

I agree completely. Though its not just nostalgia, nowadays I tend to be so worried about making a decent house that I end up stressing over it and not enjoying it at all. Everything has to have a function, a proper block palette, the layout and terrain needs to look natural, etc. Waaay too much thought goes into what should have just been something simple like where to put my enchanting table and bookshelves.
So instead I’ve recently been challenging myself to build “ugly” things like nonsensical square houses and giant wool rainbows, and it’s surprisingly hard (and fun). I’m so used to building decent looking houses that I genuinely struggle to just build random crap now.
The Sims 1 (2000) had 7 DLC. The Sims 2 (2004) had 18 DLC. Halo 2 (2004) had several multiplayer map pack DLC. Doom 3 (2004) had at least one DLC. Star Wars Battlefront 1 (2004) & 2 (2005), KotOR (2003), and The Clone Wars (2002) all had DLC. Practically every sports game on the original Xbox had roster DLC.
I think DLC were more common than people remember, even if its not to the scale it is today.