Final Words of the 2010 Tournament Realm, Back to Reality: What's Happening on Live?,

[backor]

Final Words of the TR

Why Sodah Named Us the Most Resourceful Team of the TR

The final Saturday, Sunday, and Monday of the TR was truly stressful for the ~12 teams attempting to qualify for regionals. Half of the teams were forced to queue blindly into teams in the final hours and the other half used scouting and sniping to sneak their ratings up. As soon as players got their rating they usually logged off immediately to escape being found by scouts. If you lost a game or two you had to keep queuing and the risk of being found became even greater.

Why was it so important to hide this time around?

There are almost always huge exceptions in rankings. A handful of teams or a single team is usually at an unattainable rating that no team would dare try to reach. This did not happen on the American Tournament Realm, though. Nobody was bold enough to go straight for gold and sit glorified and out of harms reach. You could argue this is where TSG stood, but their highest rating was 2620 on Sunday - a rating that was out of qualification range. With such close ratings between teams and with nobody wanting to give up their spot, there was a stalemate of queues. Obviously any team with all the information on teams would be the most confident and could precisely queue and snipe points when they knew they were not going to make it. So, that was the goal of my team this TR.

How Far Did We Go?

Our initial scouting began Sunday night searching for any team that was queueing. I had a feeling there could be a team trying to shadily queue arranged games into fresh teams with high MMR, but I did not sense any of that after searching. One of the first teams we found was Team TSG, hiding behind a tree stacked on top of each other above the cave to the starting zone in Dun Morogh. Out of all the teams... they had the poorest hiding spot, but they were also in the safest position so I can not blame them for not caring where they hide.

At some point we knew we were going to far and just ended up turning scouting into a game of who we can find and who can find them the fastest. Realz and co. had their secondary team continuously queuing both Sunday and Monday and based on where they were on the map it was pretty obvious they were trying to hide. During these last couple days any players without teams going to qualify were bored out of their mind and some of our friends decided to come along for the search. At one point we had 7-8 player raids looking for teams trying to sneak queues in during the final 6 hours of what was supposed to be the end of the TR.

Thanks again to those who helped: Novoz, Diziet, Ashman, Hawtstuffs, Kewpa, and Pollee.

We truly did have tons of fun searching for all the players trying to qualify. I have some screenshots of the search and inspect triumphs as well as who I felt were the worst and best hiders.

Novoz forgot to take screenshots, but he was able to track down Hawk Gaming twice. He found them the first time sitting in a bugged wall in Desolace. The second time he was running around and happened to pass by a wandering Rogue. They both stopped and said "Who are you looking for?" at the same time. They both answered Hawk and grouped up. They later turned out to be Uck's teamates. They chased them all through Tirisfal Glades and eventually had them cornered and their rating revealed.

Best Hider: Kollektiv

If you /who'd any of Kollektiv's characters on the TR, you'd be depressed to find out that he was in The Veiled Sea. This meant he was somewhere out in the shallow waters although you could not track down his exact whereabouts by Zone at all.

First we had our 6-man search squad head out to Teldressil to look for him as we saw him there before. To our dismay and after 1-2 hours of searching Kollektiv was no where to be found on either character. We agreed that any player to find Kollektiv was the best searcher in existance.

It took me a long while a quite a few Waterwalkings from Hawtstuffs and Novoz, but I eventually found the devil and was crowned champion of searching (BIGGEST NERD TOO).

Worst Hider: Glickz

Glickz definitely could have used some tips from Kollektiv because he was the easiest player to find on the TR. Diziet found Glickz 3 different times in 2 different zones: Bloodmyst Isle and Wetlands. Glickz took a different approach on hiding and just hid in the most random places in the middle of maps, so tracking him down was easy.

Most Hiliarous Hiders: Snutz and Venruki

CoL Red was forced to queue games as they were sitting in 8th before they knew it in the final hours of the TR. They ended up losing their first couple games and they had to just keep trying to snipe games off teams or they knew they would never make it. They set up camp in Tirisfal Glades with Sodah stealth queuing in Bloodmyst. We separated into two different search parties for this one. I was busy finding Vileroze and co. when they started the search, but we ended up teaming up with Uck's teamates again, Chris and Seruuf, to track them down. We gladly accepted them into our search knowing CoL Red could log out at any moment. After 30 minutes of searching nobody was able to find Snutz and Venruki in Tirisfal. Chris and Hawtstuffs each made a rogue and camped out at the 2 Bloodmyst Isle queue guys to search for Sodah coming out to queue (you have to destealth to queue). Using the Levitate bug I was able to work my way up a mountain I suspected the two to be hiding in: in between the starting area and the coastline. Sure enough, as soon as they got out of a game my targetting macro had Snutz targetted and I immediately raid marked him and went scouring to find him. The reason they were the most Hilarious Hiders was where I found them. Snutz and Venruki were both stuck in a 20 yard hole in a bugged area of Tirisfal. I hopped in to join them to meet an angry Venruki and Snutz who had just lost 20 points. Needless to say, I knew exactly what they logged off at.

