I used hamachi because no one aside from me in my group of friends knew how to port forward, but it didn't work on my network and it took me 4 years to figure out it was because at&t has it's own network on it's dialup modems by default.
They still do that to this day with their fiber modem/routers! I hate it! And even if you do passthrough to have your own up for only your router, your ping is still never below 23ms because there's two stop points in the chain, that and at&t's dns resolution is ass.
Terraria before proper multiplayer support was our prime Hamachi game. We had like 7-8 people from an internet forum playing on and off through our hamachi virtual network.
For those that didn't use it, Xfire was basically a combination of messenger, voice chat, and a server browser for games back in the day.
As far as I know, it was also one of the earliest ways to stream your gameplay for others to watch. I remember trying it out years before Twitch was around.
It was pretty much used the way people use Discord with a group of friends today. It didn't have servers or anything like that, but you could hop on a call with a couple of buds and play games together.
I played a lot of Halo Custom Edition over Xfire back in the day...
Unfortunate project visitor is pretty dead last I checked. 10six is impossible without having a very active clan, your bases get decimated the moment you go offline.
I remember in Paper Mario: TTYD one of the late game tattle entries on a X-naut enemy clarifies that its pronounced "cross"-nauts. This game had me mispronouncing the villain team's name the entire time until the end.
It was definitely ahead of its time! Not really sure why it faded away, I guess pressure from Steam (pun intended), and games moving to private in-game server browsers? Along with many other options for voice chat.
Agreed. Cutesy emotes are great when you aren't trying to concentrate on multiple other things at the same time. When I'm mid-game the only chat I read needs to be static and non-moving.
God that brings back memories. I mainly used it for Halo CE back on Windows XP still in like 09-10. Joined a clan through Xfire that I played with a bunch. Used it a little for Minecraft too! Those days on CE were the best.
Also, GameSpy arcade. My parents had McAfee blocking the internet, because the literal first thing I did was save porn to "My Pictures" directory. But it only blocked the browsers. So I used the built in web browser in GameSpy to download Star Wars BF2 mods, amongst other things
Used to play Duke Nukem 3D there, and I think one of the Quake games. Later games all came with bundled Gamespy and forced the installation on me, hated it so much I gave up playing online back then, and still never got back into it.
I used this daily, had so many hours logged pre getting everything on steam. Was actually just talking about it not that long ago, was such a big part of my highschool years.
I remember i had an account with my real name on it. I lost the password so my name was forever associated with an Xfire account i created as an edgy 14 year old.
I msged support and they were like the most stereotypical americans ever lol
"We cant verify if that ID is valid bc you arent from the USA but we will delete it as a curtesy"
Thank god for the GPDR, this interaction would go a bit different today lol
I remember it being a thing I didn't use. It was like a voice chat/messenger thing with a built in game browser like GameSpy, right? I used TeamSpeak and some other tool mostly over xFire. I didn't know anyone else who used xFire so it was kinda useless to me. A lot of communication apps in the late 90's/early-mid 2000's had that unfortunate downfall for me. No point in using something nobody I would talk to uses 🤷🏻♂️
This came up in convo with a co-worker recently. I had completely forgotten about it until he mentioned it and then, suddenly, a flood of memories came rushing back.
I used this and Hamachi for years
Ah yeah, I forgot about Hamachi! It was great for games that only supported LAN multiplayer.
I used hamachi because no one aside from me in my group of friends knew how to port forward, but it didn't work on my network and it took me 4 years to figure out it was because at&t has it's own network on it's dialup modems by default.
They still do that to this day with their fiber modem/routers! I hate it! And even if you do passthrough to have your own up for only your router, your ping is still never below 23ms because there's two stop points in the chain, that and at&t's dns resolution is ass.
Damn internet oligopolies.
The nice thing about awful isp dns is it is trivial to make your router just serve cloudflare’s instead (1.1.1.1)
I think I'd have to change it in their modem but I'm not 100% sure, I remember having troubles the last time I tried this
That is if u want it for the whole network but u can set dns in ur devices as well. It's usually under ipv4 section for pc and connections on Android.
