Curse

esthetic · Apr 17, 2009, 06:56 PM // 18:56

Well its that time of the month ^^. The GvG tourney this month is on April 25 so about a week away!!

my predictions

1) dP
2) DirT (took out BadV)
3) KK
4) KMD
5) rawr
6) OdS
7) nH
8) yumy

FoxBat · Apr 17, 2009, 06:57 PM // 18:57

I thought BadV disbanded?

jiggles · Apr 17, 2009, 08:30 PM // 20:30

puma raged ^^

Jensy · Apr 17, 2009, 08:51 PM // 20:51

1-8: Whomever can withstand the enormous lag generated by the GW population standing on the rings of AFK.

(lol)

Will predict next week. No point guessing right now. If I had to, I'd put KMD near/at the top.

Motoko · Apr 17, 2009, 09:08 PM // 21:08

I personally wouldn't put nH in the top 8. No offense to them. Things happen though.

I love Cirque and Hates.

I'll also do a quick summary of the skill usage chart a week before hand.

Top 5 Skills Used:
Dismember
Protector's strike
Power Attack
Foul Feast
Lingering Curse

IMMORTAlMITCH · Apr 17, 2009, 09:30 PM // 21:30

Shadow Fang
Pain Of Disenchantment/Strip Enchantment
Mirror Of Ice
Mindshock

dasmitchies · Apr 18, 2009, 01:16 AM // 01:16

This will be one of the laggiest tourney's ever. Expect a few upsets.

xDusT II · Apr 18, 2009, 03:39 AM // 03:39

1) KMD
2) dP
3) DirT
4) KK
5) BadV
6) be
7) NeiN
8) rawr

Zabe · Apr 18, 2009, 08:35 AM // 08:35

Truckloads of 321 and lag. What better could monthly be?

And so that this wont be completely offtopic:

Shat
dP
KMD
rawr
and few others, no idea tbh how this will roll out.

Derelict Daily · Apr 18, 2009, 09:29 AM // 09:29

It's a little early for me to make predictions, but I'm learning towards:

1. rawr
2. KMD

- If rawr and KMD reach the finals, rawr will win. Why? Because they always do.

3. yumy (if they don't draw someone like KMD in the first round)
4. DirT
5. KK

6-8 - more euros. I'm not sure what's up with dP and Shat. AA and Sky look pretty good. StP normally plays well in the mAT.

Derelict Daily · Apr 18, 2009, 09:33 AM // 09:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by xDusT II

1) KMD
2) dP
3) DirT
4) KK
5) BadV
6) be
7) NeiN
8) rawr

Thanks for last month's standings.

leetLoLa · Apr 18, 2009, 11:28 AM // 11:28

badv havent disbanded just puma left and now and thats gd for badv

A H O Y T · Apr 18, 2009, 08:05 PM // 20:05

I wouldn't put Atomkraft Nein [NeiN] in there lol, guild was sold and leader made some 'scammer' leader, who kicked everyone because they wouldn't give him 34k or something. Ggntwpkthxbai.
And yeah, because of the events going on; it's gonna be hella laggy... and there are always guilds QQing about lag anyway, so as said before... expect Upsets.

RotteN · Apr 18, 2009, 10:06 PM // 22:06

nine rings f*ck yeah

esthetic · Apr 19, 2009, 06:46 AM // 06:46

kay so thers a lot of lag to be expected... So who does this favor? What guild will be favored or disfavored by lag. And can you come up with a lag build in GvG to compensate or to exploit lag.

ChopChop · Apr 19, 2009, 04:23 PM // 16:23

The game may lag during the mAT, but if so it will be unrelated to other ingame events, it is simply not how servers and networking works.

Yes your personal computer does lag when you download torrents while playing games, but a hosting center responsible for hosting a game on the scale of guildwars, does not operate like that.
They have plenty of headroom to deal with any increase capacity GW would require, they are also pushing their network traffic through more than 1 network card or one router, their entire job is to set up the network so that increased load does not increase latency significantly.
It is even likely GW does not represent the biggest part of their operation (I would have no way of knowing this).

Bottom line is, many different things could cause an increase in latency to the guildwars servers, something as small and predictable as the birthday event is not one of them.

