Warzone Newsletter #11A recap of interesting stuff of 1st half of October 2023.
Clan Wars season 37 – Myth Busters won again, but the season was a blast!Congratulations to Myth Busters with their 20th won CW season in a row! Yet this time Optimum gave them a real fight lasting up to the very last CW time slot. The fun times are back!
Optimum started the season a bit handicapped, with effectively only 38 players out of 40. One of the players was overcome with real-life issues and managed to play only 2 games in the whole season. And another player ghost locked a slot. (“Ghost lock” happens when a player locks a slot in the CW roster by “signing up” for a template within during a CW timeslot, but then leaving the queue. If that player never plays a single game within the season, he will still take occupy one of the 40 roster slots, but there is no way in the Warzone UI to find who it is.) Previously, Fizzer used to respond to clan leaders’ inquiries about whom the ghost-locker was, but after some clans (namely Harmony) started to ask him multiple times to reveal ghost-lockers, he stopped that practice. I guess, he might see the ghost-lock issue as a challenge for uncapped clans, as only they usually face that problem. This time he refused to help Optimum to identify the ghost-locker either, and Optimum, to my knowledge, still doesn’t know whom that person was.
Even with 2 people less, Optimum managed to take a 5-10 win lead early in the season and maintained that lead up until the last days of the season.
Optimum accused Myth Busters of reverted to a tactic of asking high skilled players from other high CWR clans to play CW during the timeslots, when there are little Myth Busters and many Optimum players queued. That way, Myth Busters effectively tried to give Optimum tougher opponents in their games and lower Optimum’s win rates. I don’t have the full list of these invited players and clans. There is evidence that at least players from MASTER Clan were involved. I might assume that Myth Busters also contacted the players, who previously played for MB, but took a break for that season.
When Myth Busters were approached about using that tactic, they reacted, that it was a response to the “rugpulling”, which, as they believed, was exploited by Optimum. “Rugpulling” is a tactic to queue more-strategic templates, which are usually favored by MB and Optimum, but at the last moment to switch to other templates. With not that many people left in the original template queue, it results in that big clans (namely MB and Optimum) get a lot of “no games”. If for some reason, there is no option to play again that day, then it effectively results in players missing the opportunity to play and get a win. This tactic is especially effective during the last slot of the day, as there is just no other opportunities to queue again. Myth Busters believed that Optimum exploited the “rugpull” tactic, as there tends to be a tendency of MB and Optimum preferring different timeslots. Optimum plays more in the earlier slots, and Myth Busters play in the later slots. But it were not Optimum, who “rug pulled”!
The current era of “rug pulling” is maintained by clan Harmony. Maybe there are other clans or there were massive rug pulls before, but I know that Harmony started that practice in March 2023, and they still implement it up to this day. The idea of “rug pulling” the templates was promoted by Harmony as a way to make top clans doubt, whether they’ll get a game due to a mass exodus, and that might prevent them swarming the templates. Prime (and potentially other clans) were invited to join Harmony’s “rug pull” initiative, but there is no evidence of any other clan besides Harmony doing the rug pulls. Interesting, that the Harmony’s attempt to irritate top clans, served as either a reason or an excuse for MB to actually revert to shady timeslot manipulation. As far as I know, after a request from Optimum, Harmony ceased the rugpulls for a few days, but they state, that will continue doing that.
Unfortunately to Optimum, during the 2-3 to last days they had lost their lead and entered the last full day of the CW season with 14 wins behind Myth Busters.
The very last day of the CW season was a day with only a single slot, when the season was expected to end. With 109 queued players, that timeslot was the #4 most queued timeslot through the whole history of Clan Wars. Four clans swarmed the slot: Myth Busters, Optimum, Prime and Harmony (about that later). Interesting, that with 5 templates available, 94 or 109 players headed for SEAD (proving that SEAD is the actual staple of Clan Wars). Even Myth Busters and Optimum chose to swarm SEAD as it guaranteed them to avoid any “no games” and allowed for quicker games (i.e. so much needed wins).
During the last timeslot Myth Busters managed to uphold their lead and won the CW season once again.
Another interesting standoff was the battle for top-3 between Prime and Harmony. Though, not that it actually mattered, because the rewards for top-3 and top-4 are the same. While Prime had a lead though out the season, Harmony managed to catch the gap and both clans came to the season finale toe-to-toe with just 2 wins in favor of Harmony. As Prime traditionally plays a lot during the first slot of the day, Harmony had to swarm the slot too in order to secure their potential top-3 position. During the slot, Prime scored more wins, than Harmony, and when the season actually ended, bot clans actually tied on total wins in the season. With the tie on win count, the actual ranking was resolved by the unofficial “mod 128” tiebreaker (the clan with the lower value of [clan_id mod 128] is ranked higher), and Prime was ranked top-3, while Harmony got top-4 rank. Go Prime! 😀
Other than these events, there were little surprises in the top-9 rankings. With the departure of FDC, Polish Eagles easily secured their top-9 spot.
With the Season 38 started, no doubt that Optimum will try to overtake the CW crown from Myth Busters. Being handicapped in the previous season, they still managed almost to take it. With this season’s roster, they have full potential to complete that achievement. Will Myth Busters defend their title? It will be interesting to follow. (IMHO, a great time to revive the Daily CW Bugle).
Link:
https://wz-cw.5smith.ru/season/37
Nation’s cup 2023 round 4 startedThe 4th round of Nation’s cup 2023 started. With 3 rounds overs, the event has moved past the mid-season, and heading towards the ending. 4 teams are tied for top-1 right now.
For details, I recommend consulting the stream and the official spreadsheet.
Links:
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https://www.warzone.com/Forum/720131-nations-cup-2023-4th-round-matchups-
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/700792-nations-cup-2023-signups
Clan League 17 – Clan Union Strikes BackIt has been announced that a newly created clan Union Strikes Back is joining the Clan League and taking the spot of clan French Community in Division A.
French Community is an old clan which has retired from Clan League and, from what I know, almost disbanded either to clan leader’s inactivity or being limited by their national focus. It is rumored, that there was talk of the best of French Community moving to a new international clan to try and win clan league.
Union Strikes Back claims themselves to be a merge between French Community and Myth Busters. USB will probably feature a few players from MB in their roster.
Myth Busters will also play their earned spot in the Division C.
Link:
https://www.warzone.com/Forum/713444-clan-league-17-signup-announcement?Offset=60
Diplo drama – War of diplo serversPlayer Reichtangle, who is leading the diplo community of Polandball, has come to strong opposition to AnteKrist79 and his diplo community. I don’t know both sides of the story, but it all comes about one side consistently harassing the other (or may be both sides harassing each other) to the point of purposefully ruining their Warzone experience and initiatives.
Well, similar stuff happens in every diplo game and in every diplo server. What makes this conflict stand out, is its seriousness and that potentially the biggest diplo host (not that I know many diplo hosts) is in an opposition to a major diplo community. (According to some stats, that they track, they might be even the majority of discord active diplo player base) I have seen discussions, that this split already negatively influences the diplo games, so that they can’t fill up because of the player base split.
Little details so far, but if you want, you may venture to the PolandBall discord to read a big rant by Reichtangle about the situation.
Links:
- Reichtangle’s PolandBall:
https://discord.gg/B9VRnFJpJg- AnteKrist79’s Diplo Server:
https://discord.com/invite/V6hapK4sZf
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