I don't know about "recently", but things have certainly changed.
Even when there was information available in the past, it wasn't always easy to access or understand, and more critically, the willingness and pace of shared knowledge has increased tremendously.
If we look back, admittedly through the lens of nostalgia, at games like WoW:BC, then strategies took weeks or even months to bed in and disseminate from the top guilds to the wider public. RPGs, even in the gamefaqs era, took weeks or months to feel "solved".
Whereas now games are released and are often "solved" in beta before their official release. Game knowledge is spread so much faster now.
Even when we had early youtube back then, and we had IRC and gamefaqs, the knowledge just wasn't spread as fast. It's hard to know if that's just the sheer numbers of people involved now, or a greater willingness to share that knowledge.
Even when there was information available in the past, it wasn't always easy to access or understand, and more critically, the willingness and pace of shared knowledge has increased tremendously.
If we look back, admittedly through the lens of nostalgia, at games like WoW:BC, then strategies took weeks or even months to bed in and disseminate from the top guilds to the wider public. RPGs, even in the gamefaqs era, took weeks or months to feel "solved".
Whereas now games are released and are often "solved" in beta before their official release. Game knowledge is spread so much faster now.
Even when we had early youtube back then, and we had IRC and gamefaqs, the knowledge just wasn't spread as fast. It's hard to know if that's just the sheer numbers of people involved now, or a greater willingness to share that knowledge.