Okay, quick question for folks. Going forward would you like interviews to be done in video format and posted on YouTube and then I can just embed it here, or do you prefer a good old fashioned written interview?
As most of you already know probably, the 4th edition of the In Search for Freedom cup is right around the corner! Starting at 10EST/16CET/18MSK on Sunday, June 1st Ugri & Searcher will be kicking off the $300 cup with a winner take all prize pool. Registrations opened up this past weekend, and players will have until Saturday to sign up, this means that there are only 5 more days to get your name into contention! In addition, there is a limit of 64 players + subs, so those of you that want to play should make sure to get signed up, though that does not completely guarantee you'll be able to play. I've quoted Ugri's announcement below, and those that want to sign up should head over to:
We are getting so close to June 1st! We are soon to get our FFA nerding day, 64 players battling for the prize of 300$ which would be given to the winner.
Games will start at 10:00 EST - 16:00 CET - 18:00 MSK on June 1st
Registrations end on Saturday May 31st - 15:00 EST - 21:00 CET - 23:00 MSK
Before we get to that we need players and now is time to register for the event. As slots are limited, you can make a donation of 6$ to insure that you will get a position in the Cup. Previous donators will be given one if they want to participate. Check playFFA.net main page (donation block top left) to see how to donate. However this is not mandatory to donate at all.
We wish to exclude Garena from the tournament since it creates security issues. Please log from another realm on that day.
On May 31st you can watch the Cup draws live on playFFA.net!
Well, we've been forced to drop a few more people due to inactivity it seems, and this has somewhat turned into a game of who can persevere to stick into it. Still, I'm highly confident in our remaining players and think the quality of these games will top everything we've had so far! Because of the nature of how these games have been created the last round will be swiss styled, with my trying to avoid matchups from last round. In addition, the playoffs will be seeds 1-3 are directly qualified for the finals while 4-7 play in a semi-final. So, without further ado:
Map: Twilight Ruins
F20 Scrapper F10ex 4erwac Cheeron
F21 MattiasG NoMercy2 Meeds Lightweight
F22 FML|Worpex SteppinRazor NoMercy2 Rym
As you can see NoMercy2 is in two games. This is because zTsoso will be replacing him in F17 to ensure it can be played this week. F17 will be:
So I've decided to become a bit more organized and now YouTube shoutcasts will be released every week on a specific day (possibly with some bonus ones released occasionally during the week) but I'm left wondering what day they should be released on. So, go ahead and vote and if you feel really strongly you can post here.
Okay, so for the first time ever yesterday I did some video editing of the shoutcast Ugri and I did. I didn't touch the actual content of it, however I added an introduction and an outro to it. I'm not that satisfied with it to be honest, however it was quite a bit harder and more confusing than I expected. If you all would be so kind as to give me some feedback on it I'd greatly appreciate that.
My goal for future shoutcasts is to have an intro and animation for the start of all the shoutcasts I do, preferably just a 10 second thing where it says FFA Masters League on it, and then transitions into the players and shoutcasters, before transitioning smoothly into the start of the game. The ending I'd like to be a bit longer, and just have a spot to acknowledge my co shoutcaster and plug anything they'd like to. So some of the stuff I'd like help with are what you like, what you didn't. Song suggestions since I'd like to make the intro one the same every week. Any help with actually editing them (I use Windows Movie Maker), and probably several other things I don't know.
My long term goal is to start doing shorter clips as well for promos, round highlights, etc. But as it stands that's a ways away. Thanks everyone!
And here we are, despite some ups and downs we've reached our 4th, and second to last round of the FFA Farm League. We have one remaining game from Round 3 that could mix the standings up a bit, but as it is we have F10ex in the lead, and MattiasG breathing down his neck. For those that are not aware since I'm not sure we published the full format, FFL will consist of 5 rounds, and following that spots 1-3 will auto-qualify for the finals and 4-7 will qualify for the semi-finals. Winner of the semi-finals will take the last spot in the finals for the FFL Season 1 Championship!
