Nice to think about old times again! Have a long post!
Vortex2, on 10 March 2017 - 05:46 PM, said:
Approximately how many players would be on at a given time from 2000 and on? Approximations for each year?
Order of magnitude is 100s.
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When did the playerbase start to 'fall off'? How? And Why?
There have been multiple peaks followed by dives followed by another peak.
I'd hazard a guess that 2.3 was the first big peak, then things sort of coasted until 2.6a. People started to drop waiting for a new version/lost interest. The bulk of any game's playerbase is casual players who don't develop strong ties to the game and community. They want something shiny and new. When releases stop coming as frequently, they naturally drift off.
I recall a healthy community during 3.0 through to patch 3.7, where releases happened rapidly (weeks/months apart). 3.7 was the final version for a loooong time, and the community seemed dire. Many times, you'd look at All Seeing Eye (Qtracker's predecessor) and see no North American servers with people. (Euro scene was always more active, but it was also pretty dead too.) We were waiting for 4.0 or UrT HD or whatever, and it seemed more and more like vaporware with each passing day.
Then one day 4.0 came out. I would hazard another guess that the period immediately post-release was as active as UrT ever was. Lots of servers, lots of people. As 4.1 became long in the tooth, things died off again. There was a mild peak at the release of 4.2, but it was much shorter lived than the massive infusion of people that came from the 4.0 release.
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Were there LAN tournaments?
Yes, but never for prize money. Nothing official.
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What was available in the way of leagues?
Lots. North America had CAL (CPL's little brother), OGL, TWL, STA, and FTW. Europe had Clanbase and Urban Zone.
Peak of FTW had like 40 teams. Clanbase and Urban Zone had even more, as Euro scene always bigger than North American scene. Competition era was 2002-2011 for North America. I remember season 4 and 5 (2011) of FTW were competitive, but too many of the old school guys dropped after that.
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Free servers and crap like that. GlaD had a bunch of random sponsors that gave us a server in exchange for using their tag. The teams who sponsored us were pretty scrub, but free server!
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What was the community like? How were public servers?
Good. A lot of us played this damn game for over 10 years.
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What was IRC like? Was it a primary means of communication and reaching out to other players? Or was it pretty much what it is now? Were most people hesitant to reach out and make personal connections with others? Has this changed?
IRC was big in North America. Most clans had an IRC channel and there'd often be lots of people hanging out in it. This was pre-Facebook days. Teamspeak/Ventrilo servers were also popular. Most nights you'd find people to hang out and game with.
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Were there many teams? Did successful teams primarily inhabit public servers with the occaisonal scrim/pcw or was seeing them in-server a rare occurrence?
Depends on the era. Look at archive.org for league sites to estimate # of teams.
Aliasing in pubs was very common. Some people used a known alias, while others like me switched it up all the time. For me, alias was mostly to fly under the radar and not have to engage in chatter. I think almost every good person you'd see in a server was a competition player. Almost no purely pub players were good (although there were a handful--single digits for sure in North America). If you saw a name you didn't recognize at the top of the score board, 99% chance it's an aliased competitive player.
Scrims/pcws pretty rare in north america among the "good" teams. There were some eras where scrims happened more, but the general rule (in North America) was no scrims.
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How would you describe the experiences of playing Urban Terror in the past? What about at present?
Game was fun as hell. Nothing else like it. At the height of the competitive leagues, I had a ton of fun with the game. Good people to play with, good games.
Last time I played, I didn't have any fun because my skill has left me.:) I know what to do, but my character just won't do it. Partly my terrible laptop, partly rust.:) I think there came a point when I didn't really care about the game itself, but instead enjoyed being good at the game and trying to be better than other players. The game became old hat. When I could no longer do that, I realized the game no longer held my interest. I suspect that's true for many of the long-term players.
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Have Urban Terror players always shared a unique 'niche' experience for those who appreciate it, like a rare flower... or was Urban Terror 'Mainstream' once upon a time?
UrT started as a mod to Quake III Arena. Back in the day, installing a mod was a bit more technical. I think that presented a bit of a barrier for many people.
UrT has never been mainstream.