As far as prediction goes, I wont post a list, but look for who performed in past few months, put active guilds without roster changes slightly higher, they generally do perform better with time.
Expect guilds who lost players or who guest almost all the time to perform worse than they normally do.
Expect guilds who are ladder/at 'farming' to perform worse, for example I will be bold and say it is unlikely a guild like [sKy] will make top 16 in the mAT even if they performed on the ladder.

Firstly because they wont have a core who is played together, but more importantly because mAT games are significantly different from your average ladder and AT humdrum game, guilds who fail to realize this are at a large disadvantage.
Basically you can sum up 8v8 competitive pvp like this ladder optimized builds do not work well in ATs, generic AT builds do not work well in mATs.
The main reason for this is the fact that mAT builds are much more about winning vs. the particular opponent, and guilds who lack the players or ability to tweak their build to the opponent they are facing in an mAT are going to lose a high percentage of the time, just as guilds who cannot run anything but their 1 ladder farming builds generally under performs in ordinary ATs.

At the end of the day often times the real trick to understanding what happens in the mAT and why certain guilds perform consistently better is to have knowledge of how their decisions making works, who is calling the shots on what builds to play and how they adjust to the map and opponents.

Take a guild like dP (and previous French guilds) consistent winners in daily ATs and ladder, they also do well in mATs regularly, but they show significant weakness when it comes to properly adjusting to their opponent, they are just hoping to muscle their way through with the same concept every game, so they tend to get taken down every month.
StP is another example of the same concept with slightly weaker players, they perform well, but consistently fail to produce results.
Also many guilds are prone to underestimating opponents, KMD have lost numerous games due to poor build and tactic selection, expecting lower ranked players to be much worse than they really are.

Anyways that was just a quick ramble on whatever was on top of my mind, have fun.

BarPusher · Apr 19, 2009, 05:30 PM // 17:30

Depends how the server(s) is managed actually.

If server X is loading a lot of data for program A but server X is also the server for game 1 then this alters the performance for the game. They usually have different machines for each though. A server being over loaded can give a similar effect of bad lag, as an over loaded connection from the end users point of view.

Quake Live sure turned into queue live fairly quickly x).

In any case it's stupid that you can't pick from a bunch of servers, in an important game. Or let team A pick for round one and then team B pick for round two and the highest rank team gets last pick.

FoxBat · Apr 19, 2009, 05:36 PM // 17:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by ChopChop

Yes your personal computer does lag when you download torrents while playing games, but a hosting center responsible for hosting a game on the scale of guildwars, does not operate like that.

This isn't necessarily a bandwith issue - there are both servers that need to spawn and keep track of instances, and some "master" servers who do the coordination job of connecting players to those instances. Last MAT that was "ruined" by 9 rings the problems seemed more failling to load than anything else. There have been a number of periods where 'fail to load' or 'bursts of downtime' (half the team freezes for 10+s) or disconnects become really common for a day or two, it could be an inevitable flaw of the system that stress of additional users can bring to the fore.

ChopChop · Apr 19, 2009, 06:32 PM // 18:32

There could be a connection between the 2 events or it could be not related to anets servers but another issue at the data center or elsewhere in the network, if I had to I would put my money on the latter.

The thing is, when there is a problem people only look for the answer in teh information they have available, and generally leads to them blaming something related to guildwars.
I think the people who are most frustrated about is whoever designed GWs server system, because it is the most impressive work I have seen in the online game industry, and when the servers gets blamed for a problem caused elsewhere you can't do anything but sigh inside.

Also keep in mind, the player population now is significantly smaller than it has previously been, is the server load all of a sudden being a problem seem even more unlikely, of course I could be mistaken and ANet is saving pennies by decommissioning hardware, but I doubt it.

FoxBat · Apr 19, 2009, 06:44 PM // 18:44

I agree this is def. the best implementation in the industry; there are reasons most MMOs are sharded/realmed/whatever and still have a bazillion problems despite that. Still making an AFK title that encourages people to login even when they aren't playing is asking for trouble; they really ought to consider redesigning how the lucky title is acquired, it would probably save them money/headaches down the road. For example, a way to place a sum of money, and allow it to be played/banked while offline. Or maybe betting on top rollerbeetle players like XTH, except you can put in some maximum bet (around what you could AFK on a weekend) and get proportional lucky/unlucky points.