TWLB Finals - WTF decision?

[Dwopple]

Respect to you, vati. Genuinely had no idea your squad mates pulled that one at your expense. I'd say more but I'm typing this on an iPad mini, and god knows that isn't fun.

I would have preferred a replay at a later time, for the exact reasons vati named. I don't think myself, or most of dice, has an issue with losing. But the final season we all play together after playing this game for nearly a decade, i do feel quite bitter for at least not losing fairly, especially with our opponent being pandora. Vati, sorry your squad treated you like shit yesterday. It's refreshing to see someone like yourself not constantly declaring to everyone who logs on that you won lb "fairly", like zidane.

Stay classy vati

[megaman89]

Thanks Vati and same to you, when you were (C) and running Pandora I really enjoyed facing you guys you brought out the best in us. You were the only guy that I wanted to win LB on that squad and wouldn't have minded if it was against us. What do you expect when you hand the reigns over to someone like zidane though? Telling you to act afk when there was an announcement from staff that the same lineups will be played and having people delete their forum posts. That's the example of a coward and one the reasons I don't want him on suicide watch if we were to have a replay and he would lose because this game is his life. Much respect to you though Vati, was fun while it lasted.

[zidane]

i never told vati to fake afk, stop assuming crap. the only people who were terrified for their lives was dice, being terrified of playing against cape. you guys got absolutely demolished and you can use whatever excuse you want to justify it. i guess dice wasn't all that great without cape after all, cya and dont spit in my mail

[Dwopple]

Dude, zidane....just...lol.


The hypocrisy is strong with this one.

[renzi]

meg will u add me on fb pls?

[Efhat]

Agreed with mega, finally uninstalling the game for the first and last time of my 11 years here.

Memories were great, I remember starting out as a baser like if it was yesterday. (Thanks oddie)
Remember going up the ranks and being subbed in ?go base all the time cause of how bad I was in spider..lol
Remember when megaman asked me to join dice and everything changed since then and taught me everything I know.
Vati - I remember all the shit both our squads went through, when Eelam entered the zone and created this rivalry in the first place, when the game actually had competition five years ago. Good rivalries, sad it had to end like this.

I've been inactive the past year as life finally hit me. All the shit talking I've done has been for the shits and giggles of this zone.
Wanted to thank my brothers in dice for the wonderful trip we had.
Mega - You're forever my bro..words cannot explain how grateful and happy I am to have had a great dice career with you. You took me under your wing, and it was success there on.
Dwop - Since Verify always had <3 for you, we came up the ranks as newbies together. I wont forget the day you made me leave Syndicate mid TWL for pissing me off though..lol but I love you Zac.
Stayon/Kess - You guys are my boys, I love both of you. Thank you for the memories my puta bro's.
Thix - Believe it or not this guy took me in when I was a newbie and had the patience to deal with me when I sucked in FlagOwners, and you got me into Halo..won't forget you either.
Panama - My latino bro..love you, hope you visit me some time in Miami.
Cape - I remember when you axed me 3 seasons ago mid TWL for axing Hurricane, lol. But you know you're my boy.
Bumpa - Still going to visit you in Aussie and have a workout session.
Tab - You're a pub newb and I never really had a lot of years with you, but you're awesome bro. Hope we get to talk again sometime. Idk where you went.
Mess - Where ever you are, hope you're doing good brother. I'm going to miss you!!
ph/paul - DT all day, every day. The advice we have all shared with each other has always been used irl. You guys are great friends.

This squad has become such a huge part of my life, not just internet wise, but personally. These guys became more than just gaming buddies, they became real life friends. The advice I have received from these guys, and everyone else on this squad has been priceless and truly a huge aspect and part of my life. These guys have seen me grow up from the 12 year old acne middle school kid I was to a young kid with a career and a family.. I do not regret one minute I have spent on this game. All the late nights I stayed up BDing, staying up late just talking shit about life and giving each other advice, I wouldn't of traded it for anything else. I spent more time on this game than I did doing anything else really. I remember when I was 12-13 running from school logging on with my 56k and just playing with my newb friends. Those were the best days.

