I have not voiced my opinion on 19s on the forums for quite some time as my main focus has been elsewhere... yet this is my home bracket where i grew up playing wow (literally half my life) and i feel very connected to it through good times or bad, and would like to share my thoughts as i feel it offers a slightly different viewpoint (or middle ground).
It is difficult to build a tower when you lack the materials to make it's base. Difficult....NOT IMPOSSIBLE! (explanation..)
19s has been/will always be the bracket for those who embrace the spirit of competition. Whether it be in the gulch repping your guild banner, duking it out in the arena to claim a title, or setting the atmosphere on the forums for head-to-head guild rivalries, 19s live and die off the need to compete. My favorite memories from this bracket have been in these heat of the moment competitions between player groups, whether it be my premades in Laughing Skull FTW (where i grew up as a player/person) from the end of Cataclysm versus tRain Cow/Lethal Synergy/Noodle Arms, or playing along side my good friends Livingforce/Leeroy and being shutdown in final round versus Vianco/Nettiebay/Yowza in DA's 3v3 tournament, and last but not least the 5.3 premade scene this last summer where I had a fucking blast playing with my guild mates from Against the World vs the best competition the bracket has seen premade/pug wise since wrath (arguably).
Do I win every time I play? No of course not, but that's what keeps people here.... the drive to improve... on an individual level, a team level, and on a community level. Whether or not everyone likes each other DOESN'T MATTER. That is not what drives this bracket! IN FACT, I would argue the fact that people having opposite opinions and gameplays is what keeps this bracket Healthy and Alive.... not everyone carpooling to go shoot hoops at the YMCA gym.
So where did this go.... this element that seems to be missing to have healthy games once again? The opposition is here, clearly as the forums have shown for the past few months based on different threads/conflicting viewpoints. Most of us are still lurking around just on different endeavors. When did the ball drop? So i go back to my statement I made earlier in my post...
It is difficult to build a tower when you lack the materials to make it's base. Difficult....NOT IMPOSSIBLE!
In my opinion, everyone left the court when the ball was dropped in the upcoming weeks of 5.4 (mid/end of July) when the announcement of all enchants becoming available at any level was made loud and clear within the community via forums,games, sites etc... Frankly as i remember before the patch hit there was plenty of negative banter of the topic, and i will openly admit I was one of those people that was not looking forward to these enchants. Why? It significantly increased the sporadic factor of burst in the bracket on a monumental level, so much so that it grants an individual/class the potential power to turn a game all by themselves in the matter of globals. This is on an individual level.... so let's take a look at a pug/premade level.
If one person can have such a drastic impact on a game, how much impact would a 5 man group have on a game? This was displayed in the months after the patch hit after Horde more often than not dominated the Alliance in pug games... Now let's consider a few things.
A) At this point when 5.4 had already hit, the negative banter of the upcoming patch already shied (shys in past...? maybe it exists :O) away a significant player base from queuing just from the bad rep the enchants received before the patch.
B) All of the dominate guilds in the bracket had moved to horde, which when looking at a 5.3 perspective makes a lot of sense as overall horde racials are much better for premades than alliance, but when pugs tried to pick up after the patch left no real opposition or force to combat these guilds when they decided to group queue into pugs. Is this any specific guilds fault? No, this is a collective problem that just about every guild fell into due to the fact that premades can be queued via Wargames and racials were stronger horde etc....
C) Yes the burst was higher.... significantly.... but the real reason i remember this being an issue was due to class comps/lack of guilds on alliance.
And at the end of the day, it is tough to get premades going when you can't get pugs.
Now... as my friend Nicozy showed me quite a few months ago... premades are definitely possible to continue happening in 5.4, as EU had several premades in 5.4 that i feel went under the radar to a lot of members of the community that were not looking for it. They adjusted the rules to compensate for the changes, and the games were competitive!
Big Picture.... 5.4.2 is ready for our community to have premades and our community thriving once again, but are we ready to meet the demands it asks of us as a whole?
Let's start from the bottom up.... Let's get us some guilds going once again on both factions, call out your friends, dust off your skype list and click those long lost colorful names on TI and spread the news!
I'm frankly getting bored of 20s... and I miss you guys, (you can decide homo or no homo) and all the shit talk that comes from 19s. It is a bracket where survival of the fittest and long term friendships are made and sustained., if it wasn't for 19 twinking, frankly i would not be playing wow! So let's get the ball rollin!
