Skallagrim wrote:Thank you Alucroas for clarifying that for us. Can you or anyone involved give us some idea of what could have made that tourney better for the participants? Is there any single issue that stands out that soured your experience? What could the host and the staff done to make it run smoother?
I could name a few. Despite his protest and objection, I am 99.9% sure that Remaeus took this tournament mostly upon himself. I'm not going to throw out any other names of people who made judgments and such, but i'm pretty sure that a large majority of all the organization was done by Eric. That, in and of itself, is
tedious work, especially for someone like Eric whom has so many other priorities regarding the site and otherwise.
I would suggest that we gather three like-minded non-combatant orchestrators for any future grand tournaments.
Another thing which is soiling the experience is all those "writing awards" that were promised in the beginning, none have come to fruitation. The last word of the Grand Tournament we had heard was Remaeus saying "things are busy, I should have a final word up within the next two weeks or so" (this spring, I think that was? I can't even remember.) After that, everyone simply assumed that, since Circ willfully sacrificed his character (that and since he validated the final match on the Hall of Records) that he lost the fight be default. This is just another prime example of too much being put on the shoulders of one person.
I still could probably say that the GT2008 was an improvement over 2006, but that's really only in it's own personal way. GT2006 had double the contestants (i think), a large panel of judges, and even its own speed fighting division. GT2008 had a much more professional air to it (for Christ's sake it had a montage with everyone's character drawn into it, that was badass, btw), it was pretty structured and kept things pretty much level-fielded by somewhat strict criteria for a profile to be accepted, and a live action board that updated whenever someone won their match.
I suppose, though, every tournament has its flaws, and when you compare the Grand Tournament with many of the other ones here it comes off as much more prestigeous (and it actually finishes, most of the time).