Originally Posted by
Nogbad
Still going for it, despite the clear disadvantages that have been imposed.
Please BB, take a very long, hard look at how this was run, and seriously ask yourselves if this was ever a fairly run 'competition'.
Salient points to view are:
The downtime suffered by certain servers in Phase 1, Germany 9 and 10 had less than 3 days to qualify as opposed to 4 days elsewhere.
This in part lead to some of the following:
The pairings/groupings of servers for Phase2. On the whole, none of these ever made sense, there are several 'power pairings' and quite a few that seem completely handicapped. As an example, just compare the pairings of Germany 4 (known 'quest monsters' in previous events) and Germany 9 (my server) which is an eqivalent age to newfoundland, very active, and again a proven track record in these events. versus Northisle (came 3rd of our local servers in Phase 1) paired with Czech Republic 1, a very young server.
These just don't stack up, and the tables show this, there is a massive gap between all the German groupings plus Poland 1 and 2, compared to the rest of the world.
Maintenances, yet again the rest of the world got handicapped here. The german servers had their regular maintenance on Monday night, before Phase 2 got under way and after Phase 1 was complete, so no production at all was lost.
This may have balanced out over time, if we hadn't then seen the UK servers get surprised with 10 minutes notice that our maintenance was a day earlier, with no chance to renew buffs and explorers stuck out in limbo, Provision Houses left idle, quite a kick in the teeth there.
The French fared even worse than us, with their regular maintenance Tuesday night (again into Phase 2), they were then surprised with an extra 'special' maintenance the following night, utter chaos.
Seeing as there is a reward for finishing the 100% goal first, everybody else is playing 'catch up', as the unaffected servers will easily reach this goal before they experience a maintenance.
The Germans did experience some unexpected downtime yesterday, which the Techs worked manfully to resolve quickly, and no doubt that in part, this crash was due to an overload because of the following:
The 300% gem sale. This is completely cynical to time this now, and completely unprecedented. Never has there been such an offer, and it doesn't seem to relate to any 'special occasion', and has given an huge advantage in this competition. The top two Polish servers must be furious at this, they are both now being overhauled by the boosted 'pay to win' teams.
Sickening manipulation of what was supposed to be a 'fun event'.