Terraria before proper multiplayer support was our prime Hamachi game. We had like 7-8 people from an internet forum playing on and off through our hamachi virtual network.
Awesome times!
I still have my old terraria group instances saved with the eloquent passwords such as "butthole" and "42069" for ease of reference.
I played a lot of sup comm fa on there myself. I also used gameranger as a match maker for some of my more...busted...games.
For those that didn't use it, Xfire was basically a combination of messenger, voice chat, and a server browser for games back in the day.
As far as I know, it was also one of the earliest ways to stream your gameplay for others to watch. I remember trying it out years before Twitch was around.
It was pretty much used the way people use Discord with a group of friends today. It didn't have servers or anything like that, but you could hop on a call with a couple of buds and play games together.
I played a lot of Halo Custom Edition over Xfire back in the day...
It also made it really easy to join your friends games before everything was on steam.
Remember Mplayer?
Remember heat.net?
Pepperidge Farm remembers
I have footsoldier dogtags still. 10six was my jam. Still alive via project visitor.
Unfortunate project visitor is pretty dead last I checked. 10six is impossible without having a very active clan, your bases get decimated the moment you go offline.
Nice, I didn't have tags, but I got the shirt. I really only played Quake 2 and Unreal Tournament
Same on the dogtags. Never got into 10six; I was more of an FPS gamer at the time. Lots of Duke Nukem 3D. Lots of shareware Quake.
Hah, I had a promotional mix tape album from them - there was some good shit on there actually. Sneaker Pimps, The Crystal Method, etc.
I remember playing Jedi Knight on the Internet Gaming Zone
My back hurts
It got forked into MPV and is still under active development.
2013 was 30 years ago 💀
Yee olde gamer
Did you pronounce it X-fire or Crossfire?
X fire, but in my defense I was eleven
Let them know I'm taking that for my new band name.
I remember in Paper Mario: TTYD one of the late game tattle entries on a X-naut enemy clarifies that its pronounced "cross"-nauts. This game had me mispronouncing the villain team's name the entire time until the end.
Hence the cross button on PS controllers.
X usually stands for cross. Some road sign will say train xing or deer xing
Sometimes X is also used to abbreviate Crossmas.
Christfire would've gone hard.
More recently X also represents a heap of shit.
English is my 2nd language, so I always read it as "X" Fire. That;s funny, I never though about it.
I never even considered it might be pronounced crossfire...I am stupid.
I think I remember an official statement saying "X-Fire" was correct, and "crossfire" was wrong.
https://youtu.be/rCwn1NTK-50?si=P_IWEi6GnL_ziDVQ
I dont even need to watch this video, I can hear the thumbnail. Don't get caught in the CROSSFIREEEE!
I actually convinced my parents to buy this for me, played it once.
I cannot read the word crossfire without that song latching onto my brain.
The commercial is a masterpiece of 90's child-centric advertising
I could be wrong but I call it the D pad
"Ex-fire". "Crossfire" was an AMD thing.
It was definitely ahead of its time! Not really sure why it faded away, I guess pressure from Steam (pun intended), and games moving to private in-game server browsers? Along with many other options for voice chat.
Why do you think it was better than Discord today? Didn't get to experience Xfire so genuinely curious about it's user experience.
It wasn't. Nostalgia is hell of a drug
What wasn't feature-rich was the chat, just plain text, no emoticons or rich text or anything. Absolutely loved it.
Agreed. Cutesy emotes are great when you aren't trying to concentrate on multiple other things at the same time. When I'm mid-game the only chat I read needs to be static and non-moving.
Hell yeah. Xfire, Counter Strike Source, and Toonami made up the bulk of my childhood. I hardly hear it talked about anymore
The only reason it came up again for me was I noticed it in some old computer files, ha! Used to be my most used application by far.
Man I'd forgotten about this.
This and vent were the first things I loaded when gaming (along with frapps).
Unregistered Hypercam 2
This brought back memories I didn't know I had. Gosh I miss those days, I wish I had downloaded all the clips I recorded before it died. I'm sad now.
There are some archives of the service here -
https://wiki.archiveteam.org/index.php/Xfire
Supposedly most of the videos, and 20% of the screenshots? I'm not sure if there's a way to easily search the archive contents, rather than download.
