When I saw the title of this topic, I knew I had to type a reply as I was one of the first players who hated XWiS, but let me explain first.
I began to play Ra2 online in March 2004 and altough I wasn't new to the game but I had no knowledges about the decadency of the ladders until months later when I started to see faked ranked 1 players and joined the forums strike-team.net and chat stars and I saw what some people were talking there. I've also joined eaxposed and gx I admit 
During those months I made some friends and played lots of FFG so I've really never cared about the ladders or competitive games, until the shit begun...
In late 2004's someone discovered accidentally a IRC exploit that caused all the players to be kiked out from the WOL server and, unfortunately, an intermediate told anyone who worked for XWiS (don't missunderstand my expression) and first individual persons (won't say names) and later more members executed (YES) the exploit with the purpose of getting more players to an almost empty server by that time, it has been discussed in forums and admitted by some persons (wich doesn't mean it was Olaf or XWiS itself as entity doing it, but some members under their own responsability).
And because I've always been of those guys who always thought that forcing people is b/s, with all my respect, so it caused into me a deep hate to this server seeing that I couldn't play with my friends because some egoist (and excuse my expression) @%#!tard, was running the exploit, and wouldn't let people have the freedom to choice where they wanted to play on. But this is only a reminder and it's not really what I've come here to say.
What I had to say is, that during the next years since that happened, I've finally had to surrender to the evidence that XWiS was one of the best things that had ever happened to this game, and it is so sad to see it in the condition wich it is nowadays.
I would to say thanks to every member who has given a part of his life to make this work for so many years, even if they are retired 
I am pretty sure this server can be re-launched and deserves a second oportunity, you just have to take a look at the CnCNet server, if they could succes, we can too, but it takes WORK, starting by making a patch to make the game run fine on Windows 10 and modern O/S and making it easy for the people to install and play without having to modify 7 .ini files and yet get bugs, most people is just lazy to do that.
I would be the first one to play QM and FFG on the real game and with the old client and somehow I feel many players would do it too if they are given the opportunity.
Greetings commanders, and sorry for the brick 
Edited by XMaDTanKX, 17 June 2021 - 07:50 PM.
