I agree 100%. Actually, no matter what rooster thinks, I saw a bit. The amount of effort required to pull this event off, wasn't voluntary, and that is my whole problem with it.
Sorry to ruffle feathers, rooster or otherwise.
I'm sorry that you feel this way. I guess you aren't used to people freely committing hours of their own time to something they enjoy doing. What great people you must know. After 7 years of running the event I was offered payment to run it, yes. This payment was in the form of unlimited ammo, same as the Judges were paid, and the end result (ROI) was less than half of what I quoted for my time (and took over 4 months to appear in my bank account). So even when it was being paid for, this event was basically voluntary.
What do I get out of it? Let's see. When it started I was a very low -level avatar (still am) with a great but small soc and a basic understanding of EU. I saw the Ubers with their amazing skills and gear and quickly realised I didn't have the free time or spare cash to fund such a rise to greatness. So how do I shine in this virtual world?, I thought... maybe I can run a few events. We held Moo-Nami, the "300" event, and the Festival of Firepower... which came about from being told at 6 months into EU (and being below 500 in Rifle Skills) that "it's too soon to buy a Marber Bravo." Reasoning that many people probably made the same "mistake" (99 max damage and low purchase price is very tempting to a noob) and that a team full of 99 dmg guns = potential 1200 dmg every 4 seconds, we went out team-hunting the biggest mobs in game such as Araneatrox, which to us as solo hunters were the stuff of dreams. It was designed as a "don't care about eco" tension-relieving blowout, a welcome change from the preciseness of grinding "boring" mobs and cycling PED. The atmosphere was intended to reflect the vibe of a free festival IRL; turn up, have fun with many random others. It worked, and grew more popular (although even on the very first one, we had names like Neomaven coming along for the ride) so we held more and more, and it became competitive, mostly Soc vs Soc. Then SOMEONE (I know it was a female avatar, cannot remember who exactly) one day said "We should do this as country vs country." The same day I posted the call in the hunting thread "Hunt for your country" and the WoF was born.
*short history* The plan was an event that tested hunters in all facets of Entropian Hunting; big mobs, small mobs, rare mobs, (and yes, PVP-only mobs and mobs you have to travel to go hunt). 37 teams signed for the first one. 34 for the second. The number of teams decreased every year as smaller teams started to realise the larger ones were more likely to win the title. I am not ashamed to admit I liked the attention that running the event brought, I liked the way I, a low-level avatar, was now able to tell the biggest hunters in the game to go hunt Daikiba for three hours; I enjoyed (this might be just me) the mental arithmetic required at the start (and even after Mack and others came up with spreadsheets and scoring aids, I continued to do all my scoring with pen and paper and brain alone, in order to challenge myself to get the scores either faster, or at least as accurate, as the newer methods). Without grinding mobs or spending lots of cash, I was a known avatar with a "trade"; the WoF guy. We all seek our niche in the world, this, in EU, was mine. The first couple of WoFs even resulted in the players having a spontaneous whip-round for me, which I was humbled to accept; I still carry the ME edition Foxtrot that Spike presented me (but the 2k-ish PED that came with it is long gone). I was getting paid now, and the best kind of payment there is; grateful participants decided my efforts were worth rewarding (the whip-rounds kinda fizzled out but I didn't care; anything I got back from the event was nice).
Now came the part where the Rules were changed; firstly, to allow Support teams. This was, as most changes in the rules were, a result of not being able to enforce anything different. Supporters were encouraged from the start, to run ammo and loot, find mobs to shoot and even herd them, healing the hunters, and in some cases simply standing in front of big mobs and dying, just to hold them up enough for the team to kill them. Supporters and Teams soon realised that more mobs could be killed during a match if the supporters took some health off the mobs before the team finished them off (and many a non-registered "Support Team" ended up going over the 50% damage limit and therefore stole the loot and points from their own team). I was aware of this and was asked to do something about it; those without large support teams felt they were at a disadvantage, as did those who chose NOT to use their supporters for pre-weakening. What could I do? I couldn't ban the practice, as the situation could not be policed; in a hunt that ranges over the whole map, to identify and prosecute those who were pre-damaging mobs for any particular team was impossible. The supporters could just as well be random hunters who didn't look where they were shooting or hunted carelessly, there was no proof of their motives at all. Even if someone's twin brother from the same Soc and country was standing there shooting the same mobs as the Team, there was no proof that they were doing anything other than hunting in a free environment.
