Hello AoC Community! Get ready for a longggg post..
I have been meaning to make this post for a couple weeks now, but have been so busy that it's been hard to find the time for it. I would like to give a quick review of some of the highlights (in my opinion) of DM World Cup, followed by a tribute to one of AoC's icons, and finally a quick discussion of the future directions in DM.
Looking back at DM World Cup
Sign ups for DM World Cup began in March and went all the way until April 7th (if I remember right). Initially, some of us we're a little surprised and sad that some of the big names from DM were missing, namely TheViper and Riut. The past few months have been marked by a fairly low activity level amongst the top RM players, and they simply lacked the motivation to play in DMWC.
The Tournament kicked off with group stage on April 11th. Here, I would like to highlight one of my favorite series from group stage! My favorite is probably the series of Clemensor vs MBL. viewtopic.php?f=1291&t=121400 . In these games, it was known that the winner would be the most likely #2 in group, and hence move on to the next stage in the tournament. Clemensor had been training very hard for these games: he nearly perfected his Huns 1v1 start, and completely shut down MBL in the first two games, going up a quick 2-0 right off the bat. However, Clemensor made the crucial error in picking Turks as his HM in Game 3, where he narrowly lost to MBL. From there, the last 2 games we're super close: neither of them we're decided until the every end. One of my favorite takeaways from this series: people in the stream chat nick named Clemensor "The Cleminator".
On May 16th, Round of 32 began, and the bulk of the great games from this tournament were underway! I would say my favorite games from this point were the Round of 32 QuEnDi Colorz (Matt) vs Miguel: viewtopic.php?f=1326&t=121581 , Round of 16 QuEnDi Colorz (Matt) vs Xuma (Sinan): viewtopic.php?f=1326&t=121889 , and the Round of 16 of Me vs VIK_Vinchester: viewtopic.php?f=1326&t=121815. Matt, being the #8 seed from the top 8 list, was naturally going to have it tougher than the rest of the top 8 in terms of seeding. In his first series vs Miguel, Miguel had opportunities to win the entire series on a couple occasions, but Matt just barely managed to pull it off. Following this, Xuma gave him an equally difficult run. A couple great series to watch.
My series vs Vinch came as a big surprise for me. Despite taking an early 1-0 advantage, Vinch decisively defeated me in his HM choice: baltic huns. His strategy on that map was far superior to anything I did, and it was (by far) the quickest loss I took throughout the tournament. The next game was Goldrush Spain war, that game was so close that I felt I might lose it on a couple occasions. Despite the ending score of the series, I felt Vinch really gave me a run for my money, hats off to him!
Going in to the Gold and Silver cup brackets, I would say the spotlight Silver cup series came from the finals, Rubenstock vs VIK_Vinchester: viewtopic.php?f=1330&t=122771 . If anyone wants to watch a super close series in DM, this is a great candidate to watch, and I will not spoil any of it here! Rubenstock is a great Dm player who can be easily regarded as top 10; Vinch, being fairly new to DM still, has shown that he has the speed and skills to become one of DM's top players.
During this time, Interdimension (Orkut, who now plays as TheCode) was reaching new highs in his talent in 1v1. The games of him vs Jidba was by far the most anticipated series thus far in the tournament: viewtopic.php?f=1329&t=122264. In at least two of the games where Jidba won, Orkut had made such great decisive moves that I felt he would win the games; but Jidba with his seemingly infinite experience in DM tournaments managed to take crucial wins in the series. I would personally love to see a rematch between these two players.
The next best series in my eyes from Gold Cup was Me vs. Praxes (Dane): viewtopic.php?f=1329&t=122311 . In many ways, this series mirrored the series of Jidba vs Orkut. Despite succeeding in my game plan to take early advantages away from Dane in our games, Dane was shockingly resilient, and managed to take wins from me that I had felt I had the advantage. I give Dane a lot of credit for playing very strong in this series.
One thing I would like to bring attention to: nearly all of the top players in DM world cup practiced very hard for this tournament. I was constantly watching recs and noticing all of the fantastic strategies being developed and played out by many of the great players in this tournament. One such great rec pack of two DM titans can be viewed here: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=120519. While RM's top players seem maybe a little burned out on our beloved game, the competition at DM's top level is so fierce, it can be said that it rivals the early days of AoC DM. And the skill level now has definitely reached new heights never before seen in DM.
A Tribute To a Legend
It has been a long standing debate in the DM world: who is the greatest DM player of all time? Some will say L_Clan_Bender (now known as Aantan) for his domination of DM during it's most active period - 2000 to 2003, and won all 3 iterations of the annual Juno Cup series, of which the last one (Juno Cup 3) he narrowly defeated Jidba, which would be the last time Jidba would lose a DM 1v1 tournament for 13 years.
