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!

 

I mean... lets be honest, I have only one conclution: washing money? hahaha.
I mean wtf with this. This is WEIRD people, we all know that.

 

Now that Random Seeding for the main event is confirmed, might I suggest a live duck-race stream to set seeding?

Duck Race - Duck Games

Pick a winner with our Online Duck Race! This Duck Game is sure to be a big hit in classrooms! It's Quackers!

www.online-stopwatch.com

 

Now that Random Seeding for the main event is confirmed, might I suggest a live duck-race stream to set seeding?

Duck Race - Duck Games

Pick a winner with our Online Duck Race! This Duck Game is sure to be a big hit in classrooms! It's Quackers!

www.online-stopwatch.com

It was not perfectly worded I guess but it's now been clarified that the announcement was only for the qualifiers

Edit: so at least it's not finally confirmed yet

 

It was not perfectly worded I guess but it's now been clarified that the announcement was only for the qualifiers

Edit: so at least it's not finally confirmed yet

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined

 

From the handbook:

8.3 Main event
The main event bracket will be drawn randomly. The live draw will happen on the
DreamHack twitch channel on the 7th of December.

So it seems it indeed is random bracket for the main event

 

From the handbook:


So it seems it indeed is random bracket for the main event

sieste has said in the discord that they're discussing the rule though, so it might get changed.

 

I mean... lets be honest, I have only one conclution: washing money? hahaha.
I mean wtf with this. This is WEIRD people, we all know that.

haha, it's called money laundering, but i know what you mean.

 

Is there a bracket for the qualifier yet?

 

The bracket won't be definitive before the check in period ends.

Check in starts at 12.00 UTC tomorrow and ends at 13.00 UTC. At that point only the brackets will be ready for publication.

 

haha, it's called money laundering, but i know what you mean.

Wwll I do Spanglish just like Memb so... KAPPA

 

I'm happy the money got redistributed a bit, but for the love of God please people/organizers start thinking of the non-EU/NA players for once. Having these short term announcements and this whole EU focus seriously screws over our huge Asian and SA community time and time again. This is hugely unprofessional and a big pain point for the community. At least let them participate online then or something...

 

I mean... lets be honest, I have only one conclution: washing money? hahaha.
I mean wtf with this. This is WEIRD people, we all know that.

I don't believe Gamerlegion needs money laundering. It's pretty obvious they are behind this tournament at this stage.
But I don't like their approach at all. A german e-sports organization doing a rushed european focused lan tournament in germany with close casting, like Nili did with his home cup already. (Why doesn't it surprise me, that he is again involved in some controversial topic....)
Many players will be unable to attend because of shortterm visa issues. The goal is obviously to help themselves first and then the community.
The european top players hit the jackpot of course with this prizemoney. Especially viper, who should win another huge amount of money being in good shape at the moment.

 

I'm happy the money got redistributed a bit, but for the love of God please people/organizers start thinking of the non-EU/NA players for once. Having these short term announcements and this whole EU focus seriously screws over our huge Asian and SA community time and time again. This is hugely unprofessional and a big pain point for the community. At least let them participate online then or something...

I don't believe Gamerlegion needs money laundering. It's pretty obvious they are behind this tournament at this stage.
But I don't like their approach at all. A german e-sports organization doing a rushed european focused lan tournament in germany with close casting, like Nili did with his home cup already. (Why doesn't it surprise me, that he is again involved in some controversial topic....)
Many players will be unable to attend because of shortterm visa issues. The goal is obviously to help themselves first and then the community.
The european top players hit the jackpot of course with this prizemoney. Especially viper, who should win another huge amount of money being in good shape at the moment.

Multiple times before, I have said that I hope that we will get more events that are better for East Asian/Oceanean players, but for a German e-sports organisation it makes sense to organise their event in Germany (or the EU at least) and the DreamHack Hannover already provides a big part of the infrastructure, so it makes even more sense to host it at the time and place.
I think someone said a month+ ago that there will be a big AoE 4 LAN event in South Korea in 2023, Vietnam has some AOE 1 LAN events from time to time.
I am sure some European players wouldn't mind travelling to another continent once or twice per year for a big AoE 2 event, but in my opinion we can't expect GL, Nili, T90, Memb, maybe Red Bull to suddenly host a AoE 2 LAN event in China or Vietnam. So who would do it, who would organise the venue and apply for a Microsoft sponsorship or find other sponsors to reach a big prize pool and pay for flights, production and accomodation?

