Host Bid for the 80th World Cup
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World Cup 79 | Cup of Harmony 71 | Baptism of Fire 67
i. Introduction:
The World Cup has reached its 80th Edition, and we think this is an arbitrary base 10 milestone worth celebrating. For the past 15 years we've rolled dice, sacrificed rubber chickens, prayed to the almighty Margaret our RNGoddess, scorinated and resimmed and scorinated again to determine the best football team in the NS multiverse, and it's about time to do it all over again. So, as is traditional, we present EqueStar, a bid for the 80th NationStates World Cup.
There’s genuine history behind the World Cup; we’ve been doing this for longer than games like World of Warcraft and websites like Facebook have existed, and we had nearly five years of it under our belts before the first iPhone. This means that we do not take the possibility of hosting lightly; we’re aware that co-hosts are the custodians of the Cup for another round and we’re not supposed to break it before the next one comes along.
We’ve entered all these iterations of the World Cup because we love football/soccer and are trying to capture the magic of being part of one of the greatest sporting events on earth, we enter because we like to win matches, overcome the odds and reign supreme, and we enter because we like to tell stories, develop our nations, teams and characters through our adventures in the biggest, longest running and most prestigious tournament on these forums. Entertainment. Realism. Competition. This was what the World Cup was founded on, and this is the spirit we move forward in.
ii. About the Co-Hosts:
The Pony Principality of Equestrian States
Equestrian States
The nation:
Known throughout the multiverse for its majority population of sapient equines, the Equestrian States is a diverse and advanced island nation located in southwestern Atlantian Oceania. Ruled by Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, the Equestrian States is a constitutional monarchy in name, though the Princess and the royal family hold considerably more political power than in most constitutional monarchies and thus play an active role in the country's government. Technologically, the nation is very advanced for one that only emerged from isolation a few decades ago, combining technology imported from its allies with magic to quickly modernize without the pollution seen in many countries which undergo rapid industrialization. Described by many as a pleasant utopia inhabited by a friendly and diverse population of numerous sapient species which happily welcomes foreigners, the Equestrian States is a natural host nation with an economy which thrives on tourism and sports.
The most popular sport in the Equestrian States is easily football, which is more commonly known as hoofball by the country's sapient ungulate locals, and the Equestrians have a respectable history of participation in the sport's premier international competitions. First appearing in the Baptism of Fire prior to World Cup 58, the Equestrian States has competed in every World Cup since, finally qualifying for the first time at the tournament's 64th edition. Over the course of the next four cycles, the Ponies quickly rose through the rankings, peaking at 15th following a second round appearance at World Cup 67. However, the next two years were not kind to the Equestrians as poor officiating and bad luck conspired to send the Ponies packing after the playoff stage two times. The Equestrian States returned to the World Cup for its 70th edition, qualifying as hosts and reaching the second round, the first of four straight qualifications. Since World Cup 74, however, the Ponies have languished in mediocrity, which was only recently revealed to have been the doing of the nation's resident "Lord of Chaos": Discord, who had placed the nation in a form of stasis seven years prior for his own amusement. Now, having returned fully to action in the World Cup, the Ponies seek to restore their once-powerful reputation as a top team, though there is still a long ways to go.
The user:
EQS can safely be considered one of the NS Sports community's veteran hosts, having helped host three World Cups (67, 70, 72), the 57th Cup of Harmony, and the 58th Baptism of Fire. Other major tournaments the user has hosted to completion include three editions of the World Baseball Classic (25, 29, 41), the 21st World Cup of Hockey, 25th World Bowl, and the 29th and 32nd Di Bradini Cups. The lesser-known tournaments hosted by the Equestrian States include Quidditch World Cup 5, Water Polo International Championships 3, Runner Cup 3, Market Cup VI, the Baptism of Water, and all four editions of the Equestria Cup.
The Protectorate of Starblaydia
Starblaydia
The nation:
Starblaydia is one of the oldest nations still playing in the World Cup, having debuted in World Cup 15. It also has one of the most successful national football teams in history, having won a joint record five World Championships, the last coming in World Cup 47, with their last Final appearance coming unexpectedly in World Cup 63. They have also won six AOCAF Cups from their north-eastern corner of the sporting superpower region of Atlantian Oceania, been victorious two Under-21 World Cups, and a number of other non-WCC affiliated tournaments such as the Olympics.
The Starblaydi Football Association has co-hosted two previous World Cups, 20 and 40, with great success, both notable for being stand out positive experiences for their participants. The SFA remains the only body in history to host and co-host all three WCC tournaments in a single cycle, as part of the ‘über bid’ for World Cup 40, with WC and CoH co-host Krytenia. The SFA also created the Di Bradini Cup, the now recognised successor to the Under 21 World Cup, and solo hosted a number of these tournaments, with the most recent as of this writing also being hosted by Equestrian States.
Starblaydi citizens have served as President of the World Cup Committee for seventeen of it's seventy-nine cycles, with the legendary Simeone Di Bradini, slightly less legendary Giovanni Lopez and Starblaydi cult hero Lex Panarii all taking the helm of the governing body in that time.
