Please don't use my contribution on this site as an argument others should do it more. The majority of the time I click into aoezone it's something I regret, and I mainly do so because old habits die hard. Let's not act like "three trolls disliked the event" is the reason someone like Nili might not want to invest energy and time here. Look through a few pages of this thread and it's gone well beyond that, and it was way worse at times in the past. This has happened in various degrees towards Nili, Memb, and myself over the years and while it has varied in seriousness, it almost always crosses the line. Hell, even if someone is praising someone they often use it as an opportunity to tear another down at the same time. The most concerning point is that those who cross the line are often encouraged by having the highest amount of upvotes which just feeds the cycle.
Saying "every tournament that has kept the game alive over the past 15 years primordially existed because of this board" may be very true. But to me that's like saying we should stay on Voobly because of the role it played in keeping AoE2 alive. Times change and when something isn't best for the community people move on, and I can totally understand why many don't want to interact here as much.
Hosting a tournament takes a lot of time and energy. In my case I often put a year or more planning & brainstorming on what I want to achieve for the event. In Nili's case I am sure he's in a similar boat. Why would anyone want to put time and effort into AoEZone when their trailer thread is going to turn into people shitting on you for page after page, and bringing up the past at every opportunity?
I still believe everyone here loves the game and is passionate about it, but I really wonder how much that matters versus the drama these days. While most would say they do care about the tourneys and such, it seems the main thing that gets people active here is drama. For example, Titans League Silver generated next to zero discussion on this board, we had Gabi getting into Gold which was freaking awesome for our scene, we had Hoang getting good results on mixed maps, Heart and Lan returning to high level tourneys for the first time in a long time. The list goes on for Silver, but now we've got people like Running winning 2-1 vs Vinch in the first round, ridiculous games from Dracken to take down Liereyy on arena, again the list goes on and on. Maybe this is my fault for not creating a separate discussion thread for TTL (which I will do soon as this has made me think about it) but this isn't just for TTL, it's a consistent theme on this board that people prefer to talk about the game less and drama more.
AoEZone has been important to our scene over the years. But let's not act like the dominating conversations on this board are invaluable to our community these days. And to be clear, I'm not trying to diss whoever is reading this personally as it can vary from person to person... But surely there's an easy theme to pick up on when being on aoezone these days.
The thing you said about discussing games in tournaments its something i dont understand. sometimes i really want to talk about strategies, how games develop, tournaments, more deep analysys and i dont get any answer. some caster should make it, its an amazing idea for me. like one day per week, talk about results, games, analisys.
if you make a thread over this things, it would be awesome. title, game xxxx vs xxxx analysis, another title, final xxxxx tournament analisys. and take out the drama. in those topics only can talk bout strategies and games and results, no organization, no casters, nothing outside the pure game.