Only RBW3 used an observer, 1 and 2 were caster POV IIRC. He was an experienced SC observer but not Age, which is why the early work was quite poor. By the end it was basically indistinguishable from a normal cast IMO, and this is somebody with what, 12-20 hours experience?Wasnt it three rbw tournaments? No idea really. I've seen observers used in StarCraft 2 tournaments as well and it never really seems to work that smoothly, always seems to make casters seem like they're reading from a script. I actually did like the rbw tournaments though so you're off base there, I just think their commentating was worse due to having the observer.
Just take a particular scene from rbw (I'm making it up but similar to what happened). The observer showing a scout moving around in the opponent's base, the caster saying, "and now lierrey is microing down the villagers. This could be game ending damage. Right in the woodline. Hint hint observer!". Five seconds later the observer moves to the action and the gg has already been called. Why have an observer again? Believe me this kind of thing happened many times with the observer, and I personally never saw it happen before that in aoe2. Coincidence? I daut it
See this kind of anecdote is always brought up, but it happens a lot with caster POV as well. Happens very often that a co-caster sees something important that the main caster missed. There was an instance on the 1st day where t90 missed something important that Nili spotted, and Nili pointed out the outrage about the observer in RBW3 vs the "lol t90blind again" indifference when it's the caster's fault.