[quote=&quot;Hatred&quot;]<br />[quote=&quot;Ralphis&quot;]I know I&#039;m apparently the only one that thinks this out loud but I&#039;m happy to see the players that seem to not have fun in the IDL over the past few seasons finally leave. I&#039;d much rather play and build up newer players than have to keep listening to the same blow hards or have people who start leaving mid season. I love having veteran players back but if they are going to be detrimental to the league by negatively affecting it through actions (signing up and not showing for your squad after two weeks, captaining a team and pretty much up and abandoning it a few weeks in, etc) then I&#039;d rather they just buzz off and enjoy their league retirement.[/quote]<br /><br />It&#039;s funny that you say that. You were one of the people who hassled me last season when I decided I wasn&#039;t going to play anymore. I couldn&#039;t join #IDL without hearing you talk about how I&#039;m being a pussy and backing out. I didn&#039;t want to play, regardless of my reasoning at the time, you should have left it alone. Your new players could have had my roster spot. I guess getting fresh newblood play-time over washed up has-beens wasn&#039;t what you wanted then. Maybe it is now, who knows.[/quote]<br /><br />You&#039;re right. I made a mistake and learned from my mistake which lead to my new stance on pushing players into playing. I figured those would be solid motivational techniques to get you to play, which obviously worked at some level. Unfortunately, you ended up bombing your team mid-season which I never expected you to do. We can agree - lesson learned.<br /><br />[quote=&quot;Hatred&quot;][quote=&quot;Ralphis&quot;]As far as losing a lot of &quot;important&quot; players moving to Odamex, the only important player I really think that the community lost was Ladna who hadn&#039;t even really played in the league while it was on ZDaemon in the final seasons so it was more of a loss of a very intelligent, contributing community member rather than just another &quot;important&quot; player. Even then, Ladna definitely didn&#039;t want to play on ZDaemon either so I have to wonder exactly how important these other people truly were.[/quote]<br /><br />Nostar wasn&#039;t important? Chewy? Jenova? mikehail? Mass? Mantis? I could go on for awhile. Losing important players sucks and undervaluing the contributions of players in the league prior to the Odamex shift is exactly why you&#039;re losing players now. And if I was a player who wanted to play this season but didn&#039;t play last season but played the previous season in ZD, I wouldn&#039;t play after reading this.[/quote]<br /><br />I suppose all of these people had varying degrees of importance throughout the league&#039;s span, but a lot of the people you named further prove my point. Jenova played a total of two full seasons in the IDL and hasn&#039;t played in roughly two years. Mikehail also hasn&#039;t played in at least that long. Chewy was simply a player who showed up and played his games like everyone else. Most of the names you gave did contribute at some level (varying from minimal to significant) but were not critical to the function of the IDL as a whole. I was bounced out of the league in Summer 09 and it still functioned fine without me because Ladna was there to still operate it correctly. As long as there are people running league operations competently and the necessary number of players to cover the draft and free agency, having &quot;marquee&quot; names is a luxury, not a necessity. <br /><br />[quote=&quot;Hatred&quot;][quote=&quot;Ralphis&quot;]<br />It&#039;s ok for people that have been playing for years to leave and new people to get a chance to occupy roster spots and get their shot. Plenty of veterans who actually want to play have returned this season along with many new signups. This is one of the most diverse IDL free agencies of all time in terms of geography and skill levels. I&#039;m excited for this season.[/quote]<br /><br />And that&#039;s exactly why I&#039;m not playing now. So this super duper awesomely diverse group of dumb foreigners can have that opportunity to prove themselves. I don&#039;t want to steal roster spots when I&#039;m not interested and you shouldn&#039;t want veterans to. I agree with this, I&#039;d be excited for new blood, too.[/quote]<br /><br />I&#039;m glad we&#039;re in agreement that new blood is good. However I don&#039;t see anything about these &quot;dumb foreigners&quot; that makes them much different than some of our traditional &quot;dumb North Americans&quot; other than the fact that they actually seem to want to play without being crybabies, half-assers, and/or quitters. I&#039;ll take the &quot;dumb foreigners&quot; every day of the week.<br /><br />My only comment in regards to Xenaero&#039;s post is that HumanBones definitely runs the IDL, not me. At this point, I merely offer advice on occasion, help compile the wad, captain a team, and have been doing my best (along with many others) to help generate new signups. I have the utmost faith in Bones and know that he will keep the IDL chugging along and into the future.