It's pretty ironic that people used to drive that amount of time for a 4 round tournament because there just weren't any alternatives back then.
Look how many more tournaments there are now compared to 2002, its just ridiculous to compare. As far as we've come as a playerbase we still are barely a blip on wizards' radar to be honest.
Although I have to say I used to be able to walk into a room hosting a tournament and identify every player and knew what they were running that day, I shot down to the latest tmd13.5 down at stratford, I recognized only a handful of people, the rest were just randoms I had never heard of.
I guess these are the consequences for being out of the tournament scene for so long.
If it makes you feel any better I barely knew anyone in that room too and I never left