I have such rose coloured glasses of that time.
Looking back, most of the dedicated server software felt like it was just tossed over the wall. Some of the stuff we used to have to do to get things running happily on headless linux servers was very hacky. Others simply HAD to run on windows hosts.
I feel like the entire industry died as games became "live" services.
Nearly 2 decades later when my kids got into Minecraft, I stumbled into the hosted MC server world and was just amazed by the size of the industry around it.
It was a real "arrrh this is where that same spirit ended up" moment.
And now of course there's huge servers funded by getting kids into gambling and pay to win.... Gross.