So the answer was Support Teams. Those who wanted to HUNT as well as help could have some mobs of their own to shoot at, for lower points (and mostly, annoying or lower-level mobs). This would hopefully steer many away from the pre-damaging of Main Team mobs and give them some points for their actions (I also felt bad that these supporters were spending PED on getting points for other people). It also served to get more people involved, with a lot of interaction between members within each team. People sent me messages saying how much they liked the organisational side of the event (recruiting and managing their team) as well as the camaraderie and chaos of the actual hunts. Fewer teams still signed each year but the sizes of the teams grew, with some teams fielding almost 100 avatars in some matches.
Then came requests from smaller teams who felt there was no point competing against much larger ones, and asked if they could enter as an alliance. This is an area of much contention but what were the choices here? To not allow it... this would mean less teams taking part, as those who wanted to be allied to others were not going to enter if they had to fight alone. So it was allowed, with some provisos; no alliance could enter if others wanted to enter a national team representing one of the proposed allied countries. This also seemed to work well; the attendance was still good, and despite the odd complaint, the allied countries (DACH, BeNeLux) did not instantly become railroaded to victory; they were just stronger teams than before, giving teams like USA and England more competition at the top.
From the very first WoF (on Neomaven's suggestion to MA), Mindark provided Jackets for the winners. This was not planned; like the FoF, the WoF was meant to have no prizes other than the pride of winning. After a year or two, seeing the amount of money the players were spending to win, it seemed only fair to try to get them something for their efforts; with this in mind, I started asking Land-Owners if they would provide payment towards a prize fund if we used mobs on their land (let me just say now that DEATHIFIER was FAR AND AWAY the best at paying his share!). This gave me around 10,000 to 15,000 PED every year to spend at the auction (where I probably made quite a few people with "buy it now" prices quite happy) which provided prizes for the top three teams each time. Also, notable crafters (you know who you are) and other high-flying avatars would donate sometimes very generous amounts to the prize fund without ever being asked to do so. This was all done on a basis of TRUST that I would not keep the money, trust I built up from years of trying to do the right thing. I did think in the back of my mind that maybe on the strength of what I was doing with the WoF, someone in Mindark might notice and offer me a job running events. But this was a dream on the same level as thinking if I just grind on Scaboreas maybe I'd get a decent loot one day (682 PED on a longtooth is STILL my biggest single loot).
So the WoFs rolled on, every year with a few attempted improvements, some which stayed, some which didn't, but the theme the same; a tension-relieving blowout against the worst EU could throw at us, against national rivals. In the meantime, I found myself having to move from a house (our landlord sold it) into a mobile home (a Winnebago we spent 5 years in, in various campsites and fields around the area), which compromised my internet a bit; I also got married, spent 6 months on honeymoon (we combined our big day with a trip of a lifetime after spending next to nothing on the wedding itself) and then had a baby (Inara, she's ace). The WoF still ran every year but it was getting harder to free up the time. When it came to the 7th one I was very much in favour of holding off for a year or two, or even stopping it altogether. The whip-rounds, as mentioned before, had faded, and with less RL money than ever it was getting hard to just play regularly enough to know EU well enough to run the event. I also had a 9-year old PC that was no longer upgradable to the level the game ran at.