Yet again I'm afraid our cast has had a few changes made to it. I am pleased to announce that Rym has joined FFL, filling in as a replacement in F15 last week and pulling off an impressive win against the rather unimpressive FML|Mage and Worpex. However, we have also lost a few of our players. Most notably Goodbeast has been removed from this season of FFL due to a violation of rule 6.50 despite being warned. In addition Re-Chavez and Entertheone have both been removed for failures to show up to the game, and no explanations afterwards.
Map for Round 4 will be Anarchy Castle, Worpex's newest old creation. Some minor balance tweaks have been made to it to ensure that it is fit for a competitive FFA game, and I for one am very much looking forward to seeing how it plays out! Download link to come when Worpex is able to link to it.
Also, this should not be necessary to say but I will do so anyway. There will be 0 tolerance of players flaming or insulting other players. You will get a warning and then we will remove you from FFL or FML. This applies to insulting current or past FML or FFL players, admins, or even just community participants. We want FML & FFL to be a fun oriented community dedicated to enjoying a video game.
So recently our good friend Ugrilainen started a history of PlayFFA that is a fantastic read. Everyone can check out the latest chapter here. This got me thinking about FML though. While we've done some brief history before, we've never done anything in depth. I'd like to correct that problem at some point, and the first step towards doing that was sitting down with our found, Worpex himself. The below are the results of our conversation broken into two parts purely due to the fact that we wrote too much and FML won't let me post it in one go!
FML|Mage:Hey what's up everybody, this is Mage and today I have with me the one, the only, the Mr. Worpex I know that it's been a while since we did an interview, and usually we do interviews with recent FFA winners, but I think everyone will enjoy this one. We plan to delve into Worpex's background, as well as a little bit of FML history for those that are interested. So, with all that said, why don't you say hello and tell us a little bit about yourself. FML|Worpex: Hello all!! I'm Worpex. I'm from the states where I do desktop and network support for a school district. I've been playing Warcraft 3 since the start of Frozen Throne and during that time I’m mostly known for running Leagues and Tournaments. I was also on the admin team for WCR for a few years and run a few league teams which were never really any good. FML|Mage: I know that's where I first heard your name, you've certainly been around the community for quite a while and I believe we actually barely missed overlapping in clans a few times. Besides the FFA Masters League, which was your favorite league to run and give us a brief description of it. FML|Worpex: My favorite was The WC3 Olympics. It was a clan league which I developed a completely unique and new battle structure. In this structure, each team designated 1 of their 4 players as the "Champion". That player plays all 4 of their opposing clans players including their champion. There was a total of 7 1v1 matches in this and the winner was the team with the most points at the end. FML|Worpex: It ended up being very successful and some starcraft 2 league still uses the format, although the name escapes me. FML|Mage: I actually remember that well, it was a very cool mix of standard and NGL. What led to the downfall of that league? And were there any memorable teams that competed in it, either in terms of fame and prestige or personalities? FML|Worpex: There were a lot of great teams that competed although I'm not going to name any because there were simply too many! At one point, it was in the top 3 international clan leagues in WC3. WCO ran for 3 seasons before we decided to close the league on a high note. One of the founders of the league, Holcan, decided to step away from the league and the rest of the team (Myself, BaronFel and Tosh'iki) felt we couldn't find an adequate replacement. Furthermore, the clan scene in wc3 was on a huge downward spiral at the time and clans were disbanding left and right. FML|Worpex: With that said, at the time of it ending, fellow FML player, Delorex, was actually rank 9th out of 294 players which played in the league! FML|Mage: That's pretty awesome actually. Did any of the other current FML players participate in WCO that you can remember? FML|Worpex: Yes, quite a few. Rebuke was rank #3 overall, so he also did well although he hasn't been active in FML for a few seasons. Other players were, Rain, Duck, F10EX and