I can quickly touch on warming, since that was where the 'respect' was at, like skating. Really early on for me, like circa 2001 on WWP, it was players like Moose, fudo, and Andy and odo from the n00b clan, and some OaP (old age propers) people like Leviathan. Also eN (elite ninjas) members like shad, Scorpion, and maybe FieryDeath was in that one? I'm forgetting. There was also MrE, used to be skilled, but then got into cheatz. All these players really had their own impressive style.
The physics were slightly different there, and I think some of our ideas were out of the box, since a lot of us had little contact with the WA rope scene. So some unique styles were developed, like Moose's use of wall shadows, or maybe my repetitive pumps/kicks. But also, the overall WWP skill level was simply lower on the whole with a smaller community, I just didn't see too many ropers that made me realize how insane it could get.
When I came to WA I got impressed in warmers by people like Anub (tappy and insanely fast), oijogja (twitch master with 1 hand), saltyk9 (seemed like the best warmer with his fast reflex moves), Komo (double handed taps), volrin (creative + fast, had some similarities to me), KRD (style master), Marco (crazy ideas and experimental), franz (Flowing Water, also very creative), OutofOrder (top creative mind), tenchi (nice kicks/taps) and learned a lot from Pure, aka Magic, who made the Magic and qp rrs (he was like 7 aliases in the qp clan, really aesthetic style). Pure probably spent the most time shaping me of any pros at the time. I'd definitely say all those people left marks I can remember, but there really were a ton more.