As I've told you before, the AoC community has been increasing like never before. New tournaments are coming every week, the number of new players on Voobly (the main client) was never so high and the streams for big matches usually reach a couple of thousands of viewers.
This weekend, we will have one of the best matches in AoC history.
It will be a Best of 21 between the 2 undisputed best players at the moment:
TheViper and JorDan_23
The winner will take home 1000$. The games will start on 3rd of January 16 GMT and will continue on 4th and 5th. All these games will be streamed live on Voobly's Official Twitch channel: www.twitch.tv/vooblyofficial
We strongly believe this will be one of the best matches to ever happen in the AoC world, so if you have played this game before or you're just a fan of RTS, be sure to tune in as I am 100% you will not regret it!
I'm affraid there will be no "non-twitch" stream available. However, the streams will be uploaded to Voobly's Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/VooblyOfficial).
Unfortunately, the Steam version has lots of bugs and lags much much more than the original version that can be played on Voobly.
The original version playable on Voobly is still being optimized on a regular basis and thanks to the fantastic UserPatch team, we can now offer a "Spectator Mode" on Voobly, something which the community had been hoping for since AoC's release. This awesome new feature has allowed us to increase the quality of our streams.
So to answer your question: I'm pretty sure the competitive community will still stay for a long time on Voobly. The Steam version, if the Devs finally start doing their work right, surely has the potential to attract lot's of new "casual" players. But the big money tournaments (there is one with 50.000$ cash prize coming on March) will surely be played on Voobly.
On January 02 2014 03:05 MaSmOrRa wrote: HandA711:
Unfortunately, the Steam version has lots of bugs and lags much much more than the original version that can be played on Voobly.
The original version playable on Voobly is still being optimized on a regular basis and thanks to the fantastic UserPatch team, we can now offer a "Spectator Mode" on Voobly, something which the community had been hoping for since AoC's release. This awesome new feature has allowed us to increase the quality of our streams.
So to answer your question: I'm pretty sure the competitive community will still stay for a long time on Voobly. The Steam version, if the Devs finally start doing their work right, surely has the potential to attract lot's of new "casual" players. But the big money tournaments (there is one with 50.000$ cash prize coming on March) will surely be played on Voobly.
The mod for the original AoC is called "Forgotten Empires", the expansion for the HD Steam version is called "The Forgotten". Since HandA711 said "The Forgotten", I assumed he was talking about Steam's HD expansion.
On January 02 2014 18:03 MaSmOrRa wrote: TaShadan:
The mod for the original AoC is called "Forgotten Empires", the expansion for the HD Steam version is called "The Forgotten". Since HandA711 said "The Forgotten", I assumed he was talking about Steam's HD expansion.
Just get Arch_Koven to play both of them simultaneously, moar epic. How big is the cummunity nowadays? If it is anywwhere near what AoC had back then, this might be fun. If it is Empire Earth level of competition, then i won't bother to look into this. I had my fair share of elitist communities consisting of 2000 active players and the very best of them still was terrible :D Not to say these two are, but calling it Duel of the Century when might be a bit over the top when back then the community was soooo much more competitive.
And here i am sounding like the elitist jerk, sry. How big is the community?
On January 02 2014 19:56 Broetchenholer wrote: Just get Arch_Koven to play both of them simultaneously, moar epic. How big is the cummunity nowadays? If it is anywwhere near what AoC had back then, this might be fun. If it is Empire Earth level of competition, then i won't bother to look into this. I had my fair share of elitist communities consisting of 2000 active players and the very best of them still was terrible :D Not to say these two are, but calling it Duel of the Century when might be a bit over the top when back then the community was soooo much more competitive.
And here i am sounding like the elitist jerk, sry. How big is the community?
I dont know about voobly but there are lots of games hosted on gameranger.
AoC is played at the moment mainly on 3 platforms: Voobly, GameRanger and Steam. So it is rather hard to say how big the community really is. What I can tell you is that on Voobly alone, we have easily over 2000 active players. I believe the numbers are similar on GameRanger. The numbers on Steam are rather difficult to interpret because they count both single players and multi-players together, but also there it's not rare to see 6000 people "in-game".
