I was a huge fan of Age of Empires when it first came out but found it frustrating trying to find other Australia players on the Internet Gaming Zone (as it was then called).
I was on dialup and most non-Australian players wanted to have nothing to do with my slow ping time :-)
So I started the first Australian site dedicated to Age of Empires. We had a ladder and ran a couple of tournaments. Was great fun. Even got a link from Microsoft's site.