There were lots of different vendor specific graphics APIs back then, so that was a lot more complex even if the games were much simpler.
I do think it's partly that the games are much larger and more complex now, but a lack of quality control and care still plays a very significant part. Just look at stinkers like Jedi Survivor.
You say that and yet the thread was full of people claiming "Well I've not had any of those problems", must be magic.
	
 
 .  To be fair the problems would be significantly less noticeable than on slightly older hardware, but they are definitely still there.
	
	
	
 But yeah main thing is as long as your line is good quality i.e. low ping with no packet loss. Although I have whacked the bit rate to max, 75Mbps which uses 22GB per hour 