Yea, originally that was going to be a TDM tournament. However, there were only something like 16 or 18 TDM teams signed up, so I went to the GGL forums and made the argument that ONS would have a better turnout (TDM also had CPL going on that Summer, so I made the case that they didn't need two tournies). I got a bunch of other people to post in support of the idea, so GGL put up a poll to see which it should be. At that point I went to every single team's forums/website, registered and asked them to go vote for ONS. It took freakin' forever, but it worked. 
And everything bharsell said in his post is 100% correct. I was also saying all of those things back in the Fall of '04, but the ONS community is pretty resistant to any kind of change/improvement to the game (I went through hell trying to get vehicle dumping removed, as well, and if it were up to half those guys, it would still be a "feature" of ONS today).
I was also arguing back then that not only was it stupid to have unbalanced maps, but that it was also incredibly stupid to have the ladders & leagues allow teams to choose both the map *and* the color on the map they chose, since that only encouraged them to pick the most unbalanced maps possible. They didn't listen and are still stuck with that today (go figure).
As bharsell mentioned, that's probably because a lot of those guys were newer to competition, but their reluctance to try to improve the game (by making it more even, by improving some of the maps with alternate node configurations like they did at Clanbase, and a variety of other things) is a big reason why they're stuck in the miasma they currently find themselves in.
And everything bharsell said in his post is 100% correct. I was also saying all of those things back in the Fall of '04, but the ONS community is pretty resistant to any kind of change/improvement to the game (I went through hell trying to get vehicle dumping removed, as well, and if it were up to half those guys, it would still be a "feature" of ONS today).
I was also arguing back then that not only was it stupid to have unbalanced maps, but that it was also incredibly stupid to have the ladders & leagues allow teams to choose both the map *and* the color on the map they chose, since that only encouraged them to pick the most unbalanced maps possible. They didn't listen and are still stuck with that today (go figure).
As bharsell mentioned, that's probably because a lot of those guys were newer to competition, but their reluctance to try to improve the game (by making it more even, by improving some of the maps with alternate node configurations like they did at Clanbase, and a variety of other things) is a big reason why they're stuck in the miasma they currently find themselves in.