Hi folks, I finally found the new forums
I don't think its the real DethWave, he didnt even talk to me or respond to his name when I tried to talk to him, and I knew Dethwave pretty well. He wasn't afk either. I've seen wlkr come back before but he gets pretty rusty especially in today's meta. Could have been him, just ask him his real name
It's great to come back and see so many good players and get good games. I had a blast on my recent 2-week or so stint.
It's funny to think about the war2 "Classical" era - it really only lasted a few years, 96-99 or so. Back on Kali you had singles ladders with thousands of people, and doubles ladders with hundreds of teams - each with rosters 4+ deep. On top of that you had a pub scene with 12+ games 24/7, with highly competitive players that only played pubs. The great thing about those days was the diversity in maps and resources. POS was just as if not more popular than GOW for quite awhile. MAZE was considered a high-skill map that top players would pick, b2b and gseps were in the mix as well. FOC or HSC were always parts of a series. 3v3.pud and friends were also commonplace, moreso in pubs but were also be played on ladders. All of this on a mix of resources. So with all of this and a deep pool of players, skill was more general and varied. You didn't see anything close to the level of perfection and GOW science today. And with that deeper pool of players and maps, you would see more tactical diversity and experimentation even within GOW itself.
On Kali, as now, there were lots of great players. They came and went, and many didn't always grind for top ladder spot, but they could provide tough matches. Towards the end of the Kali era, top players moved on to Counterstrike, Diablo, or Starcraft. A few players like myself, DiLLs, $hield, khb, MeaT, and others were still around dominating the top spots, but it was getting old and the competition was dying down.
BNET edition was a new era that many of us were excited for as it brought a resurgence of excitement back. Azteca, KHB, MEAT, [24-7] - some of the top players I remember from the time. Cases ladder had a revival, and competitive games were back. Buzzbomb and Valkrie were also quite good, but it wasn't long before people became aware that BNET edition was very easy to hack, and the hacks were widespread with the resurgence in popularity. Fairly early on, Azteca and I caught Valkrie hacking in an impossible situation (he targeted a death knight outside of vision range). He didn't send ss, and we knew he was caught. However many in the community wouldn’t accept it, or even if they did there wasn’t much you could do about it. Valkrie continued playing at a top level, and continued hacking. It was the beginning of the end for us old schoolers, because integrity of the game was now forever lost.
After Valkrie, a slew of players who had been playing for years saw relatively fast transcendence in skill. Summoner and Swift0ne were 2 of the standouts (went from piss-poor to top tier), but the truth was you just couldn’t tell anymore who was playing legit. It was too easy to avoid detection, a hastle to enforce it, and even when people were caught, they could deny or say it was just that 1 game. Correlated to this, the meta-game became more “Hacky”. People in general would find new expansions or hidden attacks easily, never be caught un-lusted, and play defensively until they knew they had the upper hand. Hackers not only were better because of the hacks they were using, but because they could learn the game, opposing strategies, and enemy build timings much faster than the rest of us playing in the dark. People only played GOW, because it became the only map you could tell if someone was hacking on. This worked in the hackers favor as they could continuously watch and learn the various behaviors of different opponents on the same map throughout thousands of games, becoming experts on possible GOW strategy variations.
It became a hacking meta, where each player knew they had to assume they were being hacked against, and just waiting for the other to do something overly suspicious so that they would pause and ask for ss. And the Hackers of course, being overly careful to make their hack play seem as innocent and legit as possible. Blech.
This lead to the evolution of the meta we see today, which fosters this type of player with legitimate tactics such as forward scouting farms, more common scouting patterns, less “hidden” strategies, less emphasis on dk’s (compared to classical era, although I see more now than years back) etc. I think the prevailing attitude now is that everyone plays legit, because why hack a 20 year old game with only a handful of players? But really that was our mentality back then too. People still did it then, got caught, continued to hack and deny it, and get caught again. And they probably still do.
There’s that dark part of the history, and it’s unfortunate. Because war2 is such as great competitive game. Anyone who participated in that darkness is to me, damned and undeserving of any credit or recognition whatsoever. And really, you can see the lack of skill in these hackers when they play a variety of maps and resources, because they have not practice-hacked in countless games on those various settings. Swift, Summoner, Kingmage (whom I like personally) – these guys are good at the game but nowhere near the top level I’ve seen from various players throughout the years. And above all, good players who have reached those heights while maintaining their integrity deserve that credit. It’s an insult to anyone who has played this game while respecting it to give hackers any sort of credit or top spot when considering best or stack-ranked players.
But as much as I hate to admit it, we all deserve something for what we have achieved in this game. And that’s what makes war2 so special – its small enough that each of us make a difference. Whether you are the best 1v1, a great 2v2 ally, a hacking Archvillain, or just someone to watch and observe and hang out with - we’ve all played our part in war2 history. The world wouldn't be the same without scumbags, and like it or not they're out there. I get to take away my pre-hack war2 glory days, and my spurts of good wins here and there. But there are many players of equal or greater skill to me or to anyone that have come and gone. Many awesome players are still active today, or have started since the old days and have come up. As good as I, KHB, Incinerate, Viruz, Valkrie, Swift, etc. were on our best day – someone else has equaled that at some point. Thanks to all of you for continuing to play and keep the game alive so that I have something to come back to. Lets continue to keep this community alive, and hopefully maintain it with the integrity that it deserves
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