Posted with the permission of it's author, RemotE.

One of the great aspects of the game of Warheads is the fact that the game has always been dynamic in nature. It evolves. It grows. It changes. For some the changes are good, and for others, the changes are not so good.
I do not go back to the very beginning as do some of the players like Princess Die, Purdue Pete, Puffy and some others. I do go back to the days of TEN and the lean time after the demise of TEN when Princess Die kept the game alive. (If there ever is a hall of fame, Princess Die belongs due to this fact alone, not to mention his great skill and manner of playing)
When I first started playing, there were no mags and spray and prays. You needed shooting skills to compete. You needed clever weps and the skills to deliver that wep to a specific target. The game was intense! Players had specific styles (not to mention personalities) and you would create weps designed specifically to overcome these styles. One of my favorite weps in the days of TEN was named LoFat death and was designed just to kill LoFat as I had identified one of his
tendencies for a specific defense in certain situations. Many players built weps to overcome conditions just as they do today; they are just not as powerful as the ones players build today.
I flourished in that environment. And, I developed a dislike for clans. It infuriated me that clans would work together in games to eliminate non clan members, the old "gang up" theory. I decided to kill the clans. For almost six months, I became a "clan killer" and would search out games with clan members. I would taunt them, talk trash, and challenge them in every manner possible. It got to the point that I was placed on a hit list as public enemy #1 on the web site of a certain clan. In this time frame, I became "a total ass" and became no better than the clans I was so intent on killing.
Then one night (waiting for clans to show up on TEN) I was invited to join a game by i-am-oz. I had the utmost respect for this player as he was the consummate shooter and I loved his style of play. I thanked him for the invite, but told him no, and that I was waiting for the clans to show up. He told me he really wanted to play me and asked me once again to join as he had something to show me. I said ok, but let’s make it quick as I was on a mission and I knew the clan members were soon to arrive. In the game oz did not select a defense when it was his turn. I asked him what was his problem, as oz never forgot to select a defense or change his defense every turn. He told me that "I" was his problem. Now this was not very like i-am-oz as he was the least confrontational player ever to play the game. I asked him why "I" was his problem and what had I done to him to make him feel this way. He replied "You’re hurting the game of Warheads and I want you to stop what you’re doing." Of course I said something to the effect "What the hell am I doing to hurt this game; I am one of the best players this game has ever seen!!" And Oz replied "You are not one of the best players this game has ever seen, you ARE the BEST player this game has ever seen and its time you start acting like it!" The game went on by my watch for over thirty minutes and a shot was never fired! The old man had taken me to his "Warheads Woodshed" and taught me more in one half hour than countless teachers had taught me in twelve years (at the time I was a high school senior) of organized classrooms! I came out of that game a different player, or more accurately, a different person. From that moment on, I never played the game of Warheads the same. This old man made me realize that the game was not just about me or the clans or the taunting and confrontations.
It wasn’t about who the best was or who had the best weapons. Oz told me that the game of Warheads mimics life and our journey through this life. He said we will always face obstacles to overcome and situations that demand our decisions. It's how we react to these situations with our decisions and how we overcome our obstacles that make us who we are. He said to me (and I will never forget this as long as I breathe) "Your actions and your decisions are making you someone you won't like, and when you don't like yourself, you are doomed to failure in your journey though your life." I didn't understand at that time just how profound this statement was. When your seventeen years old, you don't understand how much you don't understand!
Oz told me I could use my skills to make others better players or I could use my skills to make other players dislike the game. He told me I lacked respect for the other players and in turn, lacked respect for the game. "When you lack respect for the other players and the game, how can you respect yourself" he asked me. Of course, he was right. I had no answer for him. I had a unique talent for a game I loved, and I was using that talent to hurt the very game I loved.
We talked about many things during that half hour in the "Warheads Woodshed" and I left that game no longer the same player I was when I entered that game. I no longer taunted the other players. I left the clans alone. Hell, I even made peace with LoFat and his cronies. And as a result, I started playing even better and enjoyed the game more than I ever had before.

THE DEATH OF TEN
I was there for the countdown. There for the screen shots. And then it was gone. A void had been created. A vacuum! The game was gone! And then, a very faint light in the dark void, a private server appears. Its princess die from down under. Not many players, sometimes you will wait an hour for a single player to appear. But we start to find each other and players start to appear at predictable times and the game lives. And it is FUN.
I look back at that time as one of the most enjoyable. There were not a lot of us playing, but those who were there remember this part of the warheads evolution. No bickering, no fights, just “good fun” as princess Die used to say at the conclusion of games. It went this way for an entire year! We heard rumblings of a new release of WH. Corporate deals are made and Warheads is reclaimed from Ionos software by its creator, Swerdnik (Mike Boeh).
A new day dawns and WH is re-released to critical acclaim ( download.com gives 5 thumbs up) and a new Retro64 hosted server is established.

