Altador Cup XIX (2024)

[Pickles]

Sign-ups started today for the Altador Cup. Go HERE to sign up! If it doesn't show the map to sign up, hard refresh your page (ctrl + F5 or shift + F5, depending on your browser).
Some things of note:

This year, team sign-ups and practice begin on July 16th. The team sign-ups will last until end of day July 30th. This session is then followed by a two round tournament schedule that runs until August 31st

*Be sure to join a team before sign-ups close end of day July 30th!
*This year, the Altador Cup tournament once again pits 19 teams, representing the lands of Neopia, against each other.
*This year, the tournament play is made up of two rounds. Your team will play against every other team once in the first round. In the second round, based on your performance, you will be placed into one of three brackets. You will then play against the teams within your respective bracket.
*Every win counts and adds to the overall score so be sure to play hard from Round 1, Day 1 itself!
*This year, there will also be four practice days within the tournament. The first two practice days will happen on the 6th day and the 13th day from Day 1 and the next two practice days will be before the Final Round begins. Practice days will occur when Round Robin and Final Round are not in session.

I have no idea how this will work with 19 teams, as it will not be possible to split into even brackets for the end? I feel like this was either not thought through, or clearly not explained correctly here. Or maybe the bracket with extra team won't all actually play each other in the finals? Who knows...

Basic Staff Tournament Info:

The Altador Cup Staff Tournament will begin on July 31th and end on August 23rd. Results will be announced each Friday.
You'll be able to make changes to your team at any time until midnight (12:00 AM NST) each Friday. After that, you will not be able to make any more changes to your team until after the results are announced on Friday afternoon.
Once you've got a full team in the "Your Team" area, the "Choose This Team" button will activate and you can click it to finalise your team picks.
If you want to change your team, click on the "Change Team" button to make your new selections. If you want to keep your team as is the next week, press the "Keep Team" button.

There will be 19 staffers this year to choose from.

We once again have an insane amount of time before we start actually playing for points.

Is this any surprise? I have joined the Rooligans. Got yet another RI frame and...

Lilo Blumario: Also... Welcome back! For your 18 years of dedicated play you have earned the prizes below:
Autographed Techo Fanatic Poster

Which is....a gift item. Not wearable. Literally nothing special. Yay?

The prize shop is up already if you go to the direct link, but appears to be incomplete. It consists currently of a LOT of re-released items that I already have and do not want extras of. If this is the final prize shop, I have no motivation to try hard at all this year. I suppose that will make it easier on me?

[Blue]

Thanks Pickles! I also signed up again for Roo. Zero thought went into the decision. They still have a Lupe on their team, so there you go.

Same 18 year gift for me. Woah. Somehow that feels weird.

[Chivewarrior]

Is "can't load Yooyuball" an everyone thing or a problem with my computer?

[Pickles]

Posted: Tue Jul 16, 2024 10:23 pm

Is "can't load Yooyuball" an everyone thing or a problem with my computer?

There have been some people reporting issues with it throughout the day. My suggestion would be to try hard refreshing, or try a different browser. I know a number of people have submitted tickets with pictures of the issues they've had.
I know they haven't obviously updated the Slushie Slinger game, as it still has issues.

ETA:

REMINDER: This is the LAST DAY to sign up for the AC. Play begins tomorrow.

[Siniri]

The Cup doesn't start for another 5.5 hours, and the lag has already been awful the past day and a half, and getting worse by the minute. Ugh.

[Chivewarrior]

I'm significantly more interested in the Cup at the moment because I find Yooyuball more fun than the Battledome, so that's a bit disheartening. I'm not really that active with the plot because I don't like Battledome that much; I want the Cup to work!

[Siniri]

The AC caps are the same as last year, but you get more points per game, and it takes fewer points to make each rank.

