A lot of us have wondered why the America’s army competitive community never seems to replenish it’s self anymore. Not just because there are other games out there that get played more, or that the devs can never work out all the bugs that make great maps bad.

I am talking about the gap between pub stars, one map whores, noob clans, pro teams, league and ladder stars, and frag rate whores.

Is that why America’s Army is basically split into 2 groups, the pubbers and the match players because of our remarks and the way we view each other?

It seems every time something has been posted in the AA and Tracker forums nobody replies, it gets deleted, or the flaming starts. Is there a way to bring these two groups together? Have you noticed how distant the AA and Tracker forums community is from the TWL, Cal or any other tournament sites forums, it’s like night and day, can we change this? Instead of saying “competitive community” in posts should we come up with a better description that makes all AA players feel as one?

It would seem to make more sense if we came together in some ways, to learn from each other. We shouldn’t be afraid to give up some of our good strats to lesser teams to be able to keep the whole experience more enjoyable. Is it fun to beat newer teams without a single round loss and making them quit the league or ladder? Some would answer yes I’m sure, but really, what did you accomplish other than a good laugh for a day. You are really making it worse for the game by keeping the gap between open and invite so distant. Is it really fun playing the same old teams over and over again? I know that it isn’t all about team work and strats it also comes down to individual talents. However we should be more willing to teach and share with new teams that would like to join.

When I started playing AA the good players were few and far between, so it was much easier to win rounds, stay alive and have fun. I couldn’t even imagine trying to start fresh today with all the good players around now. So now you see how hard it is already for new players and teams to even make it long enough to hear about places such as TWL and CAL. Then on top of that, add people calling them names and not teaching them how to play this game the right way. Do you really think they will make it all the way through an open league or have a willingness to challenge on a ladder just to get smoked? No, they will just sit at the bottom and eventually forget they even signed up. I know some would say that the best way to learn is to play the best teams, well not all people like to get spanked over and over again just to learn AA. Most would probably quit and go back to their old game.

America’s Army’s web site says there are 8,316,755 registered players. I realize we all have multiple accounts and a lot of those are also inactive. Well if we look at Tracker’s site we see that almost 3,000 people are playing right now. Lets look at x-fire; they show 9,879 tracked hours for the month of April per day. Let’s say the average gamer plays 2 hours per day, well that would say that approximately 4900 people play AA every day. How many teams at the moment are really that active in playing tournaments? Maybe 100 in ladders and maybe 60 of those play leagues. So that would roughly be about 1500 players. I don’t know about you but I would like to tap into all those other players and teams as well. What would it be like playing in a league with 150 teams or more? How about having an IRC channel with 500 people idling, where all your questions were answered and your scrimming needs fulfilled.

Well, I for one would like to find out. We are many teams working together as 1 for the America’s Army community, Hooah.