Quote (mikeyjd @ Feb 10 2014 11:46am)
2007: I was a late arrival on the scene. I made my first llder on ladder which was a hdin named Hammured. I remember my first lld game ted's lvl18 ph sin killing my hdin after like 5 minutes and being comepletely raged about it. I knew that there was allot to learn and that I was way behind, so I went into overdrive on every front to make up for lost time.
2008: Later on in this ladder I decided to make Santas-Revenge. I met a couple good duelers (Paul/asshat/kuwait, Andy/yeawhatup/Laine Jen/no jsp/Chya, Curt/Weaj/?, Uno/Skyball/MGL etc..) I had a great time learning from these guys and eventually competing with them. After the reset I decided to take my talents to non-ladder. Coming to non-ladder I met Shane and fell in love with NvN.
2009: It was a year of great competition. Many great duels on ladder and non-ladder alike. Toward the end of this year and into the following year we had many successful tourney's and ladders (Gobb's bvc tourney, 2v2 tourney, various bracket ladders etc..) There was allot of trash talking especially amongst the lvl18 charging elite lol... I found myself in this group with roy, ted, tom among others. Similar things went down in the lvl18 mele bracket as well, but probably not to the same degree. Tvt's were easy to come by just about any time on nonladder and if I or my team did poorly, we go to ladder and take out our frustration there afterwards. It was always nice to be on Jon's team, if you wanted to win. He was the man and could be counted on for 2-3 kills each round whether he was on his bowa or teledudu. After the reset there were quite a few solid players that didn't continue on. I remember 2008-09 as the best players I knew all being around on a consistent basis.
2010: There was a noticeable drop off in overall dueling skill and sheer numbers here. Tvt's were still fairly common, but afk's were seemingly more of an issue. NvN ladder, lvl30 and 18 dueling ladder were some of my favorite times. I quit about this time for a few months. When I came back, bjcummings had deleted one of my favorite chars (lvl30 trapper Malasia), which lead to him being chastised on a pretty consistent basis from this point forward. There was consistently more talk of the good old days, of which I only experienced the tail end of, but still understood all to well. After several months of playing I quit again for a year.
2012: I came back and found that allot of things were pretty much as they were when I had left, albeit a few less players. LLD on ladder had gotten basically totally unplayable for lack of competition, but there was still a diehard population clinging on to what had been. One of the strongest draws for me to LLD had always been item finding/character building. Duped jewels had always been a small issue, but basically still manageable. When item sites began publicly selling custom made items (imports or w/e they are) for fairly modest sums (in comparison to their actual rarity and time it takes to find them), I felt like a large piece of the game that I enjoyed was taken away. I decided that it was my time to walk away for good. I'll always have fond memories of the countless hours that I put into this silly game. The people are, and always were what made it what it was. It was an ideal medium for competition and creativity. It gave those with more skill and time invested the upper hand, but there was always the just the right amount of chance and luck involved to keep things unpredictable.
2014: Hai
dispite that ladder as you said, having almost no good competition the chars we made were still fun as shit. ladder was a melee of random people trying out lld and old pros half heatedly making 15 lifer inv chars, in that enviroment shit talk and general joking around was never in short supply