(3)Draven vs (1)Solid Snake vs (1)Samus Aran 2013

http://www.gamefaqscontests.com/gallery/albums/cb9/5266-03.jpg

Ulti's Analysis
The major story in the final was the back and forth on Reddit about whether or not to allow rallies, and it shows on the updater. I'll get to all that in a second, but the story of how these rallies were allowed at all is truly stupid.

Allen would ultimately end up claiming that r/LoL mods decided on their own to allow them, but the story he gave was pathetic beyond words. He literally claimed -- and I'm honestly unsure if this is a practical joke, though I pray it is -- that his wife used his Reddit account to ask the LoL mods to stop the rallies. This came about after some screenshots of hidden conversations surfaced, and someone realized that Allen's Reddit name actually fit into the censored spots.

Turns out it actually was his account, supposedly, and Allen claims that his wife went into his account behind his back, then had to go back to Reddit to tell them that the rallies were fine. But then when the rally ended up on r/all, Allen claimed publicly that the final was interesting until the r/LoL mods showed up. So I'm not sure what to make of the whole thing, and I seriously hope it was a huge practical joke. I can at least respect that. But if that story is legit and he actually went and used his own wife for damage control (side note: his wife did end up posting in the Board 8 topic once the contest was basically over), I'd have to question a few things. I've been married nearly 10 years, and in that time I've learned that when a decision happens in a household or a marriage, you either stand by it or you don't, with conviction. No waffing. It's the correct and manly thing to do, and no amount of forced feminism or pretending women should be the only ones in charge in our culture is going to change that. You don't trot your wife out there for damage control like Nixon did with his ungodly dumb Checkers speech. You explained what happened like a man and move on.

It's why I'm hoping the entire thing was a practical joke, because the alternative is our site being run by an insecure wuss who doesn't answer for things. I actually lean toward the practical joke angle, because Allen was legitimately upset by how things turned out this contest, and I'm sure some legal and ethical things came up regarding the rallies. He made a big post about it in his contest wrapup, which I have but I'm saving it for the conclusion piece. But needless to say, there wasn't the usual contest celebration once things ended, not even a congrats to the winners or a poll asking people what they thought of things. Just a return to the status quo like nothing had even happened at all.

As for the actual match, there isn't much to say about it since rallies determined the entire outcome. Samus fell by the wayside early when it became clear that this was Snake vs Draven, and those two stayed within 1000 votes for about 5 hours. Then Draven went on a tear to get his lead up to 3100, before Snake managed to recover and make a massive push in the same way that Link did. He cut the lead all the way down to 578, and coincidentally enough things fell apart for Snake at about the same time they fell apart for Link. But rather than a DDoS attack, Draven simply had a rally thread on r/all. That 578 vote lead turned into a 7752 vote lead in an hour, and that was all she wrote for the match en route to Draven winning by 24371 votes. That's probably a record for the biggest vote swing ever, though I can't be bothered to look it up.

Draven's 73396 votes, regardless of how you feel about how he got them, is a really impressive total. It would actually be faster to list finals performances that were better.

Series Contest - Zelda 80825, Final Fantasy 77702

That's it. The entire list. Nothing else even comes close, unless you want to count the bonus poll of Ocarina of Time vs FF7 after the second games contest ended. Draven basically took strength from the early 2000s and plopped it right into the modern era of terrible GameFAQs vote totals, and nothing Allen says can make anyone who follows these things agree that this site or its contests aren't on the downswing as a result. GameFAQs clearly didn't bother doing enough to keep up with more modern web sites, which is why our vote totals get lower and lower with each new passing contest and rallies mean that much more every year. It all culminated in a little-known character from a free MOBA snowballing out of control once he got his first double kill.