There's quite a few profiles on Web Archive too -
https://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.xfire.com/profile/*
Holy shit. Just found my profile that had stuff there like bio, pc specs and games/hours from when I was 14... I'm nearly 32 now. Wild ...
Xfire to Discord: I am your Father
Grandfather? Wasnt Mumble the in-between?
ventrilo: am I a joke to you
TeamSpeak ftw
I used it every day. RIP my gametime statistics for BF2.
If flying a fighter jet in real life was just like flying one in BF2, I'd have a very valuable life skill.
somewhere in some alternate universe, you went full Ender's Game on some sorry asses
Same, but with helicopters.
Man I used to stat pad with the boys on BF2 and camp. We were a troll squad. Such good memories.
GameSpy man. Ftw.
The gametime stats in Xfire were my first clue that I maybe needed to get off the PC once in a while and, as the kids say these days, touch grass.
Was still kinda proud of myself though. Albeit a sort of shameful pride.
I had forgotten it until this post.
God that brings back memories. I mainly used it for Halo CE back on Windows XP still in like 09-10. Joined a clan through Xfire that I played with a bunch. Used it a little for Minecraft too! Those days on CE were the best.
Oh yea xfire was the software to have. I streamed myself doing full playthrough of bioshock and remember even getting quite a few viewers. Good times.
Oh god. I must have had 2000 hours logged on jedi academy with xfire. Brings back memories.
Me too, but it was Civ 4 instead of Jedi Academy
This brought back so many memories. Late night DarkOrbit, CS..
I remember disliking it. I don't remember why
Yeah I think I ended up trying it an Ventrillo, and I preferred the latter.
Reminds me of the all seeying eye
My childhood!
This was the best way to game with and chat with friends. I miss those days.
Also, GameSpy arcade. My parents had McAfee blocking the internet, because the literal first thing I did was save porn to "My Pictures" directory. But it only blocked the browsers. So I used the built in web browser in GameSpy to download Star Wars BF2 mods, amongst other things
Xfire was my bastion with my totally legit copy of Call of Duty 4.
CoD4 was fireee. Dude, CoDJump, Zombie mod, and on top of it all promod to make the game competitive.
Oh, I remember. Some of the games I played a lot would just crash if I had Xfire running in the background.
How about even older: HEAT (HEAT.net)? https://web.archive.org/web/19970601031026/http://www.heat.net/
Used to play Duke Nukem 3D there, and I think one of the Quake games. Later games all came with bundled Gamespy and forced the installation on me, hated it so much I gave up playing online back then, and still never got back into it.
Wow this brought back memories of making bank in clan COD tourneys(=USA=). It was too easy back then, now gamers practice 6 hours a day.
I used this daily, had so many hours logged pre getting everything on steam. Was actually just talking about it not that long ago, was such a big part of my highschool years.
A blast from the past. Totally forgot about it existing until this post.
I was an mplayer user. They had plenty of quake team fortress servers.
Bring it back :(
Remember installing it from my Medal of Honor disk. Was it Pacific Assault? I don’t remember.
I used to love this. I remember it getting very buggy though towards the end. I think this turned into raptor later on or something like that.
I remember i had an account with my real name on it. I lost the password so my name was forever associated with an Xfire account i created as an edgy 14 year old. I msged support and they were like the most stereotypical americans ever lol "We cant verify if that ID is valid bc you arent from the USA but we will delete it as a curtesy"
Thank god for the GPDR, this interaction would go a bit different today lol
I remember it being a thing I didn't use. It was like a voice chat/messenger thing with a built in game browser like GameSpy, right? I used TeamSpeak and some other tool mostly over xFire. I didn't know anyone else who used xFire so it was kinda useless to me. A lot of communication apps in the late 90's/early-mid 2000's had that unfortunate downfall for me. No point in using something nobody I would talk to uses 🤷🏻♂️
I think most people used it to find servers to play on. I know that's what I used it for.
This came up in convo with a co-worker recently. I had completely forgotten about it until he mentioned it and then, suddenly, a flood of memories came rushing back.
Never knew anyone to use this
I dont know what this is