Most Ridiculous Hiders: Vileroze and Razzlin

Razzlin actually ran right by me as I was about to go searching for SK US's main team as they had just queue'd up rated arena as their final attempt at regionals and immediately logged off after. As soon as they logged I went looking around for the three players of Chasing Tail who were all sitting in Teldressil. I had no clue at all where they went and eventually I just hopped off the giant tree out of boredom. To my amazement I found a queue in the most random location on the Southeast point of the bottom of Teldressil and decided it was my spot for next TR. Seconds later I see Razzlin and Vile sitting 40 yards up the tree in the most ridiculous location ever. Sheer luck finding these guys.

They also had no idea I found them. =)

The Council Strikes - Target: Hoodrych

The only scouting that went on that did not involve my team was the search team of Toez, Venruki, and Snutz searching for Scarab Lord Hoodrych. Hoodrych is no fool, but coming back from his vacation left his character sitting in Orgrimmar - a prime target for scouts. With Crusader Aura from Toez, Hoodrych had a tough time escaping his followers. He knew they were onto him, though. With a quick inspect on their gear he noticed none of the characters had gems or enchants, so there was no reason for them to be at the queue guy. Hoodrych decided it was time to make a run for it. He quickly went to the entrance of Orgrimmar and sneakily teleported to different cities trying to confuse them. He actually went to Orgimmar from Orgimmar the first time - throwing his three followers way off on the search. Snutz found Hoodrych once again though, and with Crusader they quickly caught back up and were on the chase. I was in Skype listening to this escapade go on for 15-20 minutes. Snutz actually died while following Hoodrych after he sneakily led the pack off cliffs to drop their health pools. Hoodrych, the valiant warrior he is, ended up dying in his retreat. After his death he was unable to escape the team following him for his ratings until he logged out for the night.

Teams Who Weren't Found?

As Sodah wrote, Uck's team was never scouted in the final hours. They logged in for only a few games and immediately logged off without people knowing anything. This was definitely the best approach to the ladder because nobody can you know your rating if you log in for 1 game and instantly log out after. Realz' main team also did a good job of avoiding scouts as no one knew they got 12 points from Uck's LSD.


Proud Teams Who Didn't Hide


Rise of the Nobodies were actually sitting in Ironforge for most of the time they were queuing. I do not understand why they would go search for people then log in trying to qualify in Ironforge...

Even more interesting, the entire team of "how do you play this" sat in Ironforge for the entire TR and were proud to sit there. Getnerded bragged for the entire 7 days prior to the ending of the TR how he was getting his trip to regionals - sitting at second place coming out of nowhere. With their lack of scouting and carelessness, they may have lost their opportunity to make top 8. Getnerded actually talked **** in trade chat in the final 3 hours thinking there was no way his team could go from 3rd to 11th over one armory update period.

Who's the Top 8?


I'm not going to link the lists you've seen 100 times. I've talked to Whiteshadowz recently and he is still unsure if he is going to go to regionals with his team or not. Secondly, Vileroze's team has also not confirmed that they want to go. If both teams do not go, Hawk and SK US will be attending Regionals in their place. If only one team goes, there should be a best of 5 series between the two teams which determines who will go. The answer to the Top 8 question is sadly still unknown.

PS. I made a bet with Drmayonaise at the start of the TR that at least 1 RLS would qualify for the top 8 for 10,000g. Whether or not we hate each other or talk to each other is out of the question, but the bet is still on. It's going to come down to the wire to find out which of us was right.


Back to Reality: What's Happening on Live?



PvE Nerd Back in Action


Although I'm sure some people despise their gear on live, I've been raiding for several months now, and with my DPS magically increasing every few weeks as a gift for sucking from Blizzard - more bosses are being downed and I'm getting more cool stuff. I'm going to continue raiding until Cataclysm most likely with VC and with hopes of doing 10 mans in the expansion. We've been slowly chipping away at bosses, although everybody knows how terribly long the instance has been out and how boring it has become to repeatly kill the same bosses.