IT’S A BRAVE NEW WORLD
This is not your daddy’s warheads! There are many changes. There are options. And there are no constraints. Weapon Proliferation has begun! With virtually unlimited money available, the hot ticket is the wep editor. There is a new thing called a mag and new terms are starting to show up like “geddon and spray and pray.” Incredible weapons start to appear in games. And new ones appear everyday. And they are beyond the scope of what the old time players could ever have
imagined. Some players adjust. Some do not. I join the “weapon gold rush” and build my own pack of sprays, splitters, mags and geddons. I build my anti’s to overcome all defenses. I play but no longer enjoy. I migrate to sniper. A few play, but not many. It’s hard to find a game and as a result, I play less and less. And finally, I stop………
As the game evolved I guess I did too. I graduated from college with a degree in engineering and entered the work force (with the help of Dr. Bombay no less) and grew further from the game. It’s only been in recent months that I returned to see what was going on with the game. The death of iam-oz brought me back to read the posts in this forum. I even posted myself and had my say about the old man of warheads. After I had my say, I read the other threads. I read them all. From what I read, I have come to the conclusion that the evolution of the game has stalled. There have been changes, of this I am aware. A new owner, a new look to the site, new planets, etc. etc…. But what has not changed is the basic premise of the game. And once again, just as old man oz told me long ago in that game, Warheads mimics life. Just as it is in the world today, the same is true in Warheads. Weapons dictate life. He who is willing to fire mindless weapons of mass destruction can win a game. But in the end, they lose. Because in warheads and in life, by doing so, you only
hurt the thing you love.
It’s time for the game to grow once again. I fear if it does not, it will eventually die. The game is now a contest of weapons. It is a weapons display. It is not reaching its fulfillment. The game has always been multidimensional in the past. Weapons were 50% and the means (skill) to deliver these weapons were 50%, the balance was perfect. This balance no longer exists. I will let you assign your own percentages to what you feel is the situation in the game today.
And I doubt you will find many who do not proclaim that weapons tip the scale over skill with the game as it is played today. Without having a balance between weapons and skill, the growth of the game is stunted. How do weapons continue to grow in design after you make one that is capable of taking out a player with excessive points beyond his original health? It’s like nuclear weapons. Once you have one so powerful that it kills all life, what’s the point of building a better one? In order for weapon design to continue to be creative, unique and evolve, obstacles are needed for designs to overcome. These obstacles are not in place with the game today.
There are some fabulous weapon designs being used today. The creators of these weps are ingenious and clever. These designers need new challenges. They need their obstacles. There are new designs yet to be discovered. Do not argue this point with me, you will never convince me that every weapon design has been conceived. There are way to many permutations due to the different stages, warheads, and functions (i.e. bracket, etc.) that the combinations are inexhaustible. The ingenious warheads weapon designer needs to discover the warheads answer to the neutron bomb and kill the player without killing the universe. And he needs to do this without an unlimited supply of funds ($) to fuel his weapon. Build me a weapon that weighs in at a cost of $2000 or less that takes my breath away when I see it utilized in a unique situation and I will applaud that wep over an orbiting splitter that traps the ship and rains hundreds of disrupters on the terra trapping the player. Don’t get me wrong, that weapon is clever and it does not wipe out all the planets, but how much kill is overkill. The wep has tipped the scale past 50%. And so have many others. The balance is skewed and the growth has stagnated.
There are many who believe that weapons should dominate the game and skill should be secondary to the weapon and its design. There are also those who believe that skill should dominate the game and weapons be subservient to this skill. And this is how it should be. Thank God we don’t ever agree on everything, how boring would that be.
I happen to tilt to the skill side, those who know me would know I was less than truthful if I said I was 50/50. But what I know is this. Regardless of your position, realize this. Without each other the game is nothing. The game is Synergistic in nature. The sum of the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The skill must have its wep and the wep must have its shooter. If not, the game does not reach its potential and fulfillment.
If you have read this post to this point, thank you for putting up with my rambling. Agree with me or disagree with me, I expect nothing else. I write this because of the game. I write this because an old man made me understand that it is the game that matters. Players come and players go, the game remains. The game grips you, it addicts you. The game frustrates you and alienates you. But the old man understood the game. He saw through it! He knew there was more afoot than met the eye. He knew it was how we played the game that mattered. He knew it was how we interfaced with our fellow players that mattered. He knew that was where the real score was tallied. And to
that end, I guess that old man never really lost a game. He came out a winner every time.

Allow the game to grow again. We owe it to that old man.

RemotE