The World Bowl Discussion Thread (OOC, version II)

[Tenburg]

Ugh.

I wish I knew this was here earlier. I gotta get involved on the next one

[Union of Socialist Alpine Republics]

I think I'm in a good position to qualify. The series between me, Ethane and Nova Anglicana are all tied, so it will go to pts differencial. Ethane and Nova Anglicana both needs to win 60-0 or 70-10 to finish ahead of me.

[Bongo Johnson]

Indeed, with a critical shutout against Ethane, the U.S.A.R. has all but wrapped up the second spot in the group!

[Kaboomlandia]

It's at this point that I'm beginning to wonder if my team really is cursed.

[Union of Socialist Alpine Republics]

^I'm sorry Kaboom. I think it's my best result so far in american football, winning against a team ranked that high.

[Kaboomlandia]

22 straight group-stage wins and I've only won one playoff game in two cycles. And this isn't new either; in 13 combined World Cup of Hockey and World Bowl tournaments, I've made it past the second round of the playoffs once.

[-Anthor-]

Amazingly, the gridiron team is off to an amazing international debut!(Coming for you for Round 3 Drawk ), and I'm sorry I haven't been able to RP more, hosting WCOH has taken up more time then I was expecting. Definitely going to be striving to RP more since playoffs, but with how it's gone so far, apparently I do better if I don't >.>

[Tenburg]

Question.

Is the Baptism of Iron still a thing, or will I be able to jump right into the World Bowl next time around?

[Qasden]

Question.

Is the Baptism of Iron still a thing, or will I be able to jump right into the World Bowl next time around?

Unfortunately, the BoI had ceased long ago. So in that case, get ready to jump right in to the party! :3

[Free Republics]

Question.

Is the Baptism of Iron still a thing, or will I be able to jump right into the World Bowl next time around?

Unfortunately, the BoI had ceased long ago. So in that case, get ready to jump right in to the party! :3

We abolished the BoI a few years back, hoping that doing that would allow us to speed up the World Bowl cycle but we haven't really been able to find hosts fast enough to do that.

[Newmanistan]

Based on this tournament, and not at all the fault of the host, I am wondering if the World Bowl in general should be abolished.
The World Bowl Committee should seriously discuss the future of this tournament after this is over to give it some life again. It needs CPR desperately.

[Newmanistan]

I'll start with a radical proposal.... all rank scores are reset to zero after this tournament.

[Bongo Johnson]

Based on this tournament, and not at all the fault of the host, I am wondering if the World Bowl in general should be abolished.

Killing one tournament just opens the door for another. There will always be a World Bowl, even if it isn't called that.

Honestly, I'm not sure why you're taking it so personally. You seem to be very upset that this edition wasn't very active. Does it matter? Who cares? We can't wave a magic wand and return hundreds of users to NS Sport. As far as I'm concerned, just having tournaments run is enough for me. I enjoy following the results, discussing them with others on Discord or IRC, and from what I can see over the past two weeks, plenty of people still do as well.

So maybe, and don't take this the wrong way, consider that you should relax a little bit. Resetting the ranks might make things more competitive, but then you've gone and alienated each nation that has devoted even a little amount of time to the World Bowl. That would probably turn people off to the idea of RP'ing, since their progress is liable to get wiped out any time the BoC decides it needs to be. This is counter-productive and certainly the opposite of what method of action should be taken, if any to begin with.

My view: if someone isn't happy with the activity in the World Bowl, withdraw from future tournaments and stick to the still popular ones, like WCoH and the World Cup as a whole. Why ruin other people's fun because you aren't satisfied with how they are having that fun?

The only way the World Bowl should be ended is if there are finally no people willing to host it. Apparently, that will be when either I or Free Republics decide to give up the ghost, because I'd host another World Bowl in a heartbeat.

[Newmanistan]

Honestly, I'm not sure why you're taking it so personally. You seem to be very upset that this edition wasn't very active. Does it matter? Who cares? We can't wave a magic wand and return hundreds of users to NS Sport. As far as I'm concerned, just having tournaments run is enough for me. I enjoy following the results, discussing them with others on Discord or IRC, and from what I can see over the past two weeks, plenty of people still do as well.

My view: if someone isn't happy with the activity in the World Bowl, withdraw from future tournaments and stick to the still popular ones, like WCoH and the World Cup as a whole. Why ruin other people's fun because you aren't satisfied with how they are having that fun?

