Cut for length cause it's long and I doubt anyone cares. (which I really don't mind, I just wanted to post about it cause there's no where else to do so)
So we all know I like Neopets and participate in all the events. I go for the gold on Daily Dare and Games Master Challenge. I go every day to the Negg Festival, the Advent Calender, and the Faerie Quests. I went every day for the Disappearance of Krawk Island. But the one event I just can't seem to get very excited about is the Altador Cup. It is a sport event that happens every June. What is Altador Cup? It takes place in Altador, of course. The main event is Yooyu Ball. Basically hockey/soccer played with extendo arms that are like chutes that you catch the ball on. (which I have been informed that the extendo arms are called crestas!) There are 5 team members and 18 teams. One is goalie the others do the rest. This is all I need to know in order to play. I don't need anything else. But I guess others do. It is the middle of May and since Monday Neopets has had "pre-tournament press" articles for various teams. Basically two teams a day get "press coverage", which is an article covering what the team has been up do this last year. Wait, what? And if things go like last year at some point we'll have a mini-bio for each team member. So somehow I need to memorize 90 names and backstories and which teams they go with? Well maybe the truly devoted would do so. But it has no baring on the game. Whether you win or lose and how many points you score has nothing to do with the team members histories! I don't care if so-and-so is a newcomer to the game or if so-and-so took a vacation to Kiko Lake last fall.
In addition to that madness there's the insanity of signups. I believe they start in a week or so. They have a countdown but I'm not going to bother adding it up. We're at 223 hours. Anyway, people think signups are harder than they are. People are always suggesting this team or that team for the "tight knit community" or "fun loving community" or boast about the team being "a good group of people". You know, I'm not joining a team for the social aspect. Maybe if there really were only 5 people per team I'd take the social side of things into consideration. But I really do not go posting in the team threads. I don't care who's on the team I choose, I'm there to play not talk. Would I really pass up a beloved land because of the people? I went with Haunted Woods last year cause I like Haunted Woods. In fact if they had a Team Neovia I'd join up in an instant. (neovia is a sub-land of Haunted Woods) As long as things don't get too steampunk I'm all for Neovia. But that is besides the point. A bad community wouldn't drive me away from Haunted Woods. So unless you're mainly just there to chat with other players I don't see why people don't just pick the land they like the most. But older players who do have groups of friends who join certain teams mislead newbies into thinking they must pick based on the characters of the other players. There's also winners luck. No team has won twice in the entire time of the Altador Cup. And when a team wins one year they're in the bottom the next. I have to admit that did sorta turn me away from Lost Desert whom had won in the previous year or so. But Haunted Woods won in the 3rd year or something and that didn't stop me from picking them. Then there's that group of AllStars who gang together and pick a team to weigh in the hopes of making it win. Which is kind of like cheating cause not everyone can be AllStar so a group of them is hard to go against.
What is AllStar, you say? The top trophy tier. There are 20 levels of trophies and a participation medal, level 1 being just above the medal and level 20 being AllStar. Altador Cup lasts a month. Last year I played for, let's round out to an average of 30-60 minutes a day. I just barely made level 3. Last year someone added it up and it would take 6-8 hours of playing every single day to reach AllStar. This year people are insisting you only need to play for 2 hours a day but if that's so I should have been level 8 at least. It's not fair really, to expect people to be able to play that much. So adults should quit their jobs and children should abandon school or summer vacation?
Then we get to the monotony. As if having to play so much every day wasn't enough there are only 4 games you can play. Each lasts no more than 3 1/2 minutes at a time. One of these games does not work on netbooks, cutting netbook users down to 3 games. Your level goes up based on points earned. Yooyu ball, being the main event, gets the most points towards your level. The other 3 games have lower amounts. So basically you'd need to play, I forget, something like 2-3 games of the slushie game in order to equal one game of yooyu ball. I just can't handle having to play such a small variety of games over and over and over for hours upon hours every day for 30-31 days. I will never be AllStar due, mainly, to the monotony and boredom. Last year I got so bored and fed up with it that I just quit altogether for nearly a week.
Then there's those who can not post their stats or talk to others for fear of being told not to play. People like me who can't stand playing a lot drag teams down. A team wins based on some mystery combination of everyones scores. People figured it up that if a team has an AllStar and a Participation Medal they even each other out to about level 10. Therefore my level 3 helped put Haunted Woods in, I think, 6-8th place instead of being like 5th or something. But that doesn't mean I shouldn't contribute cause I did help us get a better place than the participation and level 1 people.
Naturally, I'm joining Haunted Woods again. *cricket* Course I didn't really expect anyone from that team to be excited that someone with low expectations is joining them. Cause while I would be happy with another level 3 my goal for this year is level 4. Dunno how I'll manage cause team intros have only been going on for three days and I'm already annoyed. Last year at least I had no idea how much I'd hate the Altador Cup and was enthusiastic for a time.
Oh, and I nearly forgot to talk about the different balls you can use. There's the normal standard ball, which acts like a ball should. Then sometimes you randomly get a different kind. The fire ball is easy to work with cause it's just a speedy ball and you can get it past the goalie from a distance without a lot of effort. Snow ball is difficult, though, because it is slow and a lot of the time when you throw it to the goal even if you're right in front of it it falls to the floor and stops half-way to the goal. Clockwork ball is alright cause it acts normally... up till the random moment it explodes. Faerie ball can be worked with if you get good at learning it's curves, because this ball gently floats in a curve, so you can't throw it straight. Darigan ball is the worst. It goes in a random direction each time you throw it. When using the Darigan ball 9 times out of 10 I score for the other team. The mutant ball can behave like any of the other balls except clockwork, and you have no way to know till you start throwing it around, which can make it very annoying. Overall I wouldn't mind just sticking to the regular ball, maybe eliminate the Darigan ball and keep the fire and faerie for sure.
...apparently there are people who are so into the Altador Cup they have a forums for it on a separate site so they can talk about it year-round. 0_0
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