-HB
Edit: Yes i know i posted this under saxxon's thread.... thought it be relevant to make it it's own post
It is difficult to build a tower when you lack the materials to make it's base. Difficult....NOT IMPOSSIBLE! (explanation..)
19s has been/will always be the bracket for those who embrace the spirit of competition. Whether it be in the gulch repping your guild banner, duking it out in the arena to claim a title, or setting the atmosphere on the forums for head-to-head guild rivalries, 19s live and die off the need to compete. My favorite memories from this bracket have been in these heat of the moment competitions between player groups, whether it be my premades in Laughing Skull FTW (where i grew up as a player/person) from the end of Cataclysm versus tRain Cow/Lethal Synergy/Noodle Arms, or playing along side my good friends Livingforce/Leeroy and being shutdown in final round versus Vianco/Nettiebay/Yowza in DA's 3v3 tournament, and last but not least the 5.3 premade scene this last summer where I had a fucking blast playing with my guild mates from Against the World vs the best competition the bracket has seen premade/pug wise since wrath (arguably).
Do I win every time I play? No of course not, but that's what keeps people here.... the drive to improve... on an individual level, a team level, and on a community level. Whether or not everyone likes each other DOESN'T MATTER. That is not what drives this bracket! IN FACT, I would argue the fact that people having opposite opinions and gameplays is what keeps this bracket Healthy and Alive.... not everyone carpooling to go shoot hoops at the YMCA gym.
So where did this go.... this element that seems to be missing to have healthy games once again? The opposition is here, clearly as the forums have shown for the past few months based on different threads/conflicting viewpoints. Most of us are still lurking around just on different endeavors. When did the ball drop? So i go back to my statement I made earlier in my post...
It is difficult to build a tower when you lack the materials to make it's base. Difficult....NOT IMPOSSIBLE!
In my opinion, everyone left the court when the ball was dropped in the upcoming weeks of 5.4 (mid/end of July) when the announcement of all enchants becoming available at any level was made loud and clear within the community via forums,games, sites etc... Frankly as i remember before the patch hit there was plenty of negative banter of the topic, and i will openly admit I was one of those people that was not looking forward to these enchants. Why? It significantly increased the sporadic factor of burst in the bracket on a monumental level, so much so that it grants an individual/class the potential power to turn a game all by themselves in the matter of globals. This is on an individual level.... so let's take a look at a pug/premade level.
If one person can have such a drastic impact on a game, how much impact would a 5 man group have on a game? This was displayed in the months after the patch hit after Horde more often than not dominated the Alliance in pug games... Now let's consider a few things.
A) At this point when 5.4 had already hit, the negative banter of the upcoming patch already shied (shys in past...? maybe it exists :O) away a significant player base from queuing just from the bad rep the enchants received before the patch.
B) All of the dominate guilds in the bracket had moved to horde, which when looking at a 5.3 perspective makes a lot of sense as overall horde racials are much better for premades than alliance, but when pugs tried to pick up after the patch left no real opposition or force to combat these guilds when they decided to group queue into pugs. Is this any specific guilds fault? No, this is a collective problem that just about every guild fell into due to the fact that premades can be queued via Wargames and racials were stronger horde etc....
C) Yes the burst was higher.... significantly.... but the real reason i remember this being an issue was due to class comps/lack of guilds on alliance.
And at the end of the day, it is tough to get premades going when you can't get pugs.
Now... as my friend Nicozy showed me quite a few months ago... premades are definitely possible to continue happening in 5.4, as EU had several premades in 5.4 that i feel went under the radar to a lot of members of the community that were not looking for it. They adjusted the rules to compensate for the changes, and the games were competitive!
Big Picture.... 5.4.2 is ready for our community to have premades and our community thriving once again, but are we ready to meet the demands it asks of us as a whole?
Let's start from the bottom up.... Let's get us some guilds going once again on both factions, call out your friends, dust off your skype list and click those long lost colorful names on TI and spread the news!
I'm frankly getting bored of 20s... and I miss you guys, (you can decide homo or no homo) and all the shit talk that comes from 19s. It is a bracket where survival of the fittest and long term friendships are made and sustained., if it wasn't for 19 twinking, frankly i would not be playing wow! So let's get the ball rollin!
-HB
Edit: Yes i know i posted this under saxxon's thread.... thought it be relevant to make it it's own post
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