Man, with the advent of broadband(still on a 56k dialup here) it has gone totally to hell for me. But it wasnt always like this......I used to play GLQuake (ahh, the mammaries) on one server and the guy had the opening level, where you can choose the difficulty you wanted to play. Then you jumped into the portal and hit the three rooms there. Total friggin chaos with about 25 people jammed into a tiny board. I played for so damn long, that I was continuously called a bot, which made me chuckle. Man, I still dont think that any game then or now, was as fun as that. Of course , it being new to me and all, it would seem to be the best.
Everyone was hobbled by the same 400-600(!) or so ping, and you always got the freezer who had so much lag that he would continuously die and respawn, only to get blasted to hell over and over. Too much fun.
Peace
Lounatik