What were the older days of AWBW like?

So since I joined AWBW a few months ago I've been lurking around and have read many posts on the old forums and I actually found the history of the website really interesting. It seemed like the site at a time had a large handful of extremely competitive players that I have read about such as Hellraider, UltraStorm and Black Mont-Blanc.

For those who were here during the older days of the website what was it like playing against these players? Do you think that they are better than the newer generation of players? Also did they all have their own unique playstyles or did they play fairly similar when compared to each other?

I'm very curious since good is a relative term, so anyone I play against who crushes me is like a modern UltraStorm in my eyes lol (liandry, Qnine, p0.3245, ichbinsehselber, start, srstarry, lvjd1828 etc). I remember reading Hellraider's analysis of Rainy and it blew my mind at how much thought could be put into a single map of the game just for its beginning capture phase. It really makes me wonder how his and other top players' minds worked at the time when approaching a game or just theorizing how to play the game in the most effective manner.

I know we lost a lot of the great players. Kamuscha hasn't been seen in years. Benbever left without a goodbye. Nahbien left early, who was basically our first Hellraider. RockmanX_Zero was really good too, he was basically like the gatekeeper to the high ranks, if you could beat him you were probably top 10. Peter91 was great, when he actually tried. Dhomochevsky, Advance Strategist, Randomizer, and possibly even me, were right behind that. Probably others I'm forgetting, it's been awhile since we had real competition here, most of them left years ago, probably got bored since it's not like the guys at AWN, Gamefaqs, or whatever other AW communities there were were ever really a challenge, that old "InterWebsite" tournament we had in 2008 or something proved that.

I'm not sure how any of them would compare to those playing now, though I'd guess that the competition was stronger 8 years ago, I'm not very impressed with most of the people I've played recently when I have time for serious games, my last really epic game was a close one against benbever in 2008, my last epic game where I won was a game with Morgan Leah which I wish I had saved because nothing could top it, though it should have been against Randomizer in 2009 but server issues resulted in me be booted halfway through. The community now is at least more fun though, there were too many "AW is serious business" types around before, but they did at least know AW pretty well. I think I prefer it that way though, I don't feel like planning my moves again, too much work, our current fun-oriented community is better now that the real competition is over.

I noticed that often while browsing the forums, it seemed like it could get very hostile at times during discussions. Personally I enjoy the competitive aspects of games I play, but the problem is when it starts to interfere with the larger group of people who play for fun. I could imagine some people getting scared off on the forums and never coming back to the website, it's saddening since the userbase for AWBW is already low enough as it is. Many other games went through similar fates for the same reasons, it's really important to just take a step back sometimes and not take things so seriously, since the main reason why people play games is to have fun. Although, people do have different definitions of fun, but most of the time the competitive group will find themselves in the minority of any game's playerbase.

I very much agree with you Airwalker. It is important to keep a fun aspect in the game. This is more important than determining who is the greatest - lol

Often the hostile aspects come into play when we fail to distinguish between perceived facts and the persons behind the perceptions. If people have their differences in opinion they should still be able to be friends or at least respectful.

Your original question: I think the best players from old times (2011 / 2012) were tactically more competent than most players now.
I think I only played and lost vs RockmanX_Zero once.
(But also I think you underestimate yourself to some extent) Currently there is no "official league". At least there is one tourney ongoing. But my impression is that game play is a lot more casual.
Often such highly competitive play modes attract the competitive players.

What I miss from old times is e.g. a league where you can register to play specific modes.
E.g.
FOG league (simply competitive play with FOG on, even if FOG is considered less competitive due to some envolvement of "luck" due to guessing the unknown)
High tier tourney (High tier COs are not banned)
Mid tier tourney etc.

Of course you need the player base and the people who are ready to do the organisational work for all this.

I think the biggest problem we have with tourneys and competitive play now is the number of interested, active, and capable players. Even if you gather enough players for a tourney, odds are that 50% or more are either booted or turn out to be cannon fodder for anyone who's at least a halfway decent player. If you made a tournament of all the interested, active, decent (or better) players, you'd probably have 8 people max at any given point, which doesn't make for much of a tourney.

I really don't have a good idea how good the old players are compared to the new, but I would imagine that most are better, simply because the competitive scene was more active and people had a lot more practice than they do now. That said, I think a lot of the best players now would probably fit right in.