Thanks for the heads up, Hblair.
To be honest; I didn't even know KOTH was still running; I attended the first couple but then I thought it was cancelled due to the TOD's?
Is it ever announced?
Secondly; I attended every WW and KOTH I could for about four months in the hope that the event(s) would take off and hopefully be duplicated at a more friendly time; that likely hood seems about as remote as ever; and it's hard to remain enthusiastic about getting up on a Saturday at 04:30 my time in the vain hope that one day, timing could be changed. Additionaly, I seem to remember a certain antipathy between the events team and myself at the time which certainly took some of the lustre off the experience.
But that's all just personal crap.
Although it's been a long time since I attended KOTH/WW, I did think there were some weak points, which I'll list. If they've been attended to in the mean time, then just ignore my comments
a) The terrain used was too large (the "gladiator bowl" in the DA). It worked for jets, but with anything else you ended up with three small furballs, one over each base, with a bunch of cherry pickers in the middle. Not the huge single furball such events should be.
b) Lack of an alt cap meant that some guys disapeared at the start of each round, only to reappear to finish off wounded/bingo birds at the end. Again; not, in my opinion, in the spirit of the event.
c) Winging. Again, this should (and could) be banned out right from the start. We have an admirable tool in the film viewer for detecting this kind of nonsense, shame it's never used. There were also numerous cases of some dick following people around during the "climb out phase" only to nail their quarry the second "game on!" was announced. Lame in the extreme (IMNSHO); and as fair as I know never suppressed.
d) Uncertainty over settings. It seemed at the time that each CM had his own idea of what the arena settings should be. This I took particular exception to. (Perhaps it's more fair to say that there was no established standard set up, leaving each "CM of the week" to do his best amidst a howl of protest until last weeks settings were replicated).
Basicaly, events (all events) live or die on the atmosphere the engender. I certainly (at the time) gained the impression that the events team looked down greatly upon WW/KOTH for it's lack of role playing and realism when compared to the TOD's, scenario's and similar; and thereby failed to realise that rule breaking (and by implication quality of CM'ing) is at least as important (if not more so) in these kinds of events *precisely* because there is no crutch of immersion to fall back on. The competition its self is everything, and anything that hampers that competativeness (or, to be fair, the perception thereof) is the death of the event. You just will not ever get the best of sticks (such as Drex, Todd, Shane or Laz) turning up if they think they're being set up or cheated, and without the best of sticks the event loses the panache it needs to capture the interest of others. After all, one has to ask what makes these type of furball events more attractive than a TA furball. Do they offer the same level of competition, rate of action and competitor recognition? If not, then why bother?
Then again, it's been quite a while since I attended; so maybe my views on this are obsolete.
In general I think events at large are under publicised; much more use could be made of the MOTD system in the MA; for instance; and as the primary point of WW/KOTH events is bragging rights, more could be made of the out come.
Maybe these types of events are passé these days in an atmosphere of squad and country loyalty and a burning desire to "win the war".
Maybe simply AH doesn't have what it takes to recreate the fun that was to be had in an old Amiga based game. I don't know.
But it'd be sad if that were true.
