Results[]
Monday, August 19th, 2013
Ulti's Analysis[]
This was basically the match where people realized Draven was going to win the entire contest, and it's also the match that got me started with League of Legends. I have played a TON of Dota (it's pathetic how much I played that game, honestly), so I figured with all the Draven hype League would be worth a try. It's a really good game, but it clearly grew to popularity by being very streamlined, easymoded and shallow. Like I have fun with it, but it hasn't really hooked me the way Dota did. I enjoy as much interaction as possible, League flat-out does not have as much as Dota. Both games do a lot of things better than the other and the constant comparisons are kind of stupid, but that's one I feel is really legitimate.
That being said, the things League does better, it does a lot better. The item system especially is so much better than Dota's that it isn't even funny, and Dota will never fix theirs because of "tradition". Screw that, make your items easy to buy and easy to put together and stop being dumb.
Anyway, the match. At one point, Draven only had 16% in it. But with all of the rallying, all of League's servers being down, and all of League's attention focused on this match, Draven gave us the most powerful performance ever in a contest. He didn't maintain it, but "Round 2 Draven" is easily the strongest character we've ever had. You'd have to go very far back in the GameFAQs contest archives to find vote totals or characters capable of beating 56937 votes in a 12 hour night match, and that's with Draven slowing down for the last hour or so.
How much could Round 2 Draven score in a match where he 100% needed 24 hours of rallying? Is 150,000 votes really out of the question here? 200,000? This match was beyond done and Draven was still pulling 500 vote updates for hours, there isn't a doubt in my mind the full rallying potential could beat things like 2003 Cloud, 2004 Link or 2007 L-Block. Regardless of hating on the dude for winning, you have to agree those numbers are impressive.
They also caused one of the biggest hype trains I can remember. No matter what happened for the rest of round 2, there were just as many topics (if not more) of people talking about the Draven/Link/(oh and Shepard was in there too) match. I can't believe all the complaining, because the whole point of this contest was making Link lose, and Board 8 agreed with that. But Draven does it instead of Snake and sand gets up everyone's crotch. I don't get it.
Zen's (Late) Analysis[]
X's quote is so on point holy shit. Wish he wasn't all talk.
If you combine the votals of the three smallest matches from Round 1 they are still like 10k short of this one.
This is where a ton of us gave up hope on this contest. Yeah, Link could still win it out in Round 3, but look at those vote totals. You know it's a bad situation when people start counting Link out of the game.
The board was in absolute chaos the entire day during this match. Not only did we get the first real wave of BUTTDEVESTATED flooding our topic list, but what really annoyed me were the people hitting us with dozens of topics asking "who draven" like they couldn't click on the fucking bios Allen put on the voting page. I guess they were just confused that this ugly mofo was beating on two icons so easily.
From what I understand, this match and the next one brought a good amount of current users to the board, so there was a bright side. Raise your hand if you are a Draven baby boomer!
In the end, the board had a mini-civil war that still has repercussions to this day. There were people who really were BUTTDEVESTATED and were vocal about it. You had other long time Board 8ers who thought it was great that votals were back up and that contests were getting attention. That's kind of a "chaotic good" approach to seeing things but I understand that point of view.
Those two groups argued day-in and day-out, and I'll admit, even though I was pretty neutral at the time, it was hard to sympathize with the "I for one welcome our new Draven overlords" group. They had absolutely no compassion and a few of them still stand by Draven being one of the better things to happen to this contest. A big defense is "you didn't care when L-Block won!!!"
Yeah because L-Block was our thing! Not Reddit's! The entire internet was in on L-Block!
Now, if you do bring up the Draven thing on the board in a positive light and say you want more rallies, you'll always get a group of people who will jump down your throat. I don't know if I want Sans, Monika or the others in the next contest. I don't know what I want other than to be able to make a bracket and not base it on predicting what fanbases will be efficient enough to rally. And if Allen really is installing anti-rally measures, then they feel like a waste of a nom, but you know people are going to try anyway.
I'm over the BUTTDEVESTATION, it still kind of sucks it wasn't a more interesting character than Draven. LoL isn't even a shadow of what it once was, so the whole "joke" of Draven winning feels extra dated. In 10 years this will probably be an even more baffling result to newer or younger users who come to this board.
fuck I hope we're still around in 10 years