Stadii Di Bradini, Jhanna, Starblaydia
The Final will be held, if this bid is successful, in the 196,754 seater Stadii Di Bradini in Starblaydia's capital, Jhanna, for the first time in history. The stadium is named after Starblaydia's legendary former striker, Jhanna-born Simeone Di Bradini, the former World Cup Committee President, World Cup Hall of Famer, and four-time World Cup Winner (all four with The Holy Empire as player/assistant manager), for whom the Di Bradini Cup, the world's premier Under-21 tournament, is also named. It is a gargantuan stadium notable for environmentally friendly 'eco-stadium' features built-in since before ground was first broken on the site.
The user:
Star is an NS Sport veteran, and has been commended by the WA for his work in Sports Roleplaying - the first of the sports community to receive such an honour. He’s been elected President of the WCC on multiple occasions, and managed the transition of the community from the old Jolt forums to our shiny new ones in between World Cups 46 and 47. Star also wrote the NSWC Signups opening blurb and wrote or co-wrote many of the stickies and guides, including the WCC Constitution. He's hosted two highly regarded World Cups, and remains the only user to have hosted all three WCC tournaments in a single cycle.
iii. The Technical Bits:
Our chosen scorinator will be xkoranate 0.3.3, using the NSFS formula and xkoranate's additive style mods. The multiplicative style mods of NSFS tend to favor teams with higher style mods, we've found, increasing/reducing the margin of victory instead of just the number of goals scored - and that's not what we're after.
In terms of tiebreakers, we'll be using H2H as first tiebreaker over Goals Scored because of how xkoranate works, and so as to not encourage style mod inflation. By all means play with a Takilan +5 modifier, but don't feel that you have to go with something out of your team’s character just in order to get a game benefit as the group tables are sorted.
Qualifying format: we will end up with 30 successful teams plus 2 hosts, as per usual. We might need play-offs, we might not. We all can work out the formats by now for various numbers of teams over the past decade and more. We’d like to keep it simple, we’d like to try and avoid play-offs, and we’d like to not have a huge number of Matchdays to do it in. The current discussion of trying to coincide World Cup 81 in with the RLStates World Cup is a pertinent one, and we'd like to keep it tight and wrap it up neatly so that the community can benefit as much as possible - balancing the wonders of making it to WC80 while preparing for the cash-in of WC81.
iv. Roleplay Encouragement:
Our RP Bonus, which we think is balanced between helping consistently good RPers out and making sure established nations can't entirely coast on rank alone, will have a partial carryover from Qualifying to Finals. Nothing that will mean that minnows can regularly topple the mighty, but enough that deciding to start posting your RPs from the Round of 16 onwards is a risky plan. We don't want it to be a double-bonus that you earn through qualifying, raise your rank for the Finals and then suddenly have yet more KPB bonus on top of that, it's more of a friendly nudge in the right direction similar to posting an above-average roster will do.
In addition to the RP Bonus, which is standard, we're planning on these non-standard items:
Sign-up Advertising
One thing we don't currently do is advertise the World Cup outside of this forum. There are RMBs, TGs to influential members of non-sporting regions, Discord... the list goes on. Did you even know there's a subreddit for NS? All of these avenues and more are waiting to be explored and get as many potentially great Sports roleplayers into the game we've been running for 15 years now.
MoneyMoneyMoney
One old-timer way of getting RPs going and interacting with other nations is the concept of World Cup Official sponsors. It's a great opportunity for world-building and a little bit of extra realism to roleplay around. We're certain that NS Sporters have more than just names in mind with their country's greatest corporations, and we'd like them to be shown off as part of our daily postings of scores, brought to you in association with...
The Winningest XI
A Team of the Tournament is something we all like to see. We'll be looking for the greatest roleplayed characters throughout both Qualifying and Finals to bring you the best XI of the World Cup. Not necessarily the most successful or godmodded players, but the ones who have great stories built around them. All we'll need is a little note saying that the player featured should be included for consideration (one per team) and we'll do the rest.
The Postie Always Delivers
Nice and simple: Mass TGs, with stamps, to participants when the threads go up to make sure everybody knows what's where and when. That's right, we've spent actual money on this game in the past, and we're prepared to use it to make sure participation levels are as high as possible.
v. Challenges
- But you two are in hugely different timezones!
The timezone difference between us means we are rarely on at the same time. As two veteran and experienced hosts, however, we have no issues with trusting each other to take any vital decisions without needing to consult the other first. It also means there's little downtime if something needs to be decided quickly. We have google docs, we have IRC and even various messenger services to communicate with, so there should be no trouble with that. - Where’s the junior partner?
80 is quite a landmark number, for many of the round numbers of Cups we’ve seen increased interest from returning and new players alike. When you throw in the mild psychological effect of a new year, too, as well as it being an RLStates World Cup year, the odds are this may have more players than in recent history, and more who will need a fun tournament so they can stick around. With two senior partners, we feel we have the experience, guidance and collective bags of tricks greater than a Senior/Junior combination would allow on the surface.
vi. Questions and Comments
Over to you the NS Sports community at large for any questions and comments you may have of us, we're happy to answer.
Edited to correct.