With that being said, if one were to ask me, Jidba is the greatest DM player to ever play the game; in fact, he might be the outright most talented AoC player ever. For most of the years spanning 2003 to 2016, DM has had a 1v1 tournament at least once a year, where Jidba was victorious in each and every one of these, including any BO series that Jidba was challenged to (such as the BO21 of Jidba vs Viper: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=84666&hilit=theviper+bo21). One of these notable tournaments was the 2011 "Masters of DM" tournament, where the finals of Jidba vs Priest was streamed and uploaded to youtube by Zeroempires: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex2_G5Fnw8c.
During this time period, notably the BO21 series of Jidba vs Viper, DM was seen as somewhat of a noob way to play AoC. When Viper came to DM, he played tons of it and managed to gain a level that was on par, or superior to nearly all of the tops of DM. This led to many of AoC's community to believe DM was easy, despite many of the other tops of RM failing to become potent in DM, as well as Viper making a lengthy post (which I couldn't find at the moment) talking about the challenges of DM, and even going as far as to state DM should be played by other top RM players to become better at RM.
Imagine if Jidba were to have lost this series vs Viper. To this day, I believe DM would have been buried completely, simply due to having an RMer so quickly take the DM crown. Jidba was the man to give DM relevance again when it needed it most, leading to amazing tournaments and competitions in DM that have led up to this great tournament, DM World Cup.
Going all the way back to 2003 when I was simply a unknown 1400 player, I have been watching Jidba's recorded games and admiring his amazing talents. Never would I have imagined back then that one day I would be facing Jidba in the grand finals of an amazing DM tournament 13 years later.
I can't give Jidba enough credit for his accomplishments in AoC. In my eyes, they are unrivaled by any other player in history, and simply cannot be reached again. He is the epitome of an AoC Legend.
The Future of DM
In the past year, we have seen consistent DM growth, and we are finding new people willing to contribute to our prize pools for future tournaments! With that being said, here I will lay out a rough-draft of our future goals and plans.
Our goal: To continue DM competitive tournaments, and improve DM's integration into the RM-based community. With that being said, we by no means wish to turn AoC into a DM-dominated game. RM will always be the core of AoC! However, everytime we have an RM player giving DM a real shot, they find DM to not only be entertaining, but also a lot more closely aligned to RM than they originally think. Hopefully, we can continue making DM a relevant part of AoC!
Fall 2016
1) We plan to have funding in the range of 500$ to 2000$ in which we are planning a teams based tournament. Personally, I would love to see Captain's Mode implemented here, as it led to some very interesting match ups during the weekend tournament Captains Mode: DM Edition. We are also considering making RM a sizeable portion of this tournament, so that it would include RMers teamed with DMers, much in the spirit of War is Coming. However, we are unsure of the level of activity from Rmers after Clan Masters ends, and we may still choose to make it a full DM tournament. Nevertheless, we would like to include RM in our tournaments going into the future.
2) We are planning a "DM's Rising star 2 (DMRS2)" which we expect to have funding in the range of 200$ - 500$. Unlike DMRS last year, which only included players <1650 in DM and <2000 RM, we plan to open up the rating range to include a much wider spectrum of players, but not including the top players. In particular, at least the DMWC Gold-Cup players will not be allowed in this tournament. We are still undecided on who else we will not allow to play the tournament.
3) RTS-League DM Clan league. I have been speaking with Black Adder from RTS-League in regards to making a league for DM teams. Despite DM have a couple significant DM clans (QuEnDi for example :D ), we would hope to include clans that are predominantly RM so that we can have enough clans to launch a league with. These days, DM seems so heavily 1v1 and 2v2 based, along with having not very many DM-only clans, that it might be a challenge to find enough clans to want to participate. Feedback from anyone reading this is much appreciated!
4) Orkut vs Jidba Duel? Many players felt that Orkut and Jidba were so close in skill level, that it would take another series between the two players to finally decide who has the edge. After realizing the demand from fans, the players had originally agreed to play a series for 200$, but at the moment, my group does not have the funds to contribute for this event. If anyone is willing to help fund this event, I think it would make for one of DM's greatest series!!
5) DM World Cup 2017? Going into next year, we plan to have 2000+$ to contribute towards a very large scale DM event again. Due to the massive popularity of DMWC, we are considering having DMWC 2017, but this is only a very loose consideration. It is still very far away, and we will probably not make any concrete plans for at least a couple months.
There is other tournaments that I am loosely aware of that will contain DM as well, including some smaller weekend DM events. As it comes to including DM in tournaments, I encourage anyone to contact me or those involved with DM events about suggestions for future tournaments. That being said, if someone wants to attempt to create a cool DM tournament, feel free to PM me and I can try to find some funding if it is available, as well as support your ideas!
