ROC IS A BALD MAN

Few minutes ago I logged my clan w3 bot on battle.net and got the most demoralizing message ever - There are currently 2020 users playing 137 games of Warcraft III, and 58704 users playing 20609 games on Battle.net; which shows how old, outdated, passed by, forgotten this game is. However, this helped me to remember and recall the captured images from the past which my mind used to take in similar occasions.

I can't remember if I ever checked how many people was online in Warcraft's first year on battle.net. There was no need for that. Channels and ladder was full all the time. It was no matter if you, for example, join Warcraft 3 FRA-1 or FRA-3 because the difference of these channels was not by the number of players that were gathering in them but by the skill level of these players. Usually, better players would join -1 channels while the -3 or even -4 were reserved for those who like to chat more than to play.

Probably the first time I checked and remembered how many users are playing ROC was somewhere in 2003, shortly after TFT went out. I guess I was curious to see how did the expansion effect on the first game or I was abusing knowledge about the recently acknowledged commands information. I remember that there were 17 000 users, at one moment, playing in the middle of week while on weekend more than 20 000 players were part of the ladder.

This situation now reminds me of a middle aged man who is losing hair. In his early twenties he was enjoying his full strength and beauty and while the years were passing by they started to take part of him with them. So each morning he would wake up with less hair than yesterday, remembering how stronger and beautiful he was yesterday or week ago or year ago.