The Grand Melee - Announcement and Discussion

Some time ago, the secretive Order of the Sheep teased us The Grand Melee, an Age of Empires II: DE happening in Hannover at the DreamHack LAN event, from the 15th to the 17th of December.

We are now happy to deliver the full message to you.

Settings specifics
The whole event will be played using the DWL game mode, also known as 9 villagers start game mode. It will allow for quicker action, while keeping the openness and strategic diversity of the standard RM mode.

Main event
The Grand Melee main event will consist of a single elimination bracket, featuring a total of 8 players.
15th of December
Quarter finals best of 5
16th of December
Semi finals best of 7
17th of December
Third place match best of 7 and Grand final best of 9

Participation
Firstly, as per their performance in the RedBull Wololo: Legacy tournament, Liereyy and TaToH has been granted an invitation to the main event.

Secondly, the other 6 participants will have to come on top of the entirely open qualifiers happening on the 3rd and 4th of December. The registration is already open and you can sign up here on start.gg

Prize money reward
The monetary reward will amount to a whopping $100,000 split between the 8 main event players as followed:

1st place: $40,000
2nd place: $20,000
3rd place: $14,000
4th place: $10,000
5th to 8th: $4,000

Where to watch?
The whole event will be streamed on Twitch at: https://www.twitch.tv/theorderofthesheep

On top of that, the qualifiers will be completely open to broadcast, so you can catch them live at your favourite streamer’s channel on the 3rd and 4th of December!

Details for the broadcasting policy of the main event will be announced soon. Stay tuned...

Join the Discord server now!
Chat with us and get all the latest updates regarding The Grand Melee at https://discord.gg/vT9NWJJtp5

You can also use this announcement thread to discuss about the tournament and to send your questions and feedback.

See you soon!

 

Wow that was a fun day 1.

 

so the whole thing was completely pointless as an in person lan then.

its better than nothing. We just had WarLords : an "online" version featuring the 9 vil start, and all standard maps. TGM is literally the same settings (DWL balance) but a smaller map pool.

I don't think from the player's perspectives they have any complaints. TGM would be more pointless if this was online because we just had Warlords (lets be honest Viper from the comfort of his chair would clap everyone again under these settings if TGM was online)

Atleast the in-person LAN allows players and casters to meetup. Not everything is for the viewers. If they don't have time to watch it during the weekdays (including myself), feel free to watch it over the weekend.

I watched bits and pieces from yesterday's stream and I love this so much more than Redbull. Redbull just felt rushed, no behind the scenes, too much production and moving around - just give us for 75% of the time Dave and Nili and Ornlu, artosis and Ellie for the transitions and maybe let the players show on cam during the "tech pauses" and we are gucci

Already I can tell the casters feel more comfortable here because they are given the time to talk. In Redbull you had Riley talk (he was amazing but still) for 90% of the time and a lot of the aoe community is there for Dave and Nili joke about each other or Daut troll everyone else rather than the host's professionalism.

 

a lot of the aoe community is there for Dave and Nili joke about each other or Daut troll everyone else rather than the host's professionalism.

You did a community poll or you're just talking out of your arse, because it's just your personal opinion?

 

I really enjoyed 1st day, despite empty audience and some little ****ups. The sets absolutely provided, casting was chill and fun and visible friendship between players always makes me feel goody

Perfect time to catch a cold and stay at home 11

 

11

 

Are casters allowed to show their political view on the official channel of the tournament? Nili just made a reference to a nearly "daut" castle by TheViper to Qatar and he even said out loud that we should consider boycotting the WC. I tuned in to watch an AOE 2 game not to hear someone's political opinion.

 

LMFAO at chat malding over Nili joke. Man these guys have no fun in their lives or what, probably the types that mald over smurf jokes 11

 

LMFAO at chat malding over Nili joke. Man these guys have no fun in their lives or what, probably the types that mald over smurf jokes 11

Or maybe they tuned in to watch AOE 2 top quality games and not some shitty jokes?

 

Or maybe they tuned in to watch AOE 2 top quality games and not some shitty jokes?

Who cares lol, ignore and chill. Might be funny to some, not to others. I LOL'd at that joke, was funny to me.

But I'll agree that the next boycott comment was unnecessary and didn't look like a joke lol

 

Who cares lol, ignore and chill. Might be funny to some, not to urges. I LOL'd at that joke, was funny to me.