Long Live AoC
Kellan
I have been meaning to make this post for a couple weeks now, but have been so busy that it's been hard to find the time for it. I would like to give a quick review of some of the highlights (in my opinion) of DM World Cup, followed by a tribute to one of AoC's icons, and finally a quick discussion of the future directions in DM.
Looking back at DM World Cup
Sign ups for DM World Cup began in March and went all the way until April 7th (if I remember right). Initially, some of us we're a little surprised and sad that some of the big names from DM were missing, namely TheViper and Riut. The past few months have been marked by a fairly low activity level amongst the top RM players, and they simply lacked the motivation to play in DMWC.
The Tournament kicked off with group stage on April 11th. Here, I would like to highlight one of my favorite series from group stage! My favorite is probably the series of Clemensor vs MBL. viewtopic.php?f=1291&t=121400 . In these games, it was known that the winner would be the most likely #2 in group, and hence move on to the next stage in the tournament. Clemensor had been training very hard for these games: he nearly perfected his Huns 1v1 start, and completely shut down MBL in the first two games, going up a quick 2-0 right off the bat. However, Clemensor made the crucial error in picking Turks as his HM in Game 3, where he narrowly lost to MBL. From there, the last 2 games we're super close: neither of them we're decided until the every end. One of my favorite takeaways from this series: people in the stream chat nick named Clemensor "The Cleminator".
On May 16th, Round of 32 began, and the bulk of the great games from this tournament were underway! I would say my favorite games from this point were the Round of 32 QuEnDi Colorz (Matt) vs Miguel: viewtopic.php?f=1326&t=121581 , Round of 16 QuEnDi Colorz (Matt) vs Xuma (Sinan): viewtopic.php?f=1326&t=121889 , and the Round of 16 of Me vs VIK_Vinchester: viewtopic.php?f=1326&t=121815. Matt, being the #8 seed from the top 8 list, was naturally going to have it tougher than the rest of the top 8 in terms of seeding. In his first series vs Miguel, Miguel had opportunities to win the entire series on a couple occasions, but Matt just barely managed to pull it off. Following this, Xuma gave him an equally difficult run. A couple great series to watch.
My series vs Vinch came as a big surprise for me. Despite taking an early 1-0 advantage, Vinch decisively defeated me in his HM choice: baltic huns. His strategy on that map was far superior to anything I did, and it was (by far) the quickest loss I took throughout the tournament. The next game was Goldrush Spain war, that game was so close that I felt I might lose it on a couple occasions. Despite the ending score of the series, I felt Vinch really gave me a run for my money, hats off to him!
Going in to the Gold and Silver cup brackets, I would say the spotlight Silver cup series came from the finals, Rubenstock vs VIK_Vinchester: viewtopic.php?f=1330&t=122771 . If anyone wants to watch a super close series in DM, this is a great candidate to watch, and I will not spoil any of it here! Rubenstock is a great Dm player who can be easily regarded as top 10; Vinch, being fairly new to DM still, has shown that he has the speed and skills to become one of DM's top players.
During this time, Interdimension (Orkut, who now plays as TheCode) was reaching new highs in his talent in 1v1. The games of him vs Jidba was by far the most anticipated series thus far in the tournament: viewtopic.php?f=1329&t=122264. In at least two of the games where Jidba won, Orkut had made such great decisive moves that I felt he would win the games; but Jidba with his seemingly infinite experience in DM tournaments managed to take crucial wins in the series. I would personally love to see a rematch between these two players.
The next best series in my eyes from Gold Cup was Me vs. Praxes (Dane): viewtopic.php?f=1329&t=122311 . In many ways, this series mirrored the series of Jidba vs Orkut. Despite succeeding in my game plan to take early advantages away from Dane in our games, Dane was shockingly resilient, and managed to take wins from me that I had felt I had the advantage. I give Dane a lot of credit for playing very strong in this series.
One thing I would like to bring attention to: nearly all of the top players in DM world cup practiced very hard for this tournament. I was constantly watching recs and noticing all of the fantastic strategies being developed and played out by many of the great players in this tournament. One such great rec pack of two DM titans can be viewed here: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=120519. While RM's top players seem maybe a little burned out on our beloved game, the competition at DM's top level is so fierce, it can be said that it rivals the early days of AoC DM. And the skill level now has definitely reached new heights never before seen in DM.
A Tribute To a Legend
It has been a long standing debate in the DM world: who is the greatest DM player of all time? Some will say L_Clan_Bender (now known as Aantan) for his domination of DM during it's most active period - 2000 to 2003, and won all 3 iterations of the annual Juno Cup series, of which the last one (Juno Cup 3) he narrowly defeated Jidba, which would be the last time Jidba would lose a DM 1v1 tournament for 13 years.
