Hey, man. I, too, started playing Bots in late 2006. I was only 10 years old and learned about the game from my cousin during Thanksgiving Break. While I haven't played the game in several years at this point, I used to be really dedicated to this game. I also like many of the mechanics of this game. I like how Bots/BOUT is a simple and easy-to-grasp game, and there's nothing forced on you like stories or cutscenes.
However, I think that Bots does not offer me anything anymore unfortunately. I grinded multiple accounts to level 100 legitimately back on the original game from 2006-2009 and played tons of PvP and BvB. In 2009, the original version of BC was released, and I played that a lot as well for the PvP.
In 2010, Bout Evo was in its closed beta phase, and I was lucky enough to get a key. I ended up playing the game a lot early on in its life, and I was the second person to get to level 110 (max level), which took forever in the early versions of the game. Later on, I got another 2 accounts in that game to max level, even though it took forever. I played a lot of PvP in Bout Evo, hoping that the admins would eventually fix BvB and make it as fun as it was in Bots.
Tok and friends never even attempted to fix BvB, so I eventually started playing the new version of BC in 2012. The new version of BC had a lot of stuff in it I thought was awful tbh, but I still played it anyway because a lot of people I liked were playing it. Additionally, BC actually had a somehow funnish BvB mode if you played with the right ruleset (level 98/108 armor only, no member flags, etc.).
However, there were still many things wrong with BvB, and nothing ever really got fixed here either. One big flaw with the mode is that there is only one map that isn't bullshit (Industrobe Plains), so it gets tiring to play on the same map all the time, even though Industrobe is a really well-designed map. I got 3 accounts to max here (back when the level cap was 172 for non-members) through basing and PvPing. But my interest waned when most of the people I enjoyed BvBing with lost interest and stopped playing. There are also few people who are actually good at BvB, so playing against random people on low level accounts got really boring after awhile as well. I even played Zylon Bots for awhile, but I got tired of sectoring and eventually got banned for hacking because Dewo told me that Jake (KillerPig) and I could complete the levels faster. Also, Zylon Bots has issues with chaining and the base mode is trash, and it will never be fixed.
Even though I really like all three game modes, sector can only maintain my interest for so long. I've done all the main levels from Bots so many times that it just simply isn't enjoyable for me anymore. I've also played tons of PvP, and while I think it can be really fun when there's a room with 8 people and play FFA or 4v4 teams, 1v1 PvP is really boring because Surges are easily the best and extremely defensive play is by far the most effective strategy. BvB isn't fun either when the only matches that I can get are 1v1s (or 2v2s which are also pretty shit), and none of the people I enjoyed the game mode a lot with aren't even playing anymore. This is a very short version of my story with the game and some of my issues with it, but maybe you'll find some of this interesting.