The general skill level of AoC has dramatically increased. A player who had a rating of 1800 on the old Zone days, would probably not have more than 1600/1650 rate on Voobly.
Both TheViper and Jordan are on a level of their own, which is clearly higher than the rest of the community. If you haven't followed AoC's development in the last few years, I'm pretty sure you will be amazed at the level that these guys have reached on this game!
Maybe, i just watched an old game of Bender vs Grunt from 2003 out of nostalgia and i remember having seen it back then in absolute awe I followed the scene with the religous fervour only a teenager could Fun times. Too bad even in AoM the same gods played vs us intermediates and where absolutely beatable in every way. And then players like pg_fire went to the dark side (WCIII) and where intermediates there :D Maybe the skilllevel increased, it would be absolutely atypical for every sport that looses the competition, but i can't compare it anyway, i have to take your word.
To any wondering how good the players are/how fun the games can be to watch id recommend Viper vs Jordan (the 2 playing in this match) from very recently, the Clash of Titans round robin, their best of 5 was entertaining
Was watching some of the matches between jordan and viper (yay jordan!) and they were really nice. but since you were talking here about viper and jordan being on a level of their own i was wondering what happened to daut? did he retire?
DauT still plays at a very high level. On the last big tournament, he finished 3rd just after Viper and Jordan. However, in the final League Stage, both Viper and Jordan beat him 5-0...
I remember looking into the AoE2 scene YEARS ago... I loved playing the game when I was a kid, but I never could get into watching it professionally.
I am curious though. Even years ago, I remember that everyone used the Huns. And when I looked up Jordan and Viper... same thing. Both play Huns! Is there a metagame on using different civs? Or is it pretty much just assumed that everyone who wants to compete rolls Huns? And WHY exactly? I am really curious to actually know a bit about the AoE2 meta.
Huns are one of the civs with good boni for maps suited for feudal warfare, as you don't need as much wood due to no houses. I guess arabia is still the standard map for games, and usually has pretty bad and far wood spots.
I think the holy trinity of races in arabia was Huns, Mongols and Maya, but it's been a long time. Maybe some of the people still following the scene can tell you
Generally, the races were not as balanced, somne had boni that were never interesting for competitive play, some were only useful for specific maps. For instance, Vikings were probably picked in most maps with watery starts, sond rarely on those without. In team leagues, teams were usually forced to pick no race twice, so that some divesity was created. And concerning melee units, the problem with cavalry usually was, that they were pretty hard countered by pikes + ranged units, while melee infantery was only played laaaate in imperial age when gold was low and food was high. As people tried to boom in feudal and castle age while still fighting with troops, wood units became more important due to food going into peons.
Huns War in Arabia is indeed very popular. But on this Series, only the first game played was an Arabian Huns War, all the other games had different settings.
Actually, Civs like Mayan or Aztecs are seen by the expert community as being superior to the Huns on such open maps like Arabia!
Infantry is indeed not used so much as Range Units and Cavalry. However, one of the most common tactics nowadays is the "Drush" (= Dark Age Rush) which is executed with 3 militias (created at the Barracks) together with the Scout you start out with.
Also Civs like Japanese and Goths rely very much on Infantry units, being the Huskarls (Goths Unique Unit) one of the most useful units in the game!
On January 09 2014 01:08 MaSmOrRa wrote: Also Civs like Japanese and Goths rely very much on Infantry units, being the Huskarls (Goths Unique Unit) one of the most useful units in the game!
Yeah, so are they used much competitively? As a person who never played competitively, the Goths, Japanese and Mongols were my favourites but their bonuses (for the Goths especially) but I've only seen a bit of the Mongols in the small amount I've watched.
The stream starts in in 11 minutes, people! Edit: Well technically the actual stream is up already although it's just ads right now as far as I can see.
I'm affraid there will be no "non-twitch" stream available. However, the streams will be uploaded to Voobly's Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/VooblyOfficial).
Too bad, since I'm not the kind that watched VODs.
EPT