With that being said, if one were to ask me, Jidba is the greatest DM player to ever play the game; in fact, he might be the outright most talented AoC player ever. For most of the years spanning 2003 to 2016, DM has had a 1v1 tournament at least once a year, where Jidba was victorious in each and every one of these, including any BO series that Jidba was challenged to (such as the BO21 of Jidba vs Viper: viewtopic.php?f=20&t=84666&hilit=theviper+bo21). One of these notable tournaments was the 2011 "Masters of DM" tournament, where the finals of Jidba vs Priest was streamed and uploaded to youtube by Zeroempires: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ex2_G5Fnw8c.
During this time period, notably the BO21 series of Jidba vs Viper, DM was seen as somewhat of a noob way to play AoC. When Viper came to DM, he played tons of it and managed to gain a level that was on par, or superior to nearly all of the tops of DM. This led to many of AoC's community to believe DM was easy, despite many of the other tops of RM failing to become potent in DM, as well as Viper making a lengthy post (which I couldn't find at the moment) talking about the challenges of DM, and even going as far as to state DM should be played by other top RM players to become better at RM.
Imagine if Jidba were to have lost this series vs Viper. To this day, I believe DM would have been buried completely, simply due to having an RMer so quickly take the DM crown. Jidba was the man to give DM relevance again when it needed it most, leading to amazing tournaments and competitions in DM that have led up to this great tournament, DM World Cup.
Going all the way back to 2003 when I was simply a unknown 1400 player, I have been watching Jidba's recorded games and admiring his amazing talents. Never would I have imagined back then that one day I would be facing Jidba in the grand finals of an amazing DM tournament 13 years later.
I can't give Jidba enough credit for his accomplishments in AoC. In my eyes, they are unrivaled by any other player in history, and simply cannot be reached again. He is the epitome of an AoC Legend.
The Future of DM
In the past year, we have seen consistent DM growth, and we are finding new people willing to contribute to our prize pools for future tournaments! With that being said, here I will lay out a rough-draft of our future goals and plans.
Our goal: To continue DM competitive tournaments, and improve DM's integration into the RM-based community. With that being said, we by no means wish to turn AoC into a DM-dominated game. RM will always be the core of AoC! However, everytime we have an RM player giving DM a real shot, they find DM to not only be entertaining, but also a lot more closely aligned to RM than they originally think. Hopefully, we can continue making DM a relevant part of AoC!
Fall 2016
1) We plan to have funding in the range of 500$ to 2000$ in which we are planning a teams based tournament. Personally, I would love to see Captain's Mode implemented here, as it led to some very interesting match ups during the weekend tournament Captains Mode: DM Edition. We are also considering making RM a sizeable portion of this tournament, so that it would include RMers teamed with DMers, much in the spirit of War is Coming. However, we are unsure of the level of activity from Rmers after Clan Masters ends, and we may still choose to make it a full DM tournament. Nevertheless, we would like to include RM in our tournaments going into the future.
2) We are planning a "DM's Rising star 2 (DMRS2)" which we expect to have funding in the range of 200$ - 500$. Unlike DMRS last year, which only included players <1650 in DM and <2000 RM, we plan to open up the rating range to include a much wider spectrum of players, but not including the top players. In particular, at least the DMWC Gold-Cup players will not be allowed in this tournament. We are still undecided on who else we will not allow to play the tournament.
3) RTS-League DM Clan league. I have been speaking with Black Adder from RTS-League in regards to making a league for DM teams. Despite DM have a couple significant DM clans (QuEnDi for example :D ), we would hope to include clans that are predominantly RM so that we can have enough clans to launch a league with. These days, DM seems so heavily 1v1 and 2v2 based, along with having not very many DM-only clans, that it might be a challenge to find enough clans to want to participate. Feedback from anyone reading this is much appreciated!
4) Orkut vs Jidba Duel? Many players felt that Orkut and Jidba were so close in skill level, that it would take another series between the two players to finally decide who has the edge. After realizing the demand from fans, the players had originally agreed to play a series for 200$, but at the moment, my group does not have the funds to contribute for this event. If anyone is willing to help fund this event, I think it would make for one of DM's greatest series!!
5) DM World Cup 2017? Going into next year, we plan to have 2000+$ to contribute towards a very large scale DM event again. Due to the massive popularity of DMWC, we are considering having DMWC 2017, but this is only a very loose consideration. It is still very far away, and we will probably not make any concrete plans for at least a couple months.
There is other tournaments that I am loosely aware of that will contain DM as well, including some smaller weekend DM events. As it comes to including DM in tournaments, I encourage anyone to contact me or those involved with DM events about suggestions for future tournaments. That being said, if someone wants to attempt to create a cool DM tournament, feel free to PM me and I can try to find some funding if it is available, as well as support your ideas!
Long Live AoC
Kellan