I wanted to take a short moment to clarify a few things related to this Vendetta and address a few concerns I've seen voiced many times in #DBGaming over the course of it.

Of Challenges

First, some questions have come up over challenges, what constitutes a challenge, and when match dodging is occurring. Joining #DBGaming and saying "Anyone want to play Pazaak?" is not an open challenge to every person in the channel that requires them all to play you before leaving. In effect its not a challenge at all.

Now, entering #DBGaming and saying something to the effect of, "Pravus, I challenge you to Pazaak" or "Pravus I want to play you in Pazaak next" is a challenge. If the DGM ignored me and continued playing other people instead that could be considered match dodging. The reason I say could be, is that match dodging is taken on a case by case basis.

I've read every line of #DBGaming since this round of Vendetta started. Often I get lost trying to track the flow of each game and the participants, going back and cross checking a second time before approving Gaming Submissions. If I can lose my place in the channel's discussion while only reviewing it, it can be very easy for a member to miss a message while playing a game of Pazaak or JA. My point here, don't try to entrap someone in Match Dodging by challenging them and then silently lurking in the shadows like some stony eyed killer until they play someone else, then jump out and run to us that they dodged you. Just remind them of the challenge and 99% of the time they're going to play you, that other 1% is when you should be coming to us. Read the section of Pravus' Report from last night on Fading Light: Sportsmanship and remember we're all in here to game and have fun.

Of Clusters

There's been a few folks asking about Clusters seeming to get approved a bit slower right now. There's a reason for that, during a Vendetta I process every Gaming Submission myself. This is to avoid any perception by the membership that my staff, who are participating in the event, have done anything shady or approved any questionable matches. I trust them all completely, but Vendettas tend to be times of high stress and occasional drama and this removes that burden from them allowing them to focus on the fun of the event. And, you know, its kind of my job to make sure they have fun too sometimes. Just sometimes though.

Typically I approve CFs in the evening (East Coast time) after getting home from work, on occasion I'll do something social and will lag behind a day. Bear with me as I get through them, don't freak out if it takes a day or two to get your awards. I promise they're coming. Yes, I really do read every line of #DBGaming and check to make sure every match was set up through #DBGaming.

Speaking of PVP Gaming and Metrics, the Club has been tearing up #DBGaming. Current counts for this event blow all previous ones out of the water, then shoot them six more times in mid-air (spaghetti western style):

• Pazaak Gaming Submissions: 454
• JA Gaming Submissions: 92
• Starcraft 2 Gaming Submissions: 22
• TOR Duel Gaming Submissions: 2

Remember that each submission can be up to 6 matches, so potentially 3,420 matches could have been played so far. Oh... we still have another week to go also.

Of (Pazaak) Cantinas

This section is also about PVP Score and how its calculated in general, but I had a theme of two C's in my title and wanted a third.

As many have noticed Pazaak matches go much quicker than JA and TOR. All platforms go faster than SC2. In the past we had leveled CFs for most of these (except Pazaak) to make sure rewards were fair. There will be no changes during the Vendetta, however following the Vendetta expect to see a CF revision to Pazaak. I will also be working with James to see if there is a way to appropriately weight each platform in the PVP Score without us crashing the site.

That reminds me, did you know the nightly site crashes were eventually linked to the 50-60 Gaming Submissions that I was approving? You gamed so much you broke the site, then James rebuilt it better than before. I love our SCL, in an evil Sith kind of way.

That's all for now. I'll have a proper report coming out tonight or tomorrow with more Gaming Goodness, unrelated to the Vendetta.