I was not seriously saying the tournament should be abolished, but I want to start generating discussion about how we revitalize this tournament. Now, why am I taking it so personally? Simple, I started this tournament. (World Bowl 0 was not considered under this umbrella) Look who hosted World Bowl 1... and 2. So, yes, there is a special element there for me. I am the tournament founder. Perhaps that is a factor of why I am being outspoken now, that's a viable observation.

You said something interesting though about discussing the results on discord and IRC. That's all fine and dandy, but is that how tournaments are being "roleplayed" now? Discussing the results also needs to happen in the roleplay thread, via roleplay. In the past, present, or in the future, I certainly hope that there has not ever been a single .00001 of RP bonus given to any user over something that was said/acted on in a location other then the RP thread.

Resetting ranks is a radical proposal intended to get a discussion rolling here. Perhaps reset everyone to zero, and then provided bonuses to everyone based on how they roleplayed in this tournament. Certainly I want to be fair to people like Abanfhleft, Drawkland, and Anthor among others, but there are users also who are completely riding their rank. If they get reset, then they will need to start contributing again, and contributing here, not in an off-forum location.

[Union of Socialist Alpine Republics]

Honestly I wish more people would RP, it's embarrassing when I'm the only one who do it. And no offense to Anthor, but if people would RP, he probably wouldn't make it to the quarter finals as an unranked team who barely RPed.

But abolishing the World Bowl and starting over would be kinda drastic...

[Tenburg]

Well I'll definitely be RPing when I jump in if that helps any.

My love for this game is almost unhealthy. Almost.

[Union of Socialist Alpine Republics]

^We'll be glad to have you in the next World Bowl, but we'll have to wait at least 3 months until the next one and considering the low level of activity I wonder if we should wait a little longer between World Bowls or maybe make sure it's not played during another major tournament like the WCoH?

[Newmanistan]

Well I'll definitely be RPing when I jump in if that helps any.

My love for this game is almost unhealthy. Almost.

I want to suggest to you to sign up for the World Baseball Classic, which has open signups right now and will probably begin in a week or two. If you are that passionate about football, I assume you are on our side of the ocean in North America. You might not really like baseball, but what it could be for you is a practice run for the next World Bowl. What it can provide you is an idea for how roleplaying a major competition works. How we set up rosters, and go about the tournament. When we roleplay, we don't necessarily have to talk about the competition, necessarily. You could, for example, talk about your football team's preparation for the next World Bowl, or give it some hype, while actually posting in the World Baseball Classic thread. The next World Bowl probably won't start to around when the real NFL season starts, at the earliest. Another tournament with open sign ups now with an imminent start date looks to be the World Lacrosse Championships, if you preferred that sport.

[The Kiaser Colonies]

I will say as a totally ignorant newcomer, who fell asleep 1 quarter in trying to watch the super bowl at 4am on the BBC and has yet to try watching a full game since, I did actually enjoy the tournament (when I could RP). Other than my lack of knowledge of the sport and the work that I had to put into googling pretty much everything to figure it out, was the clash with the beach cup and my trying to step up and host the rugby league world cup. Comparatively I did a good shift of work on this with 3 RP's compared to half of one for the quidditch and none for the hockey. It would seem to me that that is the problem for some team, especially with newer nations who throw themselves straight into multiple events at the same time. I don't have any ideas on how to stop that being an issue myself, but maybe others will. I myself in future will be back to compete again, but in isolation to avoid conflict with other competitions.

[Tenburg]

I want to suggest to you to sign up for the World Baseball Classic, which has open signups right now and will probably begin in a week or two. If you are that passionate about football, I assume you are on our side of the ocean in North America. You might not really like baseball, but what it could be for you is a practice run for the next World Bowl. What it can provide you is an idea for how roleplaying a major competition works. How we set up rosters, and go about the tournament. When we roleplay, we don't necessarily have to talk about the competition, necessarily. You could, for example, talk about your football team's preparation for the next World Bowl, or give it some hype, while actually posting in the World Baseball Classic thread. The next World Bowl probably won't start to around when the real NFL season starts, at the earliest. Another tournament with open sign ups now with an imminent start date looks to be the World Lacrosse Championships, if you preferred that sport.

Sure. I don't know the intricacies of baseball so well but why not.