Mog! FML|Mage: <3 Moggy. What time period was WCO during? I know it was a few years ago, but I suspect that people will be curious as to the exact time if you happen to remember. Also, are there any remnants of it still such as the website or news coverage of it in case people are interested? FML|Worpex: 2008 to 2010. The website has been down for years, sadly. There might be some sites with old articles left but I don't know where. :/ FML|Mage: Ah okay, well if anyone is interested after that let us know and we'll see what we can find out. FML|Worpex: Yeah I have rankings on my computer and some other useless information. FML|Mage: Moving on though to what I suspect most people want to read though, why don't you give us a brief history of how FML got started and we'll get into more detail after that. FML|Worpex: FML got started in early 2006. I had just gotten kicked out of the admin team for TFL and I had wanted to start up a new league which would be unique and fun. At some point I realized that no one had ever done a FFA League and ran with the idea. I had no idea at the time that Clan Lone and FF4 had a huge scene with their own ideas about how FFA should be played. I had just wanted to do something new! FML|Worpex: I named the league the Forsaken Melee League for its 1st season and it was met with immediate hatred. The solo scene hated it, the FFA scene didn't like the rules and few people thought the league would be successful. It turns out though, If there is anything more in the world which makes me work harder, its people telling me something won’t work. HA! I showed them! Here we are in 2014! FML|Mage: You certainly did, all on your own and with no help from anyone! Oh, wait. That's not quite right. Why don't you talk a little bit about the admin team that you started with. FML|Worpex: Yeah, I wish I could say it was all on my own I definitely can't! Luckily, despite there being a lot of people who didn't think FML would work, there were also a lot of players interested in played in Season 1. Those were the people who got FML off the ground and through its first season. FrozenPrince and Lok-Ta-Ogar were the first 2 admins. Prince actually started the league with me and we bounced a lot of ideas off each other and later picked up Lok-ta to help out with match admining. FML|Worpex: After the first season, FrozenPrince rage quit the league and we ended up picking up Renaud as a replacement. He was a perfect fit for the team! At the time he only did a lot of match-admin work but now he’s grown into our master of code and web administration. :D FML|Mage: Yeah, I can honestly say I have no idea what we'd do without Renaud! I know you mentioned that you had some issues with Season 1, would you care to go into what some of the problems were, and how you went about fixing them? FML|Worpex: The major issues were with the rule book as well as our website. During the first season the league went through a major hacking attempt which almost prevented us from even making it to season 2! The rules were also flaky. There were a lot of loopholes in the rulebook at the time and the scoring for the matches was poor. It rewarded playing for second place instead of taking the win. FML|Mage: Huh, both of those sound like bundles of fun. How'd you fix them? I presume the easy answer here would just be well we changed the rules and got a new site! But something a little more detailed please FML|Worpex: Well that’s pretty much how we fixed the vast majority of the issues. We had a lot of community input! I basically took season 1 as a learning experience for myself and started to actually learn what FFA actually is about in WC3 - since I honestly had no idea there was actually its own community for it when I started the league. Much of the rule book was rewritten for Season 2 including the addition of the now widely accepted and used 25-10-10-5 scoring system as well having the placement go by match score instead of when the players leave. Furthermore, we changed the league over to the FFA Masters League at the start of Season 2! FML|Worpex: The Community and Clan Lone helped a lot during the time. Much of the changes were suggestions from them although I honestly don't remember specific names or else I’d give credit to them. FML|Mage: Of course, of course. Don't feel bad guys, you aren't important enough to be remembered XD! So I know that Sky_Fierce won Season 1 thanks to our Hall of Fame, but I have no idea about how the season went. Are any of the players from that season still playing? And how would you rate the quality of play back then? FML|Worpex: The season was mildly successful. Many of the players were from Clan FF4 since clan Lone didn't