I have read through the post to get a general idea of what you meant. I will take the bait if it's a troll attempt although it seems pretty serious to me. I am not from NA, therefore, I might not understand everything about the community there but I have been around enough in the EU one to draw some parallels which you may find useful.
- The lists are made by the competitive community, by people who evidently belong to it. The NW community as a whole is far more diverse, I'd even argue that throughout the near-decade we have been playing this game, the 'casual' community largely outnumbered the competitive one in term of events played and people attending them. The main difference between both is the competitive community is by definition gonna be more involved in the forums, especially in certain areas (sub-forums). They fuel a fire which they have started themselves, the competitive community needs these sort of element (lists, very-competitive oriented events) to maintain a certain level of activity.
- There are a vast number of regiments who have been playing since pretty much the dawn of time but will eventually never make such lists because they never even 'cared' to really try themselves competitively speaking. That doesn't mean they were not 'great' regiments that have helped the NW community immensely, but eventually, when competitive community members are going to make a regimental list, they will rank structures based on the criteria they are familiar with. Yes, melee will take a role, just as much as leadership, consistency, achievements and improvement over a given period. As melee became more and more important over the years, tactical superiority as a regiment (and just not through your leadership) became less and less valued. You can regret it, but it's what it is.
You will eventually see some short-term regiments make a breach in these lists because they won 'this' or 'that' even though they disbanded shortly after. I was in one myself which appears to be in the Top 30 EU regiments of all-time solely because we won one season of a prestigious regimental melee-orientated event. But when you look at it, through our mere three months of existence, we didn't bring much to the community as a whole. We did not create an event, we did not own a public server, we did not contribute to making the community a better, more active place than it was before we were created. It doesn't apply to every competitive regiment, but a lot of them are extremely selfish simply by the nature which led to their birth.
Tl,dr: You don't need the validation from any lists, or the opinion of other players, to know your regiment was a force to be reckoned with. What matters is the opinion of the people who have been in it, what they got from that experience, the people they met, the community you created, the bonds you made over time which sometimes last long after you ceased to exist on NW. Take the list for what they are, the opinion of a small group, ranking such small group based on their own criteria. Once you do that, chances are you don't get bothered by reading through these lists and not finding your regiment. Because you know truly within yourself, it was worth the run for the people who have been part of it.
