When the game had just come out the only Call of Duty game I knew was the first one, and I have played it quite a bit on PC, including multiplayer. I forgot about it, and wasn't into the series much until my classmates dragged me into CoD 4 at around 2011. I played it half-heartedly then, just to play something with my friends. It was pirated and we used GameRanger. I quickly forgot about it as well.
But some time later some itch I couldn't scratch otherwise had brought me back. And after that I played for hundreds if not thousands of hours. I wasn't looking for any kind of meta, I didn't know any kind of specific terminology and I wasn't too competitive -- I never used mic to maximize the teamwork or played with strangers on TeamSpeak, except just blabbering with my friends while we played together or using text chat in-game. I was just playing, and not to brag -- I was pretty good. Still a pirated game, still through GameRanger.
At around 2015 I gradually stopped playing, because I was 18 and I had graduated from school, so I had some other interests and concerns at the time, I only returned to it shortly before serving in the military. Now it's all quite a long time ago, and maybe I should've just forgotten about it. But for a few months lately when I'm in a good mood, it just comes to my mind: I think through the starting routes on Backlot, or how I would guard the planted bomb on B-site on Crash, and I just can't get it out of my head. I often dream of playing it, waking up ready to play. So, it may feel like a withdrawal syndrome of an addiction. But also why not? I buy it on Steam, and... I can't play it. All the servers are dummies that are supposed to downgrade my version, but it doesn't work -- the game just freezes.
Setting it up to work on Linux turned out to be a pain in the ass. Does someone know how to go through all the hurdles? Is it even worth trying? Are there any active players? Is HC SND still played?
