our founding persons

[Garja]

I forgot about early skirmishers in French mirror ahah

[spanky4ever]

Anyways. I know I have forgotten to mention many of your names, But I thank you for all the work you have put down. If not for YOU, we would not be here

[callentournies]

I forgot about early skirmishers in French mirror ahah

ye early skirmishers in french mirror was a great back-end developer. always flew a bit under the radar and many folks don't know how important his work was to the site.

[uberjz]

don't forget Mitoe's Bo7 and Kaiserklein's Precision

[iNcog]

Actually wow, speaking of the official twitch channel, apparently there's a 40 hour VOD of the entire summer tournament from 2015 on their channel (the second tournament ESOC did):

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/90126128

If you look through the VOD history you can find a lot of stuff from the very first ESOC tournament as well; might be interesting for some people.

holy cow that's some strong nostalgia there. that tourney was stacked, just flipping through the vod a bit

Stacked? That's just nostalgia painting a better picture of the past. The tournament was a bit of a joke, especially after the amazing spring tournament. The level of competition was low and because the tournament was hosted in the summer period, viewer engagement was lower than expected. The targeted prize pool of the 2015 winter tournament could not be fully funded after the summer tournament ended. ESOC has never hosted another tournament in the summer since (well, unless you host it in October and call it a summer tournament).

The summer tournament in 2015 was also the last tournament to be played on the RE patch. During the summer tournament, development on the ESOC Patch was started and knowledge about this was made public after the summer tournament had ended. The winter tournament was played on the very first EP version. Even if this patch arguably caused a divide between the casual and competitive playerbase, EP greatly encouraged the development of the competitive community. We would not be here if we had been playing ottoman and hauds mirrors for the past decade.

lol ok

[Dolan]

Edit: also a hot take: discord servers are the worst thing to happen to gaming communities in the last 10 years.

Idk for some reason I lost interest in discord more than 1 year ago and quit it. It was making me waste too much time.

[fightinfrenchman]

Edit: also a hot take: discord servers are the worst thing to happen to gaming communities in the last 10 years.

Idk for some reason I lost interest in discord more than 1 year ago and quit it. It was making me waste too much time.

This is not even really a response to the post you're quoting

[Dolan]

Edit: also a hot take: discord servers are the worst thing to happen to gaming communities in the last 10 years.

Idk for some reason I lost interest in discord more than 1 year ago and quit it. It was making me waste too much time.

This is not even really a response to the post you're quoting

It is though. I'm confirming Discord servers had a negative effect in many ways

[Goodspeed]

It's just yet another way in which we're migrating from long-attention-span media (forums) to short-attention-span media (discord). It's an omnipresent, highly destructive general trend

[gibson]

Ok boomer

[Goodspeed]

Shouldn't you be on Tiktok?

[dicktator_]

Can't really speak on gaming communities in general but Discord servers absolutely had a negative effect on Aoe3. Remember when people used to actually post stuff in tournament result threads?

[gibson]

Discord killed the forum for sure, not sure it can be stated it was a negative for aoe3 since I don’t think you can quantify all the “good” that discord generated relative what the forums used to do. I don’t think you can really say it’s a migration from long form to short form either. A platform doesn’t necessarily necessitate content being long or short form, there used to be and still is a lot of short form content on YouTube even after they spun off YouTube shorts specifically for short form content. There’s plenty of long form content on discord and plenty of short form content on the forum, discord is simply designed better, easier to access, and “live”, which is why it killed the forum.

[Garja]

I'm not even in the aoe discord or atleast I never browse it. Discord just sucks dicks and balls as a replacement to forums.

[spanky4ever]

I'm not even in the aoe discord or atleast I never browse it. Discord just sucks dicks and balls as a replacement to forums.

I know, I have been there, and it was awefull. Only disrespect to be harvested there. It was some time ago though, and it could have grown up? Idc.
I stay away, from that experience, anyway.

[iNcog]

I'm on discord for one other particular community and I'll definitely be quite active in there, so long as I'm active on the combat flight sim server that I enjoy. it's just a chatroom more so than anything, good for discussion. I think I would have preferred a forum for that community but discord is fine.

there's no real reason to play aoe3 anymore since that game isn't the gem it used to be. maybe it's not so bad but the amount of bullcrap design in aoe3 makes it unfun for me to play, frankly speaking. and if I don't play the game there's no reason to partake in discussing the game.

as for these forums and their decline: eh. discussions of substance are too difficult to have on here. you either agree with what's being said with the good faith actors or you start wallowing around in the mud (pseudo-intellectual discourse) with posters of bad faith. how much discourse can you truly have when you need to convince someone else about the merits of basic ethics to even establish the semblance of common ground?

I also think that social media these days is psychologically brain rot. Everything is about negativity. if you're on reddit, it's because x, y, z is a horrible, negative thing and everything is bad. social media purposefully exploits algorithms to make you feel like shit, because negative feelings are engagement and engagement makes money.

so why would I want to discuss US politics on esoc, when US politics are so ridiculously polarizing and depressing? why would I want to discuss the advent of AI on esoc when that means that we're all going to be jobless? why would I want to discuss climate change on esoc when we're going straight into an ecological disaster that is avoidable but our broken systems prevent us from steering clear of it and making things better? why would I want to discuss inflation when I see the cost of living go through the roof and pay isn't following?

everything there is to think about just degenerates into negativity and honestly that trend applies itself to esoc as well. it used to be a somewhat chill and laid back community but these days, eh, it doesn't have that feel anymore. there was definitely a time when investing time and effort into the community felt like it was worth it. not really the case anymore. the last meaningful interaction I had with the aoe3 community was getting somehow embroiled in the breeze and his gang drama that I had no interest, at all, in taking part in.

the best thing to do is take a step back from the internet in general, honestly. the good format of the internet (forums, online gaming, etc.) is kind of a thing of the past

[MCJim]

Actually wow, speaking of the official twitch channel, apparently there's a 40 hour VOD of the entire summer tournament from 2015 on their channel (the second tournament ESOC did):

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/90126128

If you look through the VOD history you can find a lot of stuff from the very first ESOC tournament as well; might be interesting for some people.

The number of videos I put on the ESOC YouTube during those years was ridiculous.

I still feel great when thinking about the first Spring tournament in 2015. Summer 2015 was one of the least liked tournaments indeed. I remember all the Blackstar drama. Seems like you don't have to sign up twice after such a big win (or act normal). Nevertheless, watching back some parts of it feels good. I wish we'd get some more A tier casters and players back to some sort of repeat the great first Spring 2015 tournament.

[MCJim]

Also let's not forget the Winterviews, done by Umeu. Fun to look back on a 18 year old me

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