Results[]
Ulti's Analysis[]
| Division | 5 |
|---|---|
| Match # | 18 |
| Match Date | Thursday, September 20th, 2007 |
| Oracle Expectations |
Ganondorf - 47.07% Vergil - 19.87% Thrall - 19.19% Ratchet - 13.93% |
| GameFAQs Expectations |
Ganondorf first place (2pts) - 84.78% Ganondorf second place (1pt) - 8.07% Vergil second place (2pts) - 34.84% Vergil first place (1pt) - 3.15% |
| Advancing Prediction |
Ganondorf - 92.85% (34,098) Vergil - 37.99% (13,951) |
This match was almost exactly like the one prior, except it wasn't all-Nintendo and the three characters debated for second place don't have many fans on this site. Mudkip/Pit/Tingle was a good argument because people care about them. Ratchet/Thrall/Vergil was only debated because people care about their brackets. Big difference there, plus there was no "joke factor" like Mudkip to consider here. People settled on Vergil as the second place favorite here, but it was mostly by default due to his stat number in the 2005 villains contest. Thrall was slated to get anti-WoW votes, and poor Ratchet is just not strong at all.
Like Luigi, Ganondorf scored a very easy first place, and with a very similar percentage at that. The other three look like they're making a boring little staircase similar to the last match, but for quite awhile Thrall refused to behave and go down quietly. Ratchet was.... yeah.
Anyway, Vergil took a very small early lead but was unable to build upon it. A lot of people acted defeatist and assumed Thrall would get a massive WoW rally to win, but it didn't really happen that way at all. For as close as Thrall got periodically throughout the night -- Vergil's lead was a scant 2 votes at one point -- Thrall never led the match at any point. Then the morning vote happened, and Vergil was able to blow Thrall's doors off an route to an easy second place. And for those looking for a silver lining on Ratchet's performance, he used the day vote to cut something like 500 from Thrall's third place lead on him.
One thing I'll never get about this match is how Thrall was unable to form a rally or how Vergil so thoroughly wrecked him with the day vote. If you go back and look at the villains contest, Vergil's day vote sucks. Even here it wasn't so hot, but Thrall just tanked beyond belief. Very very odd how Thrall didn't get a rally here in a once-close match, and to this day I don't understand it. WoW fans love this guy, so why not push him a little bit harder?
Stats and Analysis[]
- Vergil advancing was the #7 most surprising result of Round One
this was one of those matches that nobody felt good about. Vergil was proven to be weak, but at least he wasn't pitiful -- like Ratchet is -- while Thrall had a rather large range he could fall into. people went with the proven guy in Vergil, but Thrall had a good shot.
that shot evolved into a pretty large bandwagon after Arthas's impressive performance in the second match of the contest. lots of people wanted their brackets back after seeing that. any rallying would be twice as effective here because of the nature of four-way contests. all you needed was ~20,000 votes to prevail in a fourpack this weak.
Vergil jumped out to a small lead to open and slowly increased it to 66 votes by 00:10. from there, we saw one of the more impressive stalls in my memory. Thrall would cut 20, Vergil would gain back 30, they'd tie, Thrall would win another update... the match was going nowhere fast. after an hour, Thrall cut the lead to 16 votes, but Vergil responded with a series of update wins and got up to about a 150 vote lead by 3am.
at this point, I hit up the World of Warcraft forums and found a thread created by our dear Funk rallying people to go vote for Thrall. I have no idea how long it was up, but the second I posted it, Thrall began a comeback. Thrall cut the lead to double digits and showed no sign of stopping. 50 votes, 18 votes, 17 votes, 2 votes -- it looked like Thrall was going to take over thanks to the rallying effort. Thrall just couldn't take the lead though. Vergil pushed the lead back to about 200 votes by morning. it would come down to who would take the daytime.
the answer to that? Vergil, with anticlimactic ease. the match wasn't much to watch after the first six hours, but those first six were really great - back and forth, a lead never breaking 150 votes, rallying, people calling Funk out - it was about as enjoyable as a match between two pieces of fodder could be.
Match Trends[]
