You're resorting to demagoguery and twisting facts again... let me remind you that last year, about ten people showed up in each city for the Heroes of Might and Magic III (SoD) qualifiers.
Compare St. Petersburg and Michurinsk.
Moreover, most of those who showed up were players of The Elder Scrolls (TES), who agreed to play on a different version to support the idea. And they were the ones who mostly made it to the finals. If the tournament was only for true SoD players, it simply wouldn't have taken place due to a lack of participants, or it would have gathered a frankly weak lineup.
Vik, back up your arguments with evidence, otherwise it's unconvincing.
Let's take the upcoming club final. Mizrael, Scorp, Lyokha, Borzoid, General Yura, Vitalik, Vigo - these are SoD players.
Stinger, Markon, Yama-Dharma, Bayazet, Cobra, AlexGreat, Roland, Dust, Horn, Kral, Matrosov, Porizatel became strong players long before the emergence of TES. Whether it was SoD or not, they would have made it to the finals anyway.
Dear Term, Napalm, Slonik – I don't know, maybe their rise coincided with TES. I'll also include you. So, out of the finalists, at most 4-5 people can say that they became the best players thanks to TES. That's not enough for you to dismiss SoD so definitively.
Yes, during Bayazet's peak, new players with good intelligence and communication skills on the forums appeared. But the problem is that most of them were convinced casual players, they played for a year or two, got bored, and then moved on to other games.
They are far from Yama-Dharma or Bayazet. Of those who remained, they are better known for their conflicts.
Perhaps, with the release of Warlords (VT), many new talented players are appearing in TES-VT? They are, but it seems that even more such players are appearing in SoD.
I believe that Warlords is a promising thing. And the authors are promoting this version correctly, in a subtle way. The old-timers of the forum remember the "promotion" of TES that was carried out a few years ago by Bayazet's followers to the unsuspecting Heroes of Might and Magic III players – and it didn't end well.
So, your posts are more likely to discourage people from playing Warlords, and that's wrong, in my opinion.
There is a very good correlation between the "narrow-mindedness" of one's views and their preference for a particular version of Heroes of Might and Magic. When a lively, energetic player with a sharp mind, skillful hands, a resonant voice, and ambition appears, they usually don't stay in SoD for long.
A kind of scandalous character... yes, thank goodness, there are many more of them in TES than in SoD. I'm already full of resonant voices and ambitions in real life. It's bad when this spills over into the forums, where people are supposed to relax from real life.
Purely SoD-based teams, in terms of their temperament, the nature of their relationships, and the personal development of their members, remind me of isolated tribes that have become victims of inbreeding - low vitality, weak intelligence, low levels of expansion, both personal and collective, strong xenophobic and escapist tendencies, etc. Of course, there are exceptions, but they only emphasize the state in which the rest are.
You're at it again! Call things by their name. What are these purely SoD-based teams? Heroes of Might and Magic III: World or Portal? I assure you, World developed perfectly well even without TES.