Yura, you're trolling shamelessly.

Yes, that's me (c) :)

On Bay, out of a hundred top players, only about fifteen poker players remained.

There were never a hundred there. There were 3-4 dozen active Heroes players. They changed, of course, but at any given time there were no more than that number.

Then the situation changed, the Heroes segment of Runet united, so the need to sit in isolated corners disappeared. And the Bay players were the first to sense the wind of change and scattered across different sites. Currently, all sites have a very mixed player base.

And specifically in the case of Bay, the fact that its owners (Balamut and Armageda) stepped away from the scene played a role. But if there was a need to develop Bay, someone else would have taken it up. Since there isn't (for the reasons described above), well...

Essentially, it now functions as a backup airfield, half-mothballed. If needed, we'll bring it out of mothballs. It's just that it requires effort, and there's no point; it's easier to use already established platforms like HW, HP, and HWT (heroeswt.net).

For the modern Heroes community, an abundance of different sites is not needed at all; one is enough. Because it's not websites that define the community, but people and ideas.

You're back to demagoguery and misrepresentation... let me remind you that last year, about a dozen people showed up for the qualifiers for SoD(!) in each city. So this is a general Heroes trend. Hundreds of people at club tournaments are the very distant past, when Heroes had just come out and were in fashion.

Moreover, the majority of those who came were TE players who agreed to play on a different version to support the idea. And for the most part, they were also the ones who advanced to the final. If the tournament were held only for true SoD players, it simply wouldn't have taken place due to lack of quorum. Or it would have gathered a blatantly noob lineup.

Speak directly. The Heroes world is small; did you mean World and Portal? I visit Portal very rarely now, but World much more often. Well, World is definitely not a swamp.

Swamp or not a swamp — I apparently define it differently than you do. And it's not even about forum affiliation here. It's about a personal impression of people. I look at a person and I can see if they're in a swamp or not. It's written on their face, in their eyes, in their tone of voice, in their facial expressions and body language. And it can be felt through forum posts too, though worse, but it can be felt.

So the correlation between a "swampy" outlook and preferences for a version of Heroes is very strong. When a lively, energetic player appears with a thinking head, capable hands, a strong voice, and ambitions — they usually don't stay in SoD for long.

Pure SoD communities, in terms of their temperament, relationship dynamics, and the personal development of their members, remind me somewhat of isolated tribes that fell victim to inbreeding — low vitality, weak intellect, low levels of expansion, both personal and collective, strong xenophobic and escapist sentiments, etc. There are, of course, exceptions, but they only highlight the state the rest of the mass is in.

You're right about this. I like to remember the old times. Because I managed to encounter amazingly bright people in the Heroes world; I could list them for a long time. They brought nothing but positive emotions, both in real life and on the forums.

Why did I come to this forum? Because the people who were on it brought positive emotions with them. That World of 2008-2009 was special. I wish we could bring back Zhenya, Inviz, Loy, and Adelaide to the forums. Wonderful people on a human level. Now all sorts of people are showing up, judging by the discussion board. But the core, the heart of the forum, is still alive.

Well, I simply value different things in people. Brightness, positivity, politeness, etc. — I perceive as a nice wrapper. All else being equal, I appreciate it, but nothing more. Because what matters is what's inside — talents, skills, the ability to get things done, the scale of the personality.

Therefore, for example, the boorish and scandalous Alex is much more interesting to me than the aforementioned comrades. He's someone you can learn from.