Seeing this game crash is truly one of the saddest things in my life. Seeing people grow up, leave, pass away, and just see the population decline the way it did has truly upset me.

Everyone else that I have met, played with, talked to, and trashed, it has been fun, great, and amusing. I will not forget this game, as it has really been my only child hood.
If it's normal to almost be tearing and crying as I write this, I guess I do have a heart for this game. Call me a nerd, call me what ever you want, but I truly believe some of you out there will understand where these emotions are coming from.

It's finally time to let go, as I know this game will only die slowly, and get worse at the rate its going. I tried playing this last TWL, to see if I had any drive left, and I didn't. It hurt's that the spark I had for these 11 years has finally gone away.

I know I didn't mention a lot of people I have gotten along with, and bonded with, but I know that all of you know who you are.
Vati - Once again thanks for the rivalries and memories, you'll always be that classy Derek Jeter of TW.

And finally, the cuban king gets dethroned.

Good bye my friends, and thanks for the memories..

And I hope everyone I have trashed, or upset did not take it personally as this is a competitive game, and that was the point of it. Congrats Pandora.
- crip

[Rule]

i never told vati to fake afk, stop assuming crap. the only people who were terrified for their lives was dice, being terrified of playing against cape. you guys got absolutely demolished and you can use whatever excuse you want to justify it. i guess dice wasn't all that great without cape after all, cya and dont spit in my mail

This guy has his head up his ass lol thinking anyone would be "terrified for their lives" of pathetic trolls like himself. He does not know how to communicate or think logically. Classless.

[qan]

Understood that the existing ball of code is ugly; but was there an issue that prevented testing the 20 minute time change a day or two before the game played? If so, what can be done so that this doesn't happen again? If not and the change was untested due to 'not bothering', then shame on you guys and lets redouble efforts to test everything before cutting it into production. The zone may used to be able to recover from non-testing 'back in the day' but this kind of stuff can do some real damage to the zone in its current low-population state.

There was nothing preventing us testing it except that it was changed the day-of. We still could have tested it. And I could have checked the code to make sure it would function properly -- then found that it wouldn't, and gone back and changed the CFG again.

To be clear: The change was untested due to 'not bothering.' Shame on us. Let's redouble our efforts to test everything before cutting it into production.

Or: let's try to do what we can as a ragtag volunteer group on a moribund space game. I've throw so many hours of my life into maintaining and working on this game. I get plenty out of it; I'm not complaining. I love this game. But sometimes you just don't have time to test everything. We pretty much test live or not at all.

In order to test this 30 second change, we would have needed to: get two full TWL squads together, OR create 2 fake TWL squads in the DB; have them add lineups; then have them play out a full 40-minute game. So we're looking at a minimum of 1 hour to test this 30-second change ... but of course, getting 2 TWL squads together, or 2 fake lineups, would probably take a couple of hours in and of itself, if it could even be done.

Of course, this is testing for a totally unforeseen bug arising from the simplest possible modification -- and therefore it would be unlikely we'd ever test this. That doesn't mean it still should have been tested. But: by whom? Where do you find the people to spend their time testing every feature on a very old botcore? We used to have TWBeta, waaaaay back in the day, who would help test new features and game modes. We just don't have the population to support this anymore, though.

Kind of a milquetoast response, I know. I admit we should have tested it. And yet ... where do we get the time to do it? I have to eat. I can't spend every minute testing features on SS. I'm sorry; just isn't feasible. And I'm not going to waste time feeling ashamed of myself for it, and I think you're being an overly idealistic ass for suggesting I should. (No, that's not true -- I do still feel a little ashamed. But you don't need to recommend it. Nor will it help us "redouble our efforts.") Summary is, I think you should stick to managing paid engineers.

Just in case you guys ever wonder why at any given time we have at most 3 active coders ...

[Vatican Assassin]

Zidane didn't tell me to leave, just a few others spammed me to go fold the laundry for a bit, but I didn't ever see staff say anything about having to use original lines so I held my ground. I would leave to let Cape play though, he's awesome. But god damn, after that 30 minute superstaffbowl power outage, I would have been pissed if we had to play original lines. Cape logged on 2 seconds before it said go go go! and we could have subbed me out immediately, but I didn't die for a pretty long time 'cuz hey! I'm actually not that bad in terr, ok you fucking doubters, fuck you. Dice spamming for me to be put in, Pandora spamming me to go afk, and me sitting in a room by myself, watching the screen drip red with the blood of my enemies, masturbating. TWLB finals baby it's the shit!

