Yeah...I told some 13 year old kid yesterday "You are my Ken's bitch!" on xbox live while playing street fighter.

Nintendo would ban me forever if they had a similar service and I did that.

I personally didn't mind no leaderboard as that would just lead to more idiots disconnecting when losing or being cheap online just to move up a couple of spots instead of having fun.

However there are still several stupid decisions with brawl's online.

Random matches are limited to 2 minute timed battles.
No voice chat
Having to use a FC instead of an easy gamertag
64 friend code limit
can't add random brawlers to friends after good match

Lag actually hasn't been an issue for me most of the time. Guess I get lucky.

And i'm sure I can think of more like not being able to save stages that Nintendo sends you but i'll leave it at that for now.

Yep I also agree, take an example on the PS3 online service. You can see when someone is online, what game that person is playing and therefore you can easily contact each other. WII? Post a message in the hope the other person will ever read it, is the guess. And indeed, what's up with those stupid friend codes? Its a lot easier just to mention your ID instead of a whole code, plus being able to add someone when the person requests you to, instead you'll need to type each other's stupid code in before you can even start communicating.

So to be honest, I find Nintendo Online service suck as well, its not personal, its too cold, too protective. People can protect themselves. We don't need Nintendo to do that for us.

I personally doubt they would ban you for that ...

The truth is that this demonstrates a problem that no service has came up with a solution to, connecting people to other users who want a similar gameplay experience. I could be wrong but I suspect that one of the main reasons the majority of gamers have not jumped into online gaming is the current users are far more offensive than they want to deal with, there are far too many cheaters, and you have difficulty finding an appropriate match-up ...

Yeah, I tried Brawl online the other day, and I have to say that it is almost totally broken. I don't care about voice/picture chat nearly as much as most gamers out there, but when the integral component of online play (that is, actually playing online) doesn't work there is a serious problem.

(I couldn't even successfully get into one match, and I have a good connection)

Why couldn't you get into a match? I've yet to have that problem.

 While that's a fair point it still doesn't address the FC issue or why friend matches have no voice chat.  Sure there are annoying little brats online but I want to at least have the option to dive in and see for myself.  Worse case scenario you just mute the racist idiot or go start a new match.  Instead Nintendo holds our hand trying to protect us.

 Maybe they're like me and behind a firewall that they can't control. Also, all the matches I've played have been very laggy, but I can only play against friends, and really the only people I have for that are people here and probably all halfway across the world. Oh well.

Lag seems strange to me.

Sometimes I'll tons of matches with no lag then a week later I'll play with the same person and have tons of it. Naznatips and I played a single match last night for example. The lag was to the point where I decided to step out. Went into a game with MaxwellGT2000, fazz, and Taomaster and had lag there too however fazz left and all the lag was instantly gone.

Yet fazz and I have played lag-free matches in the past...