As far as ping and gaming goes, I had my first real learning experience, when Quake 1 came out. The attitude of ID Software, the creators back then was to do something, more for the users, than their own "bottom line." These guys had already released the original Wolfenstein, Doom 1 and 2, and were very impressed with all the custom maps that the end users had come up with. With Quake 1, they made it even more programmable than the previous games. The end result, is something that will probably never be duplicated again in our lifetimes. Quake 1 is a whole lot like "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd.
Something with amazing longevity, and appropriate for any generation. In the area of ping, Quake 1 had to be the champion, at least in the 90s. It was originally released as a DOS game, and it wasn't until a year after this that they wrote "WinQuake," to run on Windows 95. What's amazing is, that because they wanted everyone to have a good internet gaming experience, they designed it to run well on a dial-up modem. I don't know if any here played or remember the Quake 1 server called "senseless." There are a total of 40 maps in the original Quake, and they used 8 - 10 for deathmatch. They would run each map, maybe 15 minutes or so, and then switch. The best part, you had all weapons and ammo, all the time. For those who have deathmatched in Quake 1, you know that some of the original Quake maps are a real pain, because they don't have enough weapons and ammo around, so you end up dead by "starvation." So, these modern game creators have a whole lot of modern things, like better grahics, but you also need a modern internet connection like FIOS, to get them to run smoothly. And we still have Quake 1, that you could set up as a server on something as slow as DSL. And for those who don't know about "ISP throttling," you should do a youtube search. If you have a FIOS connection, your ISP knows if you're gaming, and they place this activity near the bottom of bandwidth "importance." So they slow you down, and make sure that other users doing more "important" things, have some of your bandwidth. In my post "Possible answer to: Looking for a game to play," I offer to set up a dedicated server, if anyone here would like to try out my experimental map, similar to the one released on youtube. Since I don't like unequal ping, anymore than the rest of you, I wouldn't want to play on the server, which gives me a speed advantage. For those who don't know, getting set up to play Quake1, may cost you nothing. There is only one file you would need that is supposed to cost. From the original Quake it's called "PAK1.PAK" and it may be sitting on an old PC in your closet right now. "PAK0.PAK" and everything else, including a modern Quake 1 engine like Quakespasm, is free.