trust FML at the time and didn't like the rules. The play quality was definitely far lower then then it was now. Ugrilainen actually made a video of the Season 1 Final which can be found on YouTube here FML|Worpex: I don't believe any of the Season 1 players are still active although I could be wrong. I know the final was with Nooblex, Sky_Fireice, Lok-ta-ogar and FrozenPrince. FML|Worpex: Lok-ta came back recently although appears to have left again. FML|Mage: Ah, I see how it is rigging the finals with admins ^-^. FML|Worpex: :D FML|Worpex: Renaud didn't get 2 KoFFA titles by himself! FML|Worpex: (jk) FML|Mage: From here we have two trails I want to follow, and I'll let you pick how we go about them. I'd like to cover the other seasons chronologically, and I'd like to cover the admins since I personally actually don't know the early history of either very well. Which do you want to do first FML|Worpex: Honestly, I’d rather cover the admins. Chronologically would make my brain hurt, after season 1 the seasons start to blur together. haha FML|Worpex: a rough overview would be better, I can't remember exactly what happened in each individual season anymore FML|Mage: Wrong answer! We're going to pull teeth on this one, but we can do that later. So you mentioned that Lok-ta-ogar rage quit after Season 1. Who was the next admin to be hired, and when was it FML|Worpex: FrozenPrince Rage quit! FML|Worpex: and I mentioned Renaud was the next already FML|Worpex: noob FML|Worpex: :D FML|Mage: Bah, you type a lot you can't expect me to read it all! Oh, wait that's probably not a good thing to say during an interview =D FML|Worpex: hahahaha FML|Mage: Okay, so you had lok-ta-ogar and renaud as your co-admins. How long did this team last? FML|Worpex: Shit, there is an important admin here that I can't remember the name of. XD FML|Mage: Haha, what a great leader folks! FML|Worpex: OH I REMEMBER NOW FML|Worpex: So the next admin to follow was FML-Rad FML|Worpex: and he was pretty Rad. He was with the team for quite a long time actually! He took a lot of work off the plate of the rest of the team by actually showing up for matches (which I was notoriously bad at) and keeping the website updated. Lok-Ta left the admin team after season 3 I believe and then we hired another amazing admin in the name of..... UGRILAINEN!! FML|Worpex: I believe the team stayed as Ugri, Rad, Renaud and Myself for a few seasons. FML|Mage: Yeah, I think this is probably the team that most of the FML players are familiar with. Rad actually made a reappearance not too long ago. Oh, Spoiler, Rad leaves the team at some point! FML|Worpex: This is around the time things start to get a little blurry for me. I don't remember when exactly people left and other admins came in. I ended up taking a break from FML to focus on other leagues, including WCO. Renaud became the Head Admin for season 6 I believe and then passed that off to CriticalBasterd for Season 7. KillinDay then was the head admin for Season 8! FML|Mage: I suspect that this is something of a revelation for a lot of our newer players. How did you feel about leaving FML, it was after all somewhat of our baby? And obviously you're here now, how'd you end up coming back to it. FML|Worpex: Well, I was a bit tired of FFA after season 5. I had begun to get more involved with the solo scene and wanted to try my hand at another solo league. I felt a bit bad about leaving, but I also never technically left. I stepped down from the head admin role but still did work for the league whenever they needed me. I knew the admin team which i was leaving behind was more then capable of running the league by themselves so I had no worry about them running it into the ground. FML|Worpex: However, it did eventually run into the ground. The league never started back again after season 8. Killin had left the admin team as well as Ugri, SMRT and many other key members. This was also around the time that WCO became huge in popularity so I was busy with that. I don't believe S9 ever got started and FML just faded into the sunset......
So Pers and I were talking the other day, and it turns out he's going to The International IV, which I am incredibly jealous about. I've actually never been to one of the big events like Blizcon, MLG, WCG, etc but would really like to go to one. I figure with this collection of people it'd be kinda interesting to hear about other people's experiences either going to them, playing in them, or any other thoughts. So, go ahead and share.
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FML|Worpex
SteppinRazor
Meeds
Cheeron
zTsoso will be replacing him in F17 to ensure it can be played this week. F17 will be:
Meeds