Longest Running Online Leagues?

[Qrashman]

I'm just curious to see how long some of these leagues have been around for. My league, the HBL (now at www.glass4.com) has just reached our 7-year anniversary. Real-time, not seasons. 7 real years.

I almost crapped my pants when one of our owners said he joined the league when he was a freshman in high school and now he's getting ready to graduate college!

I'm pretty sure there are a couple of older leagues. How long has your league been around?

[sporr]

We're just over 6 years here. We started in March of 2002.

[Qrashman]

Wow, you were one of the leagues that I thought had a month or two on us. How many seasons have you simmed in those 6 years?

6 years is a long f'n time for a league.

[sporr]

Originally Posted by Qrashman

Wow, you were one of the leagues that I thought had a month or two on us. How many seasons have you simmed in those 6 years?

6 years is a long f'n time for a league.

We just started our 24th season. Simming 3x per week takes us about 3 months per season.

[Qrashman]

yeah so you're right on track with us. We have the same sim schedule. 27 seasons in 7 years.

[SWardle]

I'm in a league (FBBL) that has been around since 2001. Although, we've restarted twice. We ran one league on OOTP 2, I think it was, up to OOTP 5. When they put the DIPS engine in and kinda screwed with our import. We tried to convert to 6 but it just didn't work too well so we did a fresh restart on OOTP 6.

The league was ran on OOTP 6 and 6.5 all the way through until 2007 when OOTP 8 dropped. Around that time we restarted again with a historical league.

We've been together for nearly seven real years but we haven't had the same league running all seven years. FBBL ver 1.0, FBBL ver 2.0 and now FBBL Retro. I remember Baseball Maelstrom being around when I first joined this community so they're the only other league I know of that was around at that time. I've purchased OOTP since version 3. Hard to believe it has been that dang long.

Anyway, we still have 8 or so original members but there have been a lot of new faces over the years. If you want to get really technical we originally spawned from a Frontpage Sports Baseball league so our history really goes back even further. Heh.

[Qrashman]

Most of the original guys from my league came from either a High Heat League or an OOTP2 league called the XBL.

[sporr]

Originally Posted by Qrashman

Most of the original guys from my league came from either a High Heat League or an OOTP2 league called the XBL.

I was in the XBL as well. Great league.

[canadiancreed]

I know that Time Warp is entering it's fourth year of existance. Not as long as the examples mentioned, but it's up there.

[avwjase]

I see we've already been mentioned. We have taken short breaks between our leagues though. Between getting the next one properly setup to conducting full 60-round initial drafts to my wedding, to my co-commishes wedding. There have been breaks.

It is true that we started initially in February of 2001, spawned from a Frontpage Sports Baseball league by the same moniker. The FPPro league began in 2000, I believe. Some of the people in FBBL, even some of the current GM's, date back even further than that. We participated in e-feds together (online wrestling roleplaying complete with fully written events etc...). So, we go back quite a ways.

We started on OOTP in 2/01 on OOTP 2. Initially, only myself and a handful of the guys owned the game so we had a lot of e-mail lineups. That's how we ran the FP Pro league too so it wasn't a big deal. I couldn't imagine e-mail lineups working with the game today, though! Not that I'd ever go back to that... sheesh.

Around OOTP 4 I think it was everyone had purchased the game. So, our league produced a lot of sales for the OOTP brand.

I believe we closed at the end of 2003-2004 after our league failed to import correctly. People had been chomping for a restart anyway but I was deadset against it. We had simmed 13-14 seasons and it was basically all fictional at this point. I worked with Steve Kuffrey (I still have the PM's too! ) to get the import to work correctly. We tried everything but in the end, when we started simming, things were nuts. The results are flat out ridiculous and we finished out that season and then closed it down as we mapped out the restart.

FBBL Ver 2.0 launched about 8 months after that. Between that we opened a Player's League called SEBL in-which I got it off the ground then handed it off to a team of commissioners. I then went full bore into FBBL Ver 2.0 with a community edited roster pack. It took us a good two months to go from idea to league but eight months after FBBL 1 closed we had FBBL ver 2.0 ready to roll. FBBL ver 2.0 lasted for a good chunk too but closed down around the time OOTP 2007 was in full swing. It proved too hard for an OOTP 6.5 league to survive and find GM's because 2007/8 was such a good game. I was unwilling to convert, too. Could you blame me?

So, after another 9-10 seasons we closed FBBL ver 2.0 down to begin fresh on 2007/8.

Which brings us to FBBL Retro which we opened at the tail end of 2007. Yet again it took us awhile to get going because we did community edits on the rosters (and we do them for every AMA draft, too) so that our rosters were as perfect as possible. At least perfect for us.

In the end we've been around a long freakin' time and I know of one other FBBL that was around a long time too. People used to always confuse us too. They'd send apps to me for openings in the other league and vice versa. LOL. We have taken breaks for restarts and weddings, honeymoons and things of that nature. I think it's neat there's still some of us "old guys" around because I remember both of your leagues from way back. I actually considered joining Maelstrom way, way back in the day but joined DBLC ran by Shawn Dylla instead. Whatever happened to that league? I know I told them I was going on my honeymoon and was going to be out of the country for 3 weeks and came back and my team was given to someone else.

After that I kept up with them for awhile -- and they were another one of those leagues that had been around forever -- but they just completely fell off the radar one day. Anyone know what happened?