Did you anticipate how important the Altador Cup would become to so many of the players? With teams keeping their team boards going year round, and the amazing influx of players mid-May waiting for sign-ups to start, it has evolved into a major part of neopian life. For the staff tournament, did staff members actually play at all? Or was there another method of assigning scores? Oh, and if you talk to Dragona soon, please let her know how much it always meant to us TMers when she came on our board to cheer us on!
snarkie
Not a robot... probably.
Hi, Kristi!
We kind of never anticipated big reactions like that for anything, I guess? We always hoped people liked things we made, of course, but never expected them to. I think if we did that, we’d be getting complacent and not challenging ourselves to entertain everyone. Heh.
Well, maybe one guy expected it for AC. The guy that pitched it was on the Localisation team. “Everyone loves the World Cup outside of the US! It’d be really fun and super community driven! Plus, remember in the Lost Desert Plot when everyone rallied around their ‘teams’? DO IT.” Smart dude. We were actually going to do it every 4 years to coincide with the World Cup but it was so popular in that first year, even though we screwed it up by eliminating teams, that we did it again. ? So yeah, it was pretty neat to see how well it went over with the players with the boards and excitement and such you mentioned. Also the fan art. And our resident Altador Cup news writer was a big sports fan and got very into making the trades and injuries and backstories every year.
The one down side is that we had to listen to that guy brag about his amazing idea every year pfft. ?
We played all our own matches in the staff tournament! (For every staff tourney, not just AC.) Very, very, very rarely, we’d run into an instance where someone didn’t have time to play because of work. (Playing was actually work but it never took priority. We usually ended up playing at lunch or after hours to find the time, whoops) When that happened, we’d make up very low, losing scores for that person. This was just so they wouldn’t have 0’s on the scoreboard and get harassed by players. But for all intents and purposes, they forfeited that round.
It’s late but I just passed along your message to Dragona. I’m sure she’ll be very happy to read it tomorrow. ☺️ Thanks for your questions!