But I'll agree that the next boycott comment was unnecessary and didn't look like a joke lol

He should focus more on casting the game rather than doing awful jokes, this is the official channel of the event not his personal channel.

 

The boycott call was definitely not a joke. I don't care about the castle joke at all but I don't think Nili should be spreading political bullshit on stream. That's not why he's there, that's not why I'm watching the games. Just WTF Nili? You could tell how uncomfortable Daut was about it.

 

The boycott call was definitely not a joke. I don't care about the castle joke at all but I don't think Nili should be spreading political bullshit on stream. That's not why he's there, that's not why I'm watching the games. Just WTF Nili? You could tell how uncomfortable Daut was about it.

Imagine someone from Qatar and hearing this **** on a game stream.

 

Imagine someone from Qatar and hearing this **** on a game stream.

probably crying in his rols royce right now

good for nili, **** being political

 

The boycott call was definitely not a joke. I don't care about the castle joke at all but I don't think Nili should be spreading political bullshit on stream. That's not why he's there, that's not why I'm watching the games. Just WTF Nili? You could tell how uncomfortable Daut was about it.

Imagine someone from Qatar and hearing this **** on a game stream.

probably crying in his rols royce right now

good for nili, **** being political

Not every Qatari has a royal royce and politics don't have a place in an official aoe 2 event channel.

 

Imagine someone from Qatar and hearing this **** on a game stream.

I know right. They might find out about that migrant workers actually died making these stadiums.

 

politics don't have a place in an official aoe 2 event channel.

There shouldn't be any safe space for injustice. But maybe he shouldn't have said to boycott. I think the joke was fine though.

 

Imagine someone from Qatar and hearing this **** on a game stream.

Maybe they should have thought that before they let thousands of workers die for propaganda reasons.

 

There shouldn't be any safe space for injustice.

Would you be so open to on stream political topics if they didn't agree with your views though? I mean, even the migrant worker statistic is an extremely misleading one, that even the source it comes from itself agrees but now poeple are just repeating it without putting any thought into it. Nothing is that simple and precisely for that reason it shouldn't be done on an official stream. Even the Ukraine situation has been kept off official streams, just like it should have been.

 

human rights are not politics. It is just horrible to try to hide behind that argument

 

Looks like a silly joke is worse than few thousand people dying for @Mouttie

 

Looks like a silly joke is worse than few thousand people dying for @Mouttie

Many ppl are dying in other places all over the world, no one speaks about them. I turned on the stream to watch games between two of the most skilled players not to hear a stupid political speech by someone who considers himself a pillar of this community.

 

human rights are not politics. It is just horrible to try to hide behind that argument

They are though, whether we like it or not. And IF you're going to use a 100k AOE tournament as a platform to push your views then at least make sure they are factually correct. Thousands of migrant workers did not die building the stadiums, that is just plain false. The numbers refer to deaths of all workers in the entire country since 2010. By the same criteria, UK has a lot more worker deaths by every metric. Which is why what Nili did is dumb and you can tell he regretted it later when he said he was failing miserably with the jokes. If he did it on his own stream, I couldn't care less. Calling for boycott on the offical stream is just stupid, I don't know what he was thinking.

 

Many ppl are dying in other places all over the world, no one speaks about them. I turned on the stream to watch games between two of the most skilled players not to hear a stupid political speech by someone who considers himself a pillar of this community.

Ah, yes. The age-old rule that one cannot call out an injustice unless one calls out all the injustices in the world.

 

Ah, yes. The age-old rule that one cannot call out an injustice unless one calls out all the injustices in the world.

Agree but it feels so disingenuous. Suddenly so many people care about workers and human rights in Qatar and consider it the biggest injustice in the world and after Sunday everything will be completely forgotten like the issue never existed. Is there literally anyone out of the 8k viewers who watched Nili today and thought to themselves "OK, I didn't mean to but I'm boycotting the final!"?

 

I have nothing against ellie personally, but I just can't watch it when she is giving commentary. This has nothing to do with the content of her commentary. I also find Chris' voice a bit more draining than average to listen to but it's ok if I turn the volume two notches down. With a voice that makes all of your hair stand up this is not possible. I wished organisers looked at the obvious when making an S-tier production. For example as a super autistic guy I wouldn't qualify for social or manager jobs either.
I did notice quality is not on par with other tournaments though, think about mistakes like the sun shining in Viper's eyes that weren't thought about or noticed beforehand, but also the lighting of the players on cam when playing is not great especially for players wearing glasses.