The Life of a Tournament
Have you ever wondered what goes into a PoxNora tournament? How do they run and is it as hard as it looks? I’ve run a few now and today I’m going to take you behind the scenes to show how it all works. There are probably more steps than you think, but here is the entire process.
Theme - Without a good theme, a tournament is nothing more than a group of people beating on each other until only one remains. Even the smallest variation in gameplay can add an additional layer of strategy or force players to think outside the box. It could be a battlegroup of one specific race, the exclusion of Exotics, or another limitation placed on a particular battle. Maps are a huge consideration as a poor map choice can give an enormous advantage to certain battlegroups.
Prizes - No contest or tournament is worth participating in without some decent prizes. We try to rotate things with booster packs, leveling tokens, and on a rare occasion spiffy runes. For the most part many players just compete for enjoyment but a decent reward for performance is never unappreciated.
Get Approval - You might think I just decide “Hey we’re going to give away booster packs” when I decide on a tournament but it’s not quite that simple. There is an approval process we go through to make sure we are following best practices and company policy. Once everything has been a green light we can make an announcement.
Announcement - Promoting the tournament isn’t a difficult step but you want to be sure to find the balance between excitement and using the word “unprecedented.” For the most part a locked thread is put in the Events forum with specific entry instructions.
Entrants - At a specified time, I unlock the entry thread and have players post if they are interested. They also send me a breakdown of which battlegroup they are planning to use in the upcoming event. I verify it to make sure it fits within the parameters established in the rules and verify their entry. I also have a system that can see the battlegroup they are playing before the game begins, so I verify things match up.
Seeding - If you aren’t familiar with professional sports, seeding is the process of making sure matches are paired to provide a fair and exciting finale. This can be challenging if the ranking of participants varies by a large amount. It’s mitigated as much as possible but there are times where a rank 1000 plays a rank 200.
In Game Announcements - This is where I remind everyone regularly that the tournament begins at a specific time. This is not only to make spectators aware, but to remind players who may have forgotten about the event.
Take Roll - It’s time to get things going, so we need to take roll and make sure everyone has showed up. This is almost never the case, so we fortunately have some alternative entrants ready to take their place. In some cases this means finding some last minute participants who want a shot at fame and prizes.
Initiate the Competition - This step might actually as easy as waving a Starting Flag at NASCAR, but it isn’t. Depending on the size of the tournament, and if entrants arrive promptly, this can take 10 minutes to accomplish. Even after the first round has begun, players complete their battles at various times so seeding must be done on the fly.
Prizing - When all is said and done, participants must be given their reward per the tournament rules. For the most part this requires a quick few commands in our system, but a large tournament can be time consuming. Our anniversary tournament for example had 17 prizes that were individually awarded.
Hopefully this gives you a little insight into exactly what it takes to create and run a tournament here at PoxNora. While some of it is less than glamorous, seeing some of the epic fights over the last few months has been worth every minute.
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| RadarX Community Manager |