[Drawkland]

Resetting ranks is a radical proposal intended to get a discussion rolling here. Perhaps reset everyone to zero, and then provided bonuses to everyone based on how they roleplayed in this tournament. Certainly I want to be fair to people like Abanfhleft, Drawkland, and Anthor among others, but there are users also who are completely riding their rank. If they get reset, then they will need to start contributing again, and contributing here, not in an off-forum location.

Honestly, I was about to come on and apologize for my lack of RPing. I did do some decent ones towards the beginning but in my eyes, 4 RPs over like 12 cutoffs kinda sucks.

I'll try to post something out for the semifinals. Summer break started, while I thought that would be beneficial to me, given more time to write, it turned out to be the opposite, as the "waste time" side of my brain found a dozen other easier ways to spend time than RPing, compounded with family over for graduation. So yeah, I wish I could've RPed more, but I guess I'll just have to RP for these last few cutoffs a lot so I don't have a lame path to a potential title.

Good luck to Fleft, USAR, and GVH. Especially USAR, you've been the MVRP this tournament in my eyes.

[Free Republics]

^We'll be glad to have you in the next World Bowl, but we'll have to wait at least 3 months until the next one and considering the low level of activity I wonder if we should wait a little longer between World Bowls or maybe make sure it's not played during another major tournament like the WCoH?

There's always another major tournament running though. If its not the WCoH, it'd be the WBC or the World Cup or the Olympics.

---

I think part of the issue this time is that we're in the middle of the RL offseason which is one reason why I held off on opening signups for a while (the other was avoiding overlap with NSCF). I also wonder if the atmosphere around certain other tournaments is having a negative effect on participation as a whole since we should be seeing an increase in activity across the sub-forum right now and are actually seeing a significant drop in activity across the board. The next World Bowl won't happen until September or so, around the time when the NFL and NCAA football seasons start. The timing of World Bowls after that will be at the discretion of whoever wins the presidential vote that will be held simultaneously with the World Bowl XXXIII host vote (I'll be opening nominations for the World Bowl XXXIV-XXXVI term after this World Bowl concludes).

I'm probably not going to be as active as I used to be anytime soon. Right now, I'm very busy in RL for months at a time (and I'm only going to get busier over the next 2 years) and even when I'm not busy with RL, I usually have something else competing for my time these days. Besides, I've had more interest in hosting, scorinator development and administering tournaments for a while anyway and I think this has been evident from the steadily declining quality of my RPs (I probably peaked as an RPer between World Cup 67 and World Bowl XXII).

That said, as long as people continue signing up for the World Bowl, I'll remain willing to step in as an emergency host when needed (and, as long as I'm president, if the elected host is unable to complete a World Bowl, I'm going to complete it). However, given the near-total lack of RP in the recent Arena Bowl and the low RP levels in this World Bowl, I'm not going to run a Maple Leaf Bowl this cycle. Until we see an increase in activity, I don't see a need for any gridiron football events other than the World Bowl and NSCF.

[Bongo Johnson]

Tomorrow night's World Bowl championship scorination will either be early, or late - I'm going to be scorinating from the airport for a 7PM flight, so if I get through security with a good amount of time to spare, I'll post it from the terminal. If not, and I have to run to catch the plane before they close the gate, I'll have to wait til I'm up in the sky to post it with that sweet, sweet in-flight WiFi.

Tonight's semifinal matches will proceed as normal. Thanks for your understanding and good luck to the teams that are left!

[Union of Socialist Alpine Republics]

Wow I can't believe I've beat Abanfleft, they seemed to be unbeatable and GVH winning over Drawkland is another upset. I think I have a chance to win the world bowl!

Especially USAR, you've been the MVRP this tournament in my eyes.

Thanks, my goal was to climb some ranks and hopefully qualify for the playoffs (I didn't expect to go all the way to the final). So I thought I better RP the most I can to achieve my goal, I didn't know no one else would RP.

[Tenburg]

Wow I can't believe I've beat Abanfleft, they seemed to be unbeatable and GVH winning over Drawkland is another upset. I think I have a chance to win the world bowl!

Especially USAR, you've been the MVRP this tournament in my eyes.

Thanks, my goal was to climb some ranks and hopefully qualify for the playoffs (I didn't expect to go all the way to the final). So I thought I better RP the most I can to achieve my goal, I didn't know no one else would RP.

Congrats. Here's hoping the run continues.