Thanks for the Memories, Xbox Live Gold

When I think of Xbox Live Gold, I think of nothing but good things. So, so many good things. Obviously, Xbox’s paid online multiplayer service carries on (albeit with the somewhat confusing Xbox Game Pass Core), but the original branding – Xbox Live Gold – is no more. I thought I’d take a few minutes to share some of the wonderful games and moments that come to mind when I think about those three words.

It starts at the beginning, back in November of 2002 (well, technically it started a little earlier than that with the Xbox Live Beta, but that’s a splitting of the hairs that’s not relevant to this column). I’d been a dedicated PC gamer for as long as online multiplayer gaming had been a thing up until I joined the staff of Official Xbox Magazine back in October of 2002. I was used to server browsers, and trying to get a decent ping on my dial-up modem with Quake 1’s QuakeWorld client.

I will always associate my most positive memories of Xbox Live Gold with a small handful of games: MechAssault, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six 3, Links 2004, Halo 2, and 1 vs. 100

Eventually I had a high-speed Internet connection via a cable modem, but the transition didn’t happen at the same time for everyone. As a result, some players had a leg up thanks to their high-speed connection, and others were stuck on dial-up 56k modems. Xbox Live bet (wisely) on the future, allowing only high-speed connections into Xbox’s walled garden, thus ensuring a smooth experience for everyone. Couple that with every Xbox Live kit being bundled with a chat headset and, very quickly, $50 per year for the service didn’t seem so bad.

I will always associate my most positive memories of Xbox Live Gold with a small handful of games: MechAssault, Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six 3, Links 2004, Halo 2, and 1 vs. 100. 

MechAssault was a day-one launch game for Xbox Live on November 15, 2002, and boy was it fun! It stripped the simulation bits out of MechWarrior and left it with the pure fast-action, and the result made for some really unique, frantic multiplayer. It got your Xbox Live Gold subscription off to a good start.

Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon, though, was my favorite of the first wave of Xbox Live multiplayer games. It was a pretty straight port of the PC’s popular tactical first-person shooter, but it played great on Xbox Live. I remember jumping into the team-based matches and, thanks to everyone having a high-speed connection and a microphone, every game was filled with strangers eager to cooperate and share tactics. (Side note: November 2002 was a huge month for Tom Clancy video games, as Splinter Cell also released that same month for the original Xbox.)

Speaking of Tom Clancy, Rainbow Six 3 followed a year later in the Fall of 2003 and became the biggest hit Xbox Live had seen yet – and the reason you renewed your annual Xbox Live Gold subscription. It took the vast outdoor snipe-fests of Ghost Recon and brought the one-shot, one-kill tense gameplay into close indoor quarters. Many good times were had playing this one online.

Links 2004 didn’t do anything revolutionary, to be sure, but I spent so many nights playing it with my friends at OXM because it was a great golf game that let you do something that was one of the best parts of real golf: bullsh*t with each other while you played. Again, that universal chat headset made all the difference. Four of you could just play a casual round while talking about whatever was going on in your life. Xbox Live added an unconventional but most welcome real-life touch to an excellent golf sim.

If I could go back in time and relive any moment of gaming, it would be that first year of Halo 2’s life

On November 9, 2004, the game that made sure you could never be without Xbox Live Gold was released: Halo 2. It is not hyperbole to say that Halo 2’s online “virtual couch” system and matchmaking playlists were revolutionary. In fact, as no game on PC or console was doing anything close to what Halo 2 did at the time, I’d argue that Halo 2 is underrated in terms of its online systems. When I tell you that the entire OXM crew (and an extended group of friends and coworkers) played Halo 2 online every single night, that is not an exaggeration. If I could go back in time and relive any moment of gaming, it would be that first year of Halo 2’s life. We made custom games, we sent voice messages online telling our friends to come join our lobby, we ranked up in matchmaking, we used proximity chat to mess with our opponents while tapping down on the D-pad to keep our tactical chat private to our teammates. Halo 2 was so brilliant that it’s as if Xbox Live Gold was made for Halo 2. And in some ways, it was. 

Finally, a quick bit of love for 1 vs. 100. The quiz show game utilized Xbox Live in a way that no game ever had: it brought thousands of players into the same game in a scheduled live event to compete for real-life prizes. If you got selected to be in the 100, you might win an Xbox game (I won 80 Microsoft points once, or $1). If you got to be the 1, you could stand to win a lot more than that. Simply put, 1 vs. 100 was an insane experiment that actually worked – at least, technically speaking and gameplay-wise. Clearly, it didn’t make enough money to survive from a business standpoint, but there’s literally been nothing like it before or since, and I miss it.

And so as you can see, I’m a bit sad at the thought of the term “Xbox Live Gold” slowly fading into obscurity. It brought me thousands upon thousands of hours of memorable entertainment, and I’ll always be grateful for that.

Ryan McCaffrey is IGN’s executive editor of previews and host of both IGN’s weekly Xbox show, Podcast Unlocked, as well as our monthly(-ish) interview show, IGN Unfiltered. He’s a North Jersey guy, so it’s “Taylor ham,” not “pork roll.” Debate it with him on Twitter at @DMC_Ryan.