The golden age of gaming was the late SNES/early playstation era.
Graphics were beautiful, games were long and generally had incredible, immersive, and even heart wrenching stories.
Unlike today, where the focus on hyperrealism, generally at the expense of story and definitely performance. but hey, its only 6 hours long and you get to pay 80 dollars for it, so thats great, right?
The golden era depends on your personal preferences. What you said is true, but golden era for MMOs was early 2000s to early 2010s, and for me personally it was during that period