Uh, all games had patches and mappacks downloaded directly from the game’s distributor. It was extremely slow, hence the invention of CDNs like filehippo, hwfiles, 2cows etc and some gaming companies (at the time you could rent your own server and host the games. Incredible, huh? You could also have LAN parties and play with your clan against other clans all using LAN, no internet required) were also doing mirroring of those files (in Italy it was gamearena and ngi, for example). Steam wasn’t even a thing.
Lol patches… Unless you were having LAN parties, or attempting to play a game of AOE2 over dialup (hoping your mom doesn’t try to use the phone), you just ran whatever version of the game came on the disc. By “you”, I guess I meant me.
Uh, all games had patches and mappacks downloaded directly from the game’s distributor. It was extremely slow, hence the invention of CDNs like filehippo, hwfiles, 2cows etc and some gaming companies (at the time you could rent your own server and host the games. Incredible, huh? You could also have LAN parties and play with your clan against other clans all using LAN, no internet required) were also doing mirroring of those files (in Italy it was gamearena and ngi, for example). Steam wasn’t even a thing.
Lol patches… Unless you were having LAN parties, or attempting to play a game of AOE2 over dialup (hoping your mom doesn’t try to use the phone), you just ran whatever version of the game came on the disc. By “you”, I guess I meant me.