feel free to downvote and ignore this dramabait lol

note: this is directed at the organisers and the captain of QLD 1

FWIW I thought that apart from these issues the competition was fairly well run. It's also not just me that's pissed about what's happened either, which is why I'm making this post, basically. I know that both my entire team and QLD 2 are highly annoyed about the issues with QLD 1 yesterday, and I'd be surprised if NSW 2 weren't as well. I don't want this to become a flame war. I have nothing to gain by making this post. We got knocked out, and I'm proud of my team for the way they played. To be honest I'm not even that pissed that *we* got told to play; I'm pissed that QLD 2 got completely shit on, and the fairness of the competition did at the same time.

So, I suppose I'd better start by giving you our version of events, from the absolute start. If there are any mistakes, feel free to correct them; they will perhaps abate our anger.

Obviously issues with the Mumble server delayed the start; nothing (lol) we can do about that, though, just gotta move on. If it were possible it would've been good to postpone, but this was impossible. Because people didn't turn up, or whatever, the QLD teams (I think they were the only ones reshuffled) were changed so that there were 2, supposedly fair teams. It is obvious that the purpose of having 2 teams per region was to split the region in half by skill; making 2 fair teams, so that the competition is balanced and fair on everybody, seeing as there is no A or B division, just one big group. This is why Wolas made a post asking for community contributions towards whether the teams were fair; they got changed by my, Wolas, and Noob's consensus to be more fair. I (we?) thought having a team with Noob, SMACK, and bleach (which I originally think were the teams) was unfair on QLD 2, who were definitely underpowered; so they changed it, and the teams were fair. In my eyes, there are 3 top tier players on QLD; SMACK, Borgen, and bleach. Putting them all on 1 team, when the teams are meant to be fair, is, in our eyes, unfair.

Of course all this went out the window when Borgen was 2 hours late. He was assigned to QLD 2 (Noob told him to go to QLD 2 after arriving late), but they were already in their last game, so he didn't get to play. At this point the teams were already unfair. QLD 1 was winning every game with Noob, SMACK, and bleach (though I didn't think this was overly overpowered, more a consequence of having an uneven number of players) and QLD 2 were getting blown out. Another grievance was Borgen being entirely unapologetic to his team, despite being 2 hours late and putting them in an awful spot, meaning they got blown out every game; never a nice feeling. So, tensions were already high; after being blown out 3 times, QLD 2 were out of the competition and wouldn't progress. At this point though, shit happens; people are late, teams are going to be unbalanced whichever way you allocate them, and teams are going to be blown out.

Now, here's where the meat of the drama begins. QLD 1 were meant to play our team, VIC 2, which had to win to have a chance of making playoffs. We lost the first half fairly convincingly, 2-1, against Noob, SMACK, bleach, and iso (and I'm not sure why iso was placed on their team when QLD 2 desperately needed a defender; however, I digress). Going in to the second half, Wolas came in and told us that Borgen would be subbing for Noob, who had lag issues. Lag issues are whatever; shit happens, people need to sub. Our issue with this is that after showing up late, and denying his team the opportunity to advance (which was QLD 2; as Noob and Wolas attest, Borgen was assigned to QLD 2), Borgen basically got reassigned to  QLD 1, despite us agreeing before the competition that the teams need to be balanced so that QLD 1/2 each get a fair chance, especially seeing as the other teams (NSW and VIC) were fairly balanced with absolutely no issues all night; I thought each NSW and VIC team put up a good fight, and held their own.

Anyway, I digress. So Borgen got reassigned to QLD 1 because Noob was lagging; in many ways, I can understand him needing to sub in for Noob for a half, seeing as no-one wants to play with lag. It's unfair, not just by our metric, but what we agreed before the competition, and seeing as we had Hoog lagging for 2 games with no complaints, and not requiring a sub from the other team, but that's probably our fault for not asking. At this point, I want to address the excuses given by the organisers, and the captain of QLD 1, for making this decision, I guess. Firstly, Noob's declaration that the competition is for fun, and having Borgen not play is antifun. I'd argue making the teams stacked heavily in your favour (you played with the best players not just from QLD 1 but QLD 2, making it a QLD A side) made the competition unfun, not just from our perspective; I didn't want to play the second half, and I didn't, neither did any of my team (though they did; props to them, more mental fortitude than me), and I know I as well as at least 1 other person is completely done with any RW in future. The competition was unfun from QLD 2's perspective as well, considering after turning up late, their best player got reassigned to QLD 1 despite ruining the competition for them, and no apology was made to them by anyone. Secondly, the argument that as Noob is lagging and SgtPilko is a defender, they need Borgen. This is not how competitions work. You do not grab players from other sides just because one of your players can't play offense, you work with what you've got. bleach signed up as an offender and played defense the entire night; I think he could've stretched to playing O for 1 half, in a half Noob said was practically already won anyway ('I don't care about winning, we're up 2-1 anyway').

Thirdly, Wolas' quote that "I wasn't worried about fairness". I don't know why we balanced the teams before the competition then; we did this so that the competition would be fair for both QLD teams as well as all the other teams. If you're not worried about fairness, don't profess to be. I'd recommend in future handing over team assignment to someone who *is* worried about fairness, but there's the optimist in me.

Up 'til now it's typical Oceanic drama though. What made the competition *completely* unfair was that in the semi-final; despite Noob's protestations that Borgen has to play because of Noob's lag, the QLD 1 side that played was comprised of Noob, Borgen, drinkbleach, and SMACK. This, by all accounts, is the 4 best players on QLD. It also pretty much completely disproves Noob's argument that Borgen must play because Noob was lagging; clearly his internet was fine to play that game, and iso, or SgtPilko, who had got their team up to that point, should have played; not Borgen who arrived 2 hours late, consigned his assigned team to 3 blowouts, and wasn't even in that team. Not only does this show complete bias from the organisers in allowing QLD 1 to essentially pick and choose players from other teams (Noob after the game: "A few of our players can't make world war, can we pick players from other teams?" (that this is even assumed to be legal is ridiculous)), when no other team could, which resulted in QLD 2 being blown out (unfun in my eyes) in every single game, but it makes the competition look like a complete joke in our eyes.