weapon is higher in the unlock tree.

For me it was a big Fuck you.

I was always a casual online gamer, some games I played anonymously, others were more of a social affair. I liked playing Far Cry Instincts and 2 on 360 because the map editor allowed for more creative social hubs to arise, but deathmatching was fun in itself. I also played Minecraft with my friends I found in a community back when GameSpot had unions you could join.

But I was going through a lot of financial trouble in late 2012 up to late 2019, so for 7 years I did not play a single online game. I got an Xbox One and managed to get a few games of Battlefield going, some Apex, some ARK Evolved, some Minecraft. Unfortunately, that was short lived since the only friends I had were my brother and his friends, but my brother stopped playing his Xbox and his friends alienated me too much, and I never managed to find a community to pull friends from, so I just completely stopped aside from the very occasional BF4 game that always seems to be swarmed with veterans.

It doesn't help that people don't ever talk, or if they do, it is never with an ounce of kindness. I think party chat killed any expectation of socializing with strangers, but with how garbage people are, I don't blame anyone.

As for multiplayer games, I played World of Tanks for a couple of years and then tried Heroes of the Storm for a bit. World of Tanks was fun, except it has way too much RNG in it. Stat-wise, I was in the top 0.1% of players, so I was doing well, but started hating the amount of RNG and eventually quit.

Heroes of the Storm pretty much died like 3 years ago.

But besides multiplayer exclusive games, I spent maybe 1% of my total time in the Unreal Tournament games in multiplayer. Kinda eh... much prefer playing with the bots. They are very well made in UT games and offer a wide variety of skill levels. Especially liked the career modes in UT 2003 and 2004. Too bad they never expanded upon that more. So yeah, the last non-multiplayer only game I played online for a bit is Unreal Tournament 3.

Maybe 05ish? Around the time everything started being DRMed and requiring rootkits ("anti-cheats"). I was never very STRONG on it, mind you, but it became no longer enjoyable even for short sessions to play with randos.

I played Far Cry 2 online for a weekend at some point, maybe around '10. But really, all my multi-player is with people I know, which means almost always via LAN or direct connect features.

Can't stop what you never started...

Yeah, this for me as well.
Although I actually wanted to play some games, I just found no one to do it with. I tried with randoms, but I can't stand them.

year of 4 a 5 ago

it's just a endless grinde no matter if you have BIS it's never good enough

Same. I play much less MP these days... but will confess to a little RED DEAD ONLINE and ENLISTED.

An aside...

... As I get older I tend to find round-oriented MP harder-and-harder to play. For me, it's started to feel pointless -- like running in a circle for hours. Scores and "kill streaks" alone are no longer filling my need for a feeling of accomplishment.

I tried to make a distinction between MP games and "round-oriented" MP games. What I meant by "round-oriented" MP games was any game that uses primarily a round gameplay loop (ie CALL OF DUTY). Maybe I didn't explain / define that adequately.

September 2011; when my country's PvPGN Warcraft III server shut down.

Playiing on Battle.net / Blizzards official against randoms just wasn't the same. For the fun of it restarted playing many years later with Europe's, Americas, Asias servers merged into one by then. Was fun actually. Of course that all died when Refunded/Reforged came out.

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Since Supreme Commander Forged Alliance Forever supports the GOG version now, I was thinking of starting to MP that. Will see how that goes.

This, so much this.

I still enjoy a game of Left 4 Dead from time to time, but people's voices, chuckling, laughing, screaming, whispering and generally being dickheads are breaking my immersion in games utterly and completely. I can understand the need for it in competitive, professional gaming, but why oh why would one need it in casual online match.