Remember SAMP Fever?

[Aurelia]

Call me old school, but my favourite GTA version is still San Andreas. I guess that's because I've spent so much time playing it. I'd never really played the gameplay version, which is odd, considering how I like the game, but I've spent hours and hours AND HOURS playing multiplayer. My best friend liked this game as well and so sometimes we'd meet in the game after school and have so much fun. We used to drive together for hours, sometimes even run from the police or the other way round: try to catch criminals, it all depended on which job was "fashionable" at the moment: we always picked the one that wasn't. We could also talk about the game for hours. One day, while we were discussing SAMP in school - as usual, minding our own business, we mentioned how it was raining terribly and we couldn't see anything. And a girl walked up to us and asked us whether we liked rain. It was SUMMER! It hadn't been raining for DAYS. That's when we realised how odd our conversations must seem to others around us. I guess I was lucky to have someone who liked the game as I did.

I always ended up in RPG servers. There was this one... West Side, I think. I can't remember correctly. But I know that I liked it very much. It was my favourite. At times we'd find a racing forum or something, but we mostly played RPG.

Memories? Anyone? Were you crazy about SAMP when it came out? 

 

[Rux]

I never expect to see this game's name appear anywhere because of how underrated it is xD.

I started on SAMP back in 2007. I found RPGing a little pointless and too boring for a game so I joined Neo's Cops and Robbers looking for some action (back when that server was at its prime, I don't even know if it's even alive now). Anyway I got hooked in with the whole Cops vs Robbers theme and played that game daily for the next 2 years. Then I found other servers like LVP (Las Venturas Playground) which had a great, active community and a ton of clans. So that's when I truly got into the competitive side of this game. By joining clans, having clanwars or just plain gang banging another clan's member on the street just because he's alone xD. It was like real life gangs, there was even a 'gang base' somewhere that provided revenue (ingame revenue, of course) for the gang that took over it, so we fought a lot for that too. Good times.

Not long after that they invented the terms RW and WW (running weapons and walking weapons), which you probably already guessed their meaning. Then appeared each clan's servers and someone invented a gamemode called AAD (Attack and Defense). Which is what made this game truly shine for clans. There's a lot of strategy and skill involved in order to win in this kind of gamemode and that's what made it so fun and competitive.

The game isn't dead either, but all my clan members left the game since 2012-2013 and so did I. We got bored I suppose.

 

[Aurelia]

I know the feeling: we all got bored of it eventually, but for a long time, it was very active and a lot of us played it. I don't know about your server, but I revisited SAMP a few months back. I tried to find WS (the server I used to play in, daily) and there were many improvements, many new things, so many new members!! I couldn't find a single player I knew! And I knew almost everyone who'd played back then. One day, back when the server was in its "prime" as you put it, it was so busy that I couldn't log in. There were 200+ players. I kept trying and trying and only when someone got kicked or left, you could attempt to join, but if someone beat you to it... well, better luck next time. I also remember when it lost popularity: it could happen that only 15 people were online and about 13 of them were AFK in bank. 


I guess not many people play it now. You had to play it during the time it was popular or else you probably wouldn't end up liking it... I don't know. I had great fun on SAMP. I'm glad you did too.

 

[Rux]

Yea sometimes the nostalgia hits me so hard that I can't resist revisiting the old servers, but then I remember why I left not long afterwards. LVP used to have 50-150 players 24/7, but now it struggles to keep 20 and sometimes empties. You're right, you either had to get into it early or you missed it. There are some places where this game is a little mainstream though, I suppose. I see a ton of Brazilian and Russian servers everywhere with hundreds of players. They don't seem to get bored with the game.

 

[theGIJST]

Are you kidding me? GTA San Andreas is, by far, the best game ever made. I've spent so many hours playing it, including the multiplayer mode. I completed the single-player a few times, and spent countless hours messing around in the single-player, and when multiplayer came out, I played that non-stop. I played it for five years straight, barely touching any other games that were out and trending in that period. I don't know what is so special about that game, but I loved it. There was just so much to do and so much to explore. And also, the modding community for that game is insane. I think multiplayer is a little bit dead at the moment, as there are mostly deathmatch servers and stuff like that, where I prefer playing RPG servers.