And as to what I expected when I gave Zidane cap? I wanted what I can no longer give: extreme activity. In 3 leagues. You say he has no life, but Zid is me when I had no life, on all day every day 20 fucking bds a day holler. Zid earned his medals because they practiced all the time and you guys didn't appeal.

Crip! Sry to see you go but it's like Good Will Hunting where you're actually glad Matt Damon took off. I know exactly what you mean and how you feel. You tried to help me beat dice one year on pandora, but you failed and let renzi and tim have a ring, and I'll never forgive you for that.

[Pressure]

It's truly upsetting to see the game in this state. It's been an extremely sad weekend for TWL. It's such a shame that someone who only began playing this game over the last 5 years really doesn't know how he has effected those who have been here nearly since the start. People might get pissed off and flame you, Reckful, but you have to understand that the decisions you are making are only causing such a reaction because of how deeply embedded this game is in the lives of the people who invest their time in it. Yeah, I got benched when I expected to play this season, and I stepped back from the game for a few months to focus on my career, but in spite of all that I set an entire Sunday aside just to watch what I thought could have been the last TWL, just out of respect for this integral part of my childhood. Just because I may never get the chance to see a live, competitive LB finals match again. It's honestly hard to describe how difficult it is to wrap my head around that concept. It's even harder to describe how angry it makes me feel that you took that away from me. Took my last chance at watching a fair LB finals away, which was supposed to be a LEGENDARY end to a rivalry that has gone on for over 5 years. Were you even aware of what was at stake for Pandora vs. Dice in an LB finals? What about the Thunder and Dice rivalry? Pandora had lost to dice in LB finals 2 years in a row 6-7 years ago. I doubt they ever thought they'd get a fair shot at redemption ever again. 6 years later they're given the opportunity, just for it to end like that? After months of practice and dedication? Sad...

It may not mean anything to you, Reckful, but the integrity of this game rests in the way you choose to interpret and implement the rules. Something has to be said about the fact that every past successful TWL op is against the decisions you've made. Even your responses sound like you really don't give a flying fuck about what your decisions are doing to the people who worked hard for 20 years to make this league what it was before you started to run it. Everyone knew this game was dying, but because of you and the way you are handling this situation, nothing will ever be the same from here on out.



I remember watching my first LB match. Disoblige vs. Spastic. warportal going 81-0. I had played pub for over a year not knowing that the competition even existed. That day was a life changer.

Mike, it's sad to see you go man. I've seen you quit before, and never believed you actually officially would, but now I know it's for real. The memories man.. I connect with everything you said. I'm not even ashamed to admit that I would leave lunch in elementary or middle school a few minutes early just to go check TWD stats. Or would open the game during stupid classes to see the euros playing go base, so I can try to scout some up and coming potential players since we actually had newbs logging in pretty often at the time. I think everyone who played competitively can relate to doing crazy things to show up for your boys and play leagues.

I've trained and watched so many players develop and become something I was proud to have had an effect on in this game. Continuum is a microcosm of real-world political, economic, and social dynamics, and anyone who spent the time to take the most out of this game knows what I am talking about. I don't know how I can ever thank the people who made this game what it was, what it has become up until these last few years. It's hilarious thinking back at all the times I would get so worked up, for the good and the bad, over this game. How I can have so much respect people who I've never met in person before, look up to them, love them, or hate them so much, all over little space ships. It's crazy to look at my forum posts from '05, just to see how much I've grown from that little annoying fucker who would spam everyone to go #mythrandir to start up basing games. Or alias to sneak onto squads

I'm not ready to uninstall it just yet, I've said since I was 9 years old that I would never actually "quit" SS, but it's still just so hard to actually see it get to this point. To see one of the last living pieces of my childhood start to fade away. I'll never forget this game and the impact it's had on my life and again, thank you if you had some part in making it what it was. There are times that I laughed so hard for hours on this game. I'll miss that lack of responsibility, where we could just stay up forever playing endless BD's. Or just being stupid as fuck in chat. The squad dynamics, the friendships, the legacies... No gaming experience will ever be like Subspace.

