I didn't say that to discredit him. What I find frustrating is the lack of foresight by community leaders to allow the shift to happen
completely. It is a good compliment to the scene, but it is a blunder to have it
be the scene.
You need to think about if from the perspective of the average player, because that's the lifeblood of any community:
It's difficult enough for players to make their way to play an outdated game.
It's difficult enough for players to find the "right" battle server, or even understand game modes.
It's near impossible for the general public to be lured in by competitive play. You're not Rocket League, you're not League of Legends, you're not even **** Battlerite. Not even in the same league. That's like GK vs BkS, and this community is GK (or OE or tK or whatever **** tier clan you want to use for the metaphor).
Only a certain percentage of those who try this game are going to stick with it in any meaningful way.
Now, with a public server gone, you're adding in extra steps when random scrublords try to come play Mount and Blade: Warband because they saw a Steam sale and thought it looks cool. They see no server that's populated, and 95% of people these days go, "Game's dead. You guys want to play some CS?" and leave it at that. An extremely small amount of people will actually put in the time to go find this third party program that matches them with people who are light years ahead of them in experience; add to that that the community is already incredibly insular, and you have not created a hospitable environment that is in any way nurturing for new players. **** that, it isn't even that it's not nurturing, it's that it isn't possible -- you are, in effect, cutting off any meaningful possibility of the inwards flow of new players, as this giant barrier to entry has been set on an already small and dying community. The argument that, "Bro, it's cool, our numbers are good" right now is because
this just happened recently. The only numbers you have are what you have right now. Once that public server was abandoned by the competitive community and you guys made the dumb-as-**** permanent jump to playing exclusive matchmaking, you took a static, pre-set group that is going to have an
extremely low, if not non-existent, rate of addition. In fact, you're going to see that static group experience attrition, as is normal, but there will be no new influx to take the place of the guys who fall away.
In short, you have locked the door to new possibilities, and you
will see the set number of players you have now, dwindle. No one will replace them. When you look at our history, you've seen clans come to the top, lose interest, then other groups pop up and take their place. That's why **** clans like OE now have the opportunity to even play in a finals match, with players who used to be on the **** tier teams. This is normal, and this is how the game rolls forward, as you see them playing a lot of new clans with newer names. The community used to have leadership at the top that steered the ship: I did it, Mad Dawg did it, Calamity did it, and it was much more than just posting "dank memes" and bumping your thread. What is NA Warband, now?
You have slowly shifted the way the game is played away from what the NA identity has long been, because most of you don't have any sense of originality or identity, yourselves.
You have given into European ideas and metas, map-making trends and server settings. It's virtually identical. You all play the exact same way, and it's pretty **** boring.
You have chased the idea of "eSport," because you see League, SC2, Rocket League, CSGO and these other games do it. Warband will never be an "eSport" on that scale. You've sacrificed so much. What have you gained?
Finally, you've proven how short-sighted and apathetic you are. Everything has to die, but you just unplugged the majority of machines keeping this scene alive. You'll be okay for a while, but as players start to naturally exit, and with no pathway for them to be replaced, time's going to show you how right Lord Rhade, Commander of the Shields of the Black **** is. I'm rarely wrong, small sons.
I'm sure there are inevitable "y u care doe" and childish ****posting coming, and that's another thing entirely. That's what this community is now -- memes, no identity, and it's cool not to care. Frankly, I'm kind of disappointed in you guys. But, the reason I care, is that I've always had a soft spot for this game, and the people that played it. Frustration and boredom made us leave, but that doesn't mean I don't want to see Taleworlds, and, more importantly, this game's community, succeed. Bad decisions, guys.