Skirmishes and "THE GAME"


With TR down and everybody in insanely high teams they do not want to touch yet, we've been doing arranged skirmishes against each other for fun. We only queue up "THE GAME", though. What's THE GAME? RMP vs RMP. Most players would agree that RMP vs RMP is one of if not the most skilled match-up possible in the game. It's basically been top players vs top players, but without one of the 6 players sometimes, players like Snutz or Toez hops on the Rogue or Priest and we keep playing. THE GAME has been played for the past 3-4 days almost 8 hours a day - Loaded Black status.


Everyone agrees THE GAME is fun whether you're destroying the other team, getting owned, or splitting games. There was always something your team could have done better and you work towards it next game. Teams are generally randomly put together, but nobody really minds if one team is stacked. I can not recall a single game that was more epic than any of the finals games of MLG with CoL Red vs Loaded Black.



Expecting the Unexpected: 3100 on the Horizon?



Season 8 is going to be the longest season ever, by far. Even now, the season has been in play for about the same time a normal season has. The only problem with that is, we still have another 5-6 months before we see Cataclysm. More and more characters are reaching level 80 everyday which can only help to inflate ratings. Without the zero sum system from TBC, teams will continue to reach higher and higher ratings as 3100 becomes more and more forseeable. I am not sure exactly which team will be attaining such an unbelievable rating first, but they are already some candidates.

Whiteshadowz, Seastonez, Cirranis - LSD


Sneakily during the TR, these three raced their team to the top with over 95% win on the hardest BG in the US. With the 2 Wizards having access to the best PvE gear in the game they can and will one-shot any player they choose to point and shoot at. They will definitely be a contender in the drive to 3100 and they have already showed they are not satisfied with just 3000 and have reached an all time high of 3010 rating.

Velsuz, Nadagast, Hoodrych - WLD


Although these three don't always play together, their MMR is always consistantly between 2800 and 3000 and they will be everyone's favorite to hit 3100. They have already achieved 3k in the past, so we can expect some great things out of these guys if they make the effort.

Reckful, Sodah, Snutz, Toez, Tenderloin, Venruki - almost anything (RLD to 3k)


With access to nearly all of the top players of each class in the US, this group of players can easily play the ladder and beat down nearly any team they come across. They have yet to touch their 3k team and with such a long time in the season and Reckful's drive to be at the top - I can only imagine when they will queue up.

Vileroze, Imbadz, Razzlin, Giantz, Shourialize - MLD, MLS, WLD


The Ruin champions have done the unthinkable and destroyed the Ruin ladder in a single week of play. With a 95% winrate, I predict this team will be the first up to the glorious 3100 rating.



Hydra TR Footage



As I'm sure many Hydra fans were excited to find out, Hydra released a video of his RMP on the EU TR. It may not have been of the caliber of one of the Hydra series videos, but it was definitely an interesting watch with a great song. The video can be found here.




Took me a bit to find it, but here's the song from Hydra's TR Video. It's called Chemicals by MRSA. I actually watched this video and found the Asteroid-like game to be pretty interesting and tried it myself. It's called Beat Hazard. Your shots and enemy appearences are based off the beats and intensity of the music. The color and lighting is also based on how intense the music is and makes it confusing to dodge stuff. Enjoy, and see you next week!

[Larancy]

Interesting read.. but why is this in cataclysm forum?

[Aletheria]

O...kay.

[Dranae]

Okay, so let me get this straight.

You guys devoted hours of your time trying to find people hiding on the Tournament Realm? Why on earth would you do that?

I never played on the Tournament Realm (being a Maryland-er) but is that the norm? Stalking people?

Pretty sure that could count as harassment. I mean, it sounds really fun, but it's stalking nonetheless.

[Aletheria]

Okay, so let me get this straight.

You guys devoted hours of your time trying to find people hiding on the Tournament Realm? Why on earth would you do that?

I never played on the Tournament Realm (being a Maryland-er) but is that the norm? Stalking people?

Pretty sure that could count as harassment. I mean, it sounds really fun, but it's stalking nonetheless.

From what i can gather its actually sound tactics to figure out where you are in comparison, ratings wise.

[Dranae]

From what i can gather its actually sound tactics to figure out where you are in comparison, ratings wise.

But how does that work? Is there a GearScore-like addon that displays your ratings?

<--- has never done arena

[Wulfon]

interesting read but why do ppl hide on the tr? what does that achive