Originally Posted by
Fear
I thought that $1000 USD aikido tourney was a lot of fun.
Originally Posted by
zwouter
That 1000 USD one really was cool. I wasn't home that day but it was a great event, like, huge and stuff.
My good old friend Bate won it that day. I remember getting lifted out in the quarters and being salty about it.
I could probably write an entire book about the period from forums wipeout to that tournament. That 1k tourney used to be big for some. Me and a few other folks, especially Bate himself used to do 300k-1kk duels on regular basis(which was, of course, real money for us at a 10k-1$ back in the days). I don't think that I'll ever get a thrill like that ever again while playing a video game. And the beautiful thing was that we actually had fun while gambling. But then the game just lost it. I think everything after that tournament was the breaking point.
World champs were discontinued. Scammers came in, following that a lot of retarded rules were created that constrained a lot of good players. Shit tons of drama started regarding scams and other bullshit. Some people were actually freaking forbidden from duelling each other. Event hosters and some of the mods turned full nazi. I, myself, hosted over 500 events as a GK/GM and I remember I was told to keep my tournaments more "formal". That was probably the most retarded moment in the nine years of being in this community.
Even earlier, back when this community had Wibbles and Veb, that time was fun as hell. God it was incredible how one dev alone made the entire community fun as hell.
This game had an INCREDIBLE perspective to have a VERY good competitive scene. Instead of creating a scam-friendly system for dueling, hosting more events like world champs the exact opposite was done which made me extremely sad back when I still played. Nobody had a freaking vision. All of the old-schoolers started leaving the game and it just turned out completely "meh" in a matter of one year.
In all honesty I grew up with this game. I downloaded the game in late 07, found out about the forums later in 08. Started when I was 11, now I'm 20. I bought my first phone, laptop from this game. Spent so much time on it. Kind of weird when you think about it, but no regrets whatsoever.