 

but in my opinion we can't expect GL, Nili, T90, Memb, maybe Red Bull to suddenly host a AoE 2 LAN event in China or Vietnam

The location on itself is not a problem. It becomes a problem, when the announcement and especially the qualifiers are held on such a short notice, that many people don't have the time to get visa or simply can't free up time from daily obligations to travel around the world. The main even is held just 10 days after the qualifiers. So if you qualify, you have what? 2 days to get a visa?
And in combination with closed streaming I get a pretty good feeling, that the goal of this tournament is more to help themselves instead of also growing the community.

 

The location on itself is not a problem. It becomes a problem, when the announcement and especially the qualifiers are held on such a short notice, that many people don't have the time to get visa or simply can't free up time from daily obligations to travel around the world. The main even is held just 10 days after the qualifiers. So if you qualify, you have what? 2 days to get a visa?

That is true and I have no idea why it was done like that for the Grand Melee (e. g. why they did not try to get the qualifier before Warlords and have Warlords one week later).
At least RBW Legacy did much better this year than last, and we can definitely hope that the Grand Melee is just an exception. I would not see it and DreamHack as the typical and examplary AoE 2 event.

 

Between this and Holy Cup, should we consider Gamer Legion-organized tournaments to be true S-tier events? Excluding the prize pools, they leave much to be desired.

 

One of these qualifying brackets looks a lot different than the others...

 

Hera, Daut and Slam in the same bracket. Lol

I don't know what seedings they're using that Daut and Hera came up in the same bracket 11.
Such a shame that one of them won't make it

 

I heard following in the twitch chad "Lyx was waiting for Yo to finish off his game to translate for him. But FIre just claimed the win" - is that correct? Sounds terrible and very unmannerd. usually i thought aoe scene is very mannerd and fair? who decided that?

 

I heard following in the twitch chad "Lyx was waiting for Yo to finish off his game to translate for him. But FIre just claimed the win" - is that correct? Sounds terrible and very unmannerd. usually i thought aoe scene is very mannerd and fair? who decided that?

really?!if so, FIre may win the game, but lost reputation.

 

Hera, Daut and Slam in the same bracket. Lol

I don't know what seedings they're using that Daut and Hera came up in the same bracket 11.
Such a shame that one of them won't make it

Also JorDan and Viper in the same bracket
yeaaah, it's just a shame

 

This whole tournament is a joke, feels like it was organized by a 6 year old

 

Welp, now that I think about it both JorDan and whoever between DauT/Hera might still easily make it once it inevitably turns out that a few of the 6 players who got in can't show up


I know that on the one hand we should appreciate whenever someone is willing to sponsor an AoE2 tournament, and it's always good for the pro scene whenever there's cash injected into its veins, but this is still the closest I've ever gotten to thinking that we'd be better off if a tournament didn't happen at all.
Hope the quality of the games in the finals prove me wrong.

 

ACCM's bracket is the funniest thing I've seen in some time. I don't care how likeable the guy is, he should not be the best player in a qualifying bracket that leads to an 8 player event. Especially when a bracket of Viper/Jordan/Dogao exists.

I think it's Aoe tournament elo throwing things off here. That needs to be thrown into the trash heap, it ranks ACCM 5th even though he's had like two top 8 results in his life lol

 

ACCM's bracket is the funniest thing I've seen in some time. I don't care how likeable the guy is, he should not be the best player in a qualifying bracket that leads to an 8 player event. Especially when a bracket of Viper/Jordan/Dogao exists.

I think it's Aoe tournament elo throwing things off here. That needs to be thrown into the trash heap, it ranks ACCM 5th even though he's had like two top 8 results in his life lol

100%

I saw that bracket and literally lmao

There are death brackets with Hera, Daut, Slam, Barles. Another with Viper, Jordan, Dogao
And then there is ACCM's bracket 11

The seeding for this tournament is an absolute ****ing joke.

Also JorDan and Viper in the same bracket
yeaaah, it's just a shame

Yeah, plus Dogao. Another bracket of death