During this last week, the template nomination was undertaken. The process there was relatively drama-less, and so all I need to say is that nominations happened and finished.
Due to the aforementioned drop-out of Masters clan, this left only six clans in Division A of CL11. TBest had three options to choose between:
Leave it as is, with six clans (rather than the usual seven) in Division A.
Only relegate one clan from Division A
Promote three clans from Division B
TBest had originally decided that option two would be his preferred pick. However, there was a large outcry by the community. Last season, in CL10, option one was chosen (for Division B), while in all other CL seasons, option three had been implemented. Never, in the history of Clan League, had someone taken option two, and the community was going to make sure it would never come to be.
So, of course, TBest relented. He removed the last Division A spot from GG and gave it to Statisticians, who dutifully accepted the promotion. About the promotion, Gus, a member of Statisticians, quoted linberson, a member of GG, “We are happy to play either A or B, personally I favor B since its less stress! =P”.
Finally, TBest announced that template voting had begun.
About a week and a half ago, Fizzer released a surprise update that excited the WZ community, chat rooms. In this update, each clan has been given a private page in which they can chat in real-time with the rest of their clan mates. Not only that, but Fizzer added a global chat for the entire WZ community to participate in. Many of the community are exceptionally happy, but they can’t enjoy anything for long before they criticise it.
The criticisms have been rather focused, which means Fizzer, if he chooses to listen, does not have very much that he has been demanded to fix. The first suggestion has been to increase the scope of the capabilities, from one chat for a clan, to including a multi-clan chat. Do I think it is viable? Not really. Another request is to modify the effect of ‘time out’ on a player, and that one I can get behind. A final request, which has possibly been the most repeated, is for the chat to store the last ~100 messages in global chat (not including created games). Currently that isn’t the case, which makes it difficult for newcomers to catch up on current conversations. Fixing this problem would enable the community to interact easier than before.
Phase one was completed this week. There were twelve nominated templates, which are currently being pruned down to a smaller number. Phase two is expected to have been completed by the 23rd of January, so voting will be able to begin soon.
There wasn’t much discussion on last week’s discussion thread. All we got were a couple of players trying to sway voters’ votes.
This season is almost finished. There are eight games left, seven of which are from Group A. Due to the distribution of games, there is no confirmed winner yet for the league, but Deadman is only a single game of snatching the title for himself. The two games he has yet to complete are against Beren, who has so far gone 2-2, and Timinator, who is currently 0-2, meaning the win for Deadman is highly likely. This will be his first win in this PR league competition, giving him another title under his belt.
Fizzer alerts us that the next week has begun. Time to start voting!
The maps in this week’s competition are all rather small, with only one containing more than 100 territories. All of them also have quite average ratings, with the top ratings being for Brazilian Southeast at 3.78/5 and the worst for Oklahoma at 2.92/5.
This week, all maps are of real places on Earth, with two of them being located in Brazil. Surprisingly, the map of Southeast Brazil contains almost six times the number of territories as the map of the entirety of Brazil. It also has a better rating, which may be due to Lionheart’s experience of making 32 maps compared to Ycontrol’s first. In my opinion, Ycontrol’s map is just too small and the bonuses are too large (when compared to the number of territories) for a fun game, while Lionheart’s Brazil Southeast is a much nicer size, with better graphics and more regular-sized bonuses.
So what new news has been added on this topic in the last week? Well, not much. There haven’t been any new judgements, but there has been an updated punishment to two cases already announced and dealt with.
Who has been affected? These two updated cases affect five players in total, Wick, Beren and malakkan from ONE!, and Lucien Miller and max™ from (at that time) Lu Fredd. Currently, Lucien Miller is in Outlaws and max™ is in SNinja.
Immediately questions came forward as to how far the rules could be bent. Is asking for help in a game you are in allowed? No, definitely not. What about simulating the game against yourself in such a way that you played as both sides? Yep, that’s allowed. What about simulating a game by playing it against an oblivious player? Well, you aren’t asking for help from the other player, but are they helping you, even if they aren’t aware? I think yes, they are helping you. And since the rules state that “It is prohibited to get help or advice”, but doesn’t say that “it is legal to get help from a player who is not aware that they are helping”, it stands to reason that simulating an ongoing CL game against someone who is not playing that game is indeed illegal, whether or not they are aware of the intentions.
That’s all there is on this weekly news report. Feel free to discuss any of the news items in this thread, or send me a WZ mail. I am hoping to do a ‘features’ section in future news editions, so if you have a map, clan, template or even a player that you think deserves a commendation, then get in contact and explain why. Finally, if you have any stories that you would like written about, or any events that you want reported in next week’s edition, then make me aware about it and I will consider adding it in to the news.
This is The News Reader, signing off.
Edited 1/20/2019 21:45:47