[Pickles]

Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2024 11:07 am NST

Well...this feels ridiculous. If you max out on all the games, you can probably make All-Star tomorrow. I was doing SOSD while I was getting my walking in on my treadmill and monitoring my kiddos doing school (Which why did I not try it on mobile last year? It's way easier than on the computer), and I haven't even done 2/3 of the games I can do for the day and am already rank 4. Making All-Star this year will be stupidly easy. Way too easy for it to feel like any sort of accomplishment. It was already cut down a lot last year, but this, with the points being so much easier to get, is...meh. I hate the "everyone is a winner" mentality SO MUCH. Can't we actually have some harder goals to work towards? Ugh.

I hope they update the prize shop to add a bunch of stuff, because right now, there's almost nothing I want in it. Obviously it's not finished, as it's not possible to purchase things from, but it's really a bad set of items. I have absolutely no motivation right now to try hard at all on this. Hopefully we'll get clarification at the AMA tomorrow as to whether or not this is the final prize shop or just a test set. If not, between the simplistic version of All-Star and the lack of anything I'm interested in...yeah. There are a lot of hardcore AC players who are similarly disappointed.

Don't forget to get your Staff Tournament picks in before Friday. Or Monday. The FAQ says Friday, but the countdown timer looks like the end of Monday, and below the countdown timer, it says "Make sure you select your team before 6th August. You must change your team or select Keep Team to enter this Round!" So...I'm not sure which one to trust. Just make your picks soon?

ETA: Well, good thing I hadn't gotten to these numbers yet (I'm at 237 SOSD...whew!), but...looks like the caps on the games have changed:
29 YYB
?? SLSL (current guess is 52/53)
242 MSN
242 SOSD

No clue if you keep the points if you went over it before they switched the max or not.

MLP is bummed she moved off Faerieland this year, since it appears SOTAC joined them. She was like, I KNEW IT WOULD HAPPEN IF I SWITCHED TEAMS! Ah, well...

[Siniri]

Ugh. I was playing SlSl and SOSD on my phone at work because I've been working since 7:30am (and am finally about to go back to the pet-sitting house where I have another 30 minutes to do).

12 extra SlSl games because the score report kept counting up. At least I caught the change before I finished maxing SOSD.

I'm already rank 8 and have barely touched the other two games.

[Blue]

Yooyuball does not work on my Neopets computer... "WebGL is required" error *sigh*

[Siniri]

TNT was fixing and improving the AC games, they said.... But what's better? Surely not that hideous blue YYB field that exactly matches two of my players, and also the faerie YYB and the freeze power-up. And not the ridiculous captchas on MSN that made maxing it take 600+ games and 5+ hours (for the new, lower cap).

[Pickles]

Well...they mixed up the color of the ground and the ice...so now the ground is blue, and when you freeze people, they're in...yellow ice? Ewww.

RI is on our Bye day today. I am not sad about this. I hope that some things are clarified in the AMA tonight but I am not too hopeful about that, either. Ah, well.

There have been rumors that there might be Orion "mini-quests" or something, as well. I guess we'll see?

[Blue]

Of course on RI's Bye day, YYB is now "working" on my Neopets computer. (running Ubuntu 20.04 server + LXDE)

The game now loads, but gameplay is insanely slow. As in .01 ticks off the clock in ~20 seconds of real-time. It can be played, but it's painful

[Pickles]

AC themed AMA answered absolutely no questions about the AC issues - the change in caps, the Darcadia avatar mess, or the prize shop. (The also didn't talk about the LEV in the plot mess, either). They spent a lot of time talking about the new team Darcadia, and that was about it. So...who knows if the prize shop will change or not?

They did release this Grundo Warehouse code and destroyed the value of another item that I have sitting in my SDB from hard work on one of the early AC's: YOOYUAUGUST
At least they left the red, blue, and yellow untouched? For now? Sigh.

Ugh. All of the above combined makes me even less motivated to do much this year.

ETA: Okay, so the AMA was supposed to have an additional guest to talk about the AC, but they couldn't make it. Hopefully some of the questions will be addressed in another way.

[Siniri]

I quad maxed day 1 and reached rank 12. And have yet to be able to play any games today because of failed captchas (refused to beat my head against a wall too much though). Fell asleep and woke up with 1:20 left to play after dailies and quest log and plot. Maybe it'll work better? If not, SOSD on my phone and probably won't even single max.

This is just not it, TNT.