As for me, I was playing RTW vanilla in Dec. 04 and quickly wanted something more realistic. I saw RTR and downloaded and started playing it pretty soon after getting the game. Talking with shigawire about a Latin and Greek voice mod he wanted to develop, he told me about this "EB" thing. I was sceptical at first but he kept telling me how good it was and I took a further look at it (it had no snazzy forum or site like RTR did at the time). I then joined the team quite hesitantly and continued to work on the voice mod, then started pointing out other stuff I thought needed changing (map mostly at first, then issues with the makeup of the KH faction, etc.). That was my introduction to it all. I eventually started working on a few other small things in the mod.