Meh. Console warring seems just as bad, if not worse to me. Back in the day sites were busier and tended to be divided up into platform-specific subforums with rules about only talking about that platform. So the console warring was more limited unless you went to poorly moderated places or the places with catch all gaming forums.
In any case, there was just much less complaining about gaming in general than there are these days and a lot more of people just positively chatting about the games they were currently loving. At least on the forums I spent time on. That still exits, it's just in discord's, smaller subReddits and other more curated places rather than traditional forums.
Add in all the added warring between the political divides that wasn't really there in the gaming community in any great frequency prior to Gamergate and then the 2016 election etc., and things are just very hostile and tense anymore for what is supposed to be a fun hobby.
But like I said, it just is what it is. I'll either find enough utility and enjoyment from forums in their current form, or just quit them entirely. With the latter being the most likely outcome given dropped every forum but this one.
Also, just to be clear, I'm not saying forums were ever amazing or overly civil places. From pretty much day 1 anonymous internet communities have been havens for trolls, assholes and losers who just want to share their misery as most "normal" people are interacting in real life and not on hobbyist forums. The ratio of toxic to good posters has just further shifted toward the former as there's so many other, more curated and easy to use options for people who want to avoid all that to go with social media, subReddits, Discords, group threads in text messaging apps etc. than there was back in the day. There's less reason for the positive folks to wade through all the crap to find the good posts than ever before.
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