I, for one, welcome our new overlords.
Inexpensive airsoft is accessible airsoft.
Accessible airsoft has taken us where we are today.
That is to say, a time that pales in comparison to the heydays of yesteryear, when airsoft was expensive and you really only had the true believers.
I respectfully disagree with this elitist thinking. Were it not for an affordable solution, airsoft would not have been an option for me and several of my close friends who have had interest in playing. One can only afford so much time and money when you have a wife, children, mortgage, car payments, credit card bills to care for.
Did it bring in a lot of kiddies? Sure it did. But it also made the sport accessible to those adults who simply could not afford to throw down $200-300+ on a starter gun while they live paycheck to paycheck.
It is not elitist but rather realist.
This game took a major nose dive after the clone explosion. Take this example with guitars;
I play a guitar however I don't play acoustic. Nothing wrong with it but I prefer heavy music with more emphasis on actually playing beyond power cords or slow melodies. I get to college to find every guy there "plays" guitar as well. So I ask them, "oh, then have have every played such and so song?". Come to find out every single one of the players had the same damn guitar, played the same damn shitty Green day song and only played when people watched so they sucked at it. And since Green day's songs tend to be so mind numbing easy they'd get the label of "guitarist" even though they are no such person.
Do you understand now? Before the game/skill was valued because it was rare. It took time and effort to buy a good gun or play even decent guitar. But then a bunch of shitty guns came out/shitty well known bands came to the forefront and littered the scene. So now the real players of both are forced to the back to watch their beloved sport/talent get mutilated by hacks.
Back when the AA games were smaller and the people knew each other a lot of the Bullshit didn't exist. Few of the active posters here actually know of the pre-clone days and I only caught the tail end of it. To this day I still remember my first AA game and using Mad Sarge's M4 at SWPB because of a lot of the drama and attitude didn't exist. Playing for fun is vastly different than playing for competition which has long since forgotten here.
AH! Vince beat me too it but I'll post this anyway.