Then along came Mindark with an offer to pay me to run it. This came at a good time for me; I need all the cash I can get right now. So I added up the hours it took to run each time and quoted accordingly (at not much above minimum wage) which they agreed to. It looked a good plan; MA would now be promoting, funding and helping the event like never before. They even sent me a new PC tower (not an expensive one, it must be said, but with a good graphics card that let me see High Settings for the first time ever). Then a few days before the first hunts kicked off I was informed the payment would have to be in Unlimited Ammo. Ok, I thought... I'd secured 100 PED of this ammo per match for each judge, as a fee; it seemed fair enough that I got paid the same way. However, once the event had finished I needed to cycle this PED, which I did, with the most efficient means at my disposal, and the results were less than half the value of my quote (and also took many nights of hunting, and 2 months withdrawal time to get to).
I'd asked Mindark to make a big fuss over the Calypso Cross, an incentive for smaller teams, in the hope it would become a separate goal for the small teams and inspire more teams to enter (the WoF works best with larger numbers of TEAMS, not players), which they seemed to agree to but then the prize for the CC was reduced to what I consider a token gesture (still not sure if they were even issued yet). The Calypso Cross would only ever be won by the smallest teams (the prize is for points-per-person, and without the organistaion of terminators, no large team could be efficient enough to equal the scores that small teams could achieve in this area. 2 people scoring 200 points equals 100 points per person; a team of 4 Main team and 20 support would have to score a total of 2400 points to beat it), so I thought it warranted at least a special suit of armour (much like the Community Recognition Armour that came around for a while) (not that I expected a set for myself, but hey...) or a decent weapon, but apparently it's only worth a beret.
Now we have people saying "there's no point taking part" for another reason; that certain teams are paying high-skilled players to be their support and pre-damagers, meaning that team kill more per hunt than their rivals (the aim of the event). Ways to stop this? Policing the hunting area? Unworkable. Too many, too wide-ranging, and even if there, how could agreements and allegiances be proven? To have the Final (or even other matches) in Instances, with only certain people allowed in? This might work, but would change the whole spirit of the event into just another instance. Take away the prizes altogether, to stop people wanting to spend the cash on support? This would just decrease the return for anyone entering, and as I saw in the earlier wofs, people don't seem to need to incentives like prizes in order to get fanatical about winning. Get rid of support teams? Again, unenforcable. The support teams are only there BECAUSE we can't stop anyone shooting at a mob if they choose to.
My personal opinion is that this is just another in a long line of tactics that other teams should find ways to overcome or combat. The things that make a team win the WoF, in my opinion, are RECRUITING, ORGANISING and then SKILLS and GEAR. Many a team with low skills but good attendance have worried and beaten the bigger teams. Many a highly-skilled team has been beaten due to bad organisation (no point having 12 Ubers if only 2 show up) and on the odd occasion when an Uber or two has made a bid for victory as part of a very small team (Tibet and Uzbekistan, which were basically 1 shooter and a medic), victory in later stages escaped them mostly because such arrangements don't lend themselves to garnering great numbers of supporters. I'm still not 100% on whether this needs fixing, and definitely not 100% on how to fix it if so. What I do think is the WoF needs to be properly promoted (many foreign-language forums exist, many countries well-represented in EU such as Spain have never had a WoF team), it needs to offer prizes that mean something, and it needs to have more teams take part.
In short, if you're wondering why anyone would do all this voluntarily, I'm starting to feel the same. So I'm taking this year off to sort my own stuff out, and have a good think about the event. I only want to bring back the WoF if it becomes the event it was always meant to be; Entropia's World Cup, Superbowl or Olympics. A sport in it's own right.
After reading all this you still think I'm in this for shady reasons or that the WoF is a fraudulent event, I stand by my deleted comments. Oh and for the record, Kitty Fire took part in the first ever FoF and has been a RL friend ever since she jumped on a plane to say hi to the Gloryhounds. So yes, she knows her shit on this topic.
Hurrikane
