Call of Duty 2 multiplayer

I used to spend lots of time on COD2 on Xbox 360 back when it was in it's prime

I'm seeking some nostalgia, I want to play a server with lots of people and low ping

I don't know where to even begin to set up my computer so I can play

I remember a long time ago I used SA-MP for GTA:SA, is there something similar?

I've not played any PC games without Steam so I don't know what to do

Can you just torrent any old COD2 copy and set it up to connect to a random server? Or do you need to find a server's website and download their own thing?

Well if they were on gamespy then you have a problem.

But to be honest I reckon you're shit outta luck, even bad company 2 from 2010 has no one playing it.

Does it have LAN? If so you could run Tungle and just set up a room there for your friends to join. 

I really wanna play a server that is hosted on some VPS or dedi where there's people on it from all over the world. I wanna play COD2 like I did when I used Xbox Live match making back in the day

I used to play it on PC a couple of years ago. There is a server browser built in and you can also connect to custom IPs. Quite a few people played it when I was. There would always be a server with at least 8 people in it. I think patches 1.2 and 1.3 had the most servers. If it's a modded server it'll automatically download anything you need.

For example, right now this server which I used to play on a lot has 29 players on it https://www.gametracker.com/server_info/89.215.114.195:28962/