I don't know what is to come of this game, or TWL, but both have had a much more respectable run than I bet Sony or PriitK or whoever designed it ever thought it could. I hope I'll never have to actually say "bye" to this game, but I think it's safe to say that it's time to say bye to competitive leagues. I'll be here until the end. Hopefully we see another TWL. I love you TW

[Rough]

It is baffling how people are still complaining over this, Pandora clearly showed much dominance in round two (won) and three (18-11 min lead), can even argue for the first one but it's shameful that people thinking the outcome should be different. It's shameful honestly especially to the players who participated this weekend. This whole thing pretty much shadowed on what Hulk / Mcvicar even did in those three rounds containing under vs stayon / kess. This all came when everyone said Pandora had no spiders and couldn't even go far in playoffs let alone finals. Anyway, it's all said and done

[Dreamwin]

Then fierce won TWLD finals round 1 by this precedent. I mean, the lead for pandora is 24% more in an 18-11 situation. And a 35-25 lead is a 20% lead, those are approximately the same. so the expected outcome should be the same.

Here's what it sounds like to me from this post: you got fed up with dealing with the problems and people bitching, so you made up some bullshit to overrule actual rules so that you didn't have to deal with it anymore. And your decision doesn't particularly mean finality if dice appealed (in regards to vati, official appeals have to be sent to an email, hence we dunno if they did) as according again to the rules it requires multiple op inputs to render judgment. Or is that rule being edited on the fly for convenience too?

Bro, do you have any common sense at all?

35-25 in LD/LJ is a little bit different than 18.40-11.30 when we have just TD'D. This is the thing I mentioned in the other post. You guys are cleaving to every little detail that can turn this around for pandora (statistical or w/e). Guess this zone just hates pandora so much, which is a shame.

[Rule]

Typical Pandora trolling here. Anytime an event is disputed tactic = storm the thread by blaming everyone else and taking no responsibility. What can you expect from a squad that is led by Dipshits/message board/ingame trolls like Zidane and Vatican Assassin and has very few redeeming people like Myth. Good job running the league to the ground trolls.

[M_M God]

Well, to start off, this was probably one of the most embarrasing and most frustrating days as a staffer I've ever had.
I mean, we've come a long way from starting to play this when we were young and clueless, just enjoying a simple game we stumbled upon, not knowing it would grow into an addiction up onto this day and being able to have so much love for this game (and frustration at other times).
It's easy to simply blame every staffer attached to this game for things that are not working out the way they should be (and sometimes rightfully so), but still, we're all here playing this game together and in the end are responsible for the survival of this game aswell..
Over these last few years, we've had a steady decline in population, activity and it has been increasingly harder to find dedicated, experienced and movivated staffers to run this game.
However, overall I still think we're managing pretty well, if you look at other zones, their staff mostly is just a disgrace, and they are letting their zone die out without any motivation to do anything to save it.
The most basic thing to survive as a game and zone comes from the players, actually being actively involved in playing, twd, twl etc and making this zone a success..
Providing us with motivation to continue with all the voluntary staff (bot, dev, league) work we're doing up to this day, without getting much for it in return besides appreciation from the players themselves, and personal growth and development of our own skillset.
Do not think we're not busy/trying to save this zone and game, we are, but we are limited in some things (resources, cooperation, being able to update/change game client, etc) and all have our private lifes aswell.
Just like each and everyone of you, we invest time in this zone, by either playing it, contributing on forums, giving us input/insight on whats missing/needs to be improved in this zone to just providing the community with a HoN on TWL matches, etc.

