MPlayer

1999 was the year of my final Red Alert game on Westwood, just before MPlayer took off. Arguably the era with the highest number of skilled players, due to 60,000 active Westwood players being filtered down to around 2000 keen MPlayers at it's peak.

There was a forum inside MPlayer:

MPlayer computer specs were incredibly low:

There were Sages and Wizards

''Tourney Hosts were officially designated to run daily tournaments because at that time Wizards were used more as a watchdog and lobby leader than an event host (which was weekly if at all). These individuals had a "Tourney-" prefix and had a halo and angel wings icon. The Sages were the lowest level of official volunteer. This required an application and Wizard recommendation (Wizards were next in hierarchy). Originally the Sages ran the help desk lobby and were also responsible for answering any help desk pages with the pager function. The Sages were not technical geniuses, but were given a long list of FAQs to help with specific mplayer technical difficulties. Sages also monitored chat lobbies for trolls and then reported them to staff. The Wizards later opened up more free enrollment and they ran the weekly events. Gamegods were mplayer staff that were responsible for overseeing the Wizards (top of hierarchy).'' - Wikipedia

Top Players/Clans

The strongest clan at the start of MPlayer was probably J5, consisting of

• Porker
• JJFjr
• FallenAngels
• Aloli
• Doughboy

You can read a little about them in Milo's guide and records . 

How good were they?

Porker was a skilled tanker who specialised on map Path Beyond. Winner of the Westwood ladder multiple times, Cases #1 and Hall of Famer.

                                     
JJFjr beat Milo234 12-2 in 2005 https://funkyfr3sh.cnc-comm.com/milo/brag.html, but Milo won the CnCNet ladder after 2 months practice and a 14 year hiatus.

FallenAngels beat Milo 5-0 on map HJK, but Milo traded HJK games with top CnCNet players RC and Ford.

Doughboys was the strongest builder around at the time.

Aloli owns the 2nd highest MPlayer skill rating of all time:

Most J5 members also joined ORA (founded by Galgu from Japan) at one point or another, and other notable clans included Team DK MB and T2. 

MB-Tiger was perhaps a GQ pioneer per Blitz, dominating large tank battles unexpectedly. Other notable players included Ssanai, Mage, Rawsteel, Fattynoob, Dak, Galgu, Topjig, Llynx, Wegandi, Weirdhero, T4nksex, Blitz, Kobra1, JCFarmer and Blast.

A full screenshot of Mplayer.com

Mplayer.com

A MPlayer Riddle

Anyone remember this little quote in MPlayer?

"A Riddle, wrapped in an Enigma, hidden behind the 'fridge"

I believe it was displayed either at Install or perhaps a splash screen when loading Mplayer or a Game...

Mplayer Video