Are you thinking of Peasant? Despite being simpler than Peasant, it seems like it's a younger format than Peasant. All remarks I've seen on the origins and early history of Pauper made it seem like a format that was first played on MTGO, gaining some popularity with the establishment of the now-defunct "Pauper Deck Challenge" website. This would have been very early on in MTGO, but well after Urza's Block, which predates MTGO by a few years. Anyway, if you did play Pauper back then, I guess it's older than most people think (a frequent occurrence for casual formats).
I can't really speak to the level of homogenization in the format as a whole, because events in your area might be different from events in mine. Also, with how many cards have been banned, the format has shifted a lot. It used to be like 20% combo decks I think, maybe more. But it seems that every commons-only combo deck that can be fast has been banned out of the format. So it's like 70% aggro and 30% control, give or take. Most of the control decks are Urzatron big mana builds. People try just about every flavor of aggro, but the best ones are Affinity and various red-based lists.