So lets relapse on last sunday's TWL final games. TWLJ finals started off normally, (if you can call it that, within minutes the first cheater calls about certain people lagging already came in), we had to force people to sub out, but the game was evenly matched and we survived twlj without any major flaws or bots dying.
TWLB Finals were started a little bit late due to TWLJ being 3 rounds, both squads added their lineups, Pandora complained about wanting extra time added so Cape could show (we already started later than planned, and they had 25 people online), we denied it and the game started.
When we were about 3 minutes into the game, people came to me about the remaining time on the bot/match not being correct, and I contacted both qan and reckful about it, which both already knew about it at that time.
We could not fix this right away because we needed to kill the bot so this fix could be done, so we decided to see how it would turnout since at that time Dice was in FR/cram and was leading with a few minutes.
As soon as Pandora regained FR control, we looked at a fair way to end the game without going into another replay which would cost us another 30 minutes or so.
When game time ran out, we decided that the previous made decision to let the score stand was not in compliance with any stated TWL rules and thus a replay would be needed, while first having looked at other ways to (manually) finish the 20 minutes time race game.
I called for a replay, we restarted the bot and I received a few questions (along with the usual hate messages/spam) about using the same lineup or not since Cape was in instead of Vatican.
They claimed Vatican was afk now, zidane was still angry with our decision at that time and since I didn't want to delay any further, we started off with the game.
People refocused on the game again, things went back to normal and in the end, Pandora won the first match. At that time I had to go, so other that what I heard from my staffers afterwards, and have seen on forums, that is all I know.
We (Qan, Reckful and I) are the first ones to acknowledge that the blame partly lies with us here, part with the awful timing of bots dying due to a suspected DDOS attack or routers going down or what not.
Appearantly I am also needed to triple check everything is fine before the TWL finals, that includes hosts, bots, overseeing TWL staff and unforseen circumstances and I have neglected parts of that, and I am sorry.
Seriously now, In all the confusion and drama that has happened, and with the TWLD finals still having to be replayed, I would still like to give everyone a chance to play a normal and fair TWLB final.
Pandora members claim that they are the rightful winners, that they can win any time vs dice they want, so why not give everyone a last fair chance at ending the TWLB Finals the way they should be?
I think most of us deserve the chance to feel satisfied, knowing that we did infact play a normal TWLB Final game without any staff confusions, mishaps, or bot failures/servers dying.
Back up your words with actions, show some consideration for others and show that we all still care about this game.

Both dice and Pandora captains could come to an agreement to play some sort of replacement final TWLB match this sunday, or in 2 weeks, to have the chance for both sides to show fairly and decide for once and for all who is the better, deserving TWLB winner.
I will promise and see to it that, from our perspective, everything will go smooth ( excluding problems that are out of our reach, such as bot servers crashing ) and make it so at least everyone can look back on these TWLB finals with a satisfactory feeling afterwards. We will even host this manually if needed.
These terms are negotiable by the captains of both squads, last sunday's outcome could still stand if Pandora should lose these TWLB finals, some sort of extra recognition could be added for these games, or some other solution could be found.
I know all of you have a lot of heart for this game, captains of both squads have a lot of experience and I am sure they have the dignity and respect for the other captains to at least sit down and discuss this like normal adult and the veteran players they are.

Thank you.

-M_M God

[Ricko]

I really am sad to see dice guys leaving after this. You guys have been inspiration to many on how basing should be done, and what to aim for in terms of skill and knowledge of the basing game.

Even though my personal pleas will mean nothing to you guys; don't go. I am going to ensure during this off season with other TWL ops (who ever they will be) that we completely re-vamp TWL via rule changes and possible point systems and what not. We need to jig up TWD to ensure that this then means TWL can be competitive once more and enjoyable for all.

Some people seem to think that staff do not care for TWL or do not give it the time of day it needs. Let me say that I intend on helping with TWL next season (more so than I have done this year) and I challenge anyone to say that I am not passionate about TWL and all of the history that has come from it. I still try to put hours of game time into this game to keep it alive in TWD and TWL aspects. Do not give up, we can get TWL back to what it should be, and I want the input of vets to help mould the perfect TWL - such as Jones' recent thread regarding player input.

Big changes are just coming for TW, and we can at least try to restore what we had or go one step further and boost our population and activity. I cling on to this game for nostalgia reasons but I also have the belief that this game still has the game mechanics and community to bring in so many new players if we get our strategy correct.

TL;DR - Hate to see dice go, true basing legends.
- Don't give up, we will re-vamp TWL.