That's right, the greatest minds of the forums have met, and they have decided, it is time, once again, to pit forumer against forumer in a no-holds-barred battle to the pain.
The catch? This time, it's a two on two battle. Each matchup will pit a team of two forum members against a team of two other forum members. So find a buddy and get ready to rumble!
There's rules and regs, though not much, mostly to fix a few issues with the last one. So read the following fucking closely.
Sweet, I want in on this...
...hold on, Skippy. This contest is going to be for established forum members only, and you're going to have to qualify for it. It's ridiculously easy to qualify, though. In short, if people say "Who the hell are you?" when you try and sign up, you probably don't qualify. You can qualify by one of the following:
Senority - You've been a member of the forums
or you've been a regular visitor to the IRC chat for at least three months. That's March 1st, folks.
Post Count - If you're still pretty new, you can get in if you have at least 50 posts. This shows you're new, but contributing. If you're just contributing spam, though, forget it.
Achievement - If you've done something significant with the site or the forum (like win a NES challenge), you're in.
Personal Letter of Recommendation - If you fail all three of these tests, if you can get Syd to send me a PM to allow you into the contest, I'll let you in. I hope Syd won't write these willy-nilly.
In addition, you must be a real person.
Okay, so how do I enter?
Simply send me a PM, or post in this thread saying you want to enter. Sign-up deadline is June 27th, brackets will be drawn on June 30th. The first match-up will begin on July 4.
So how do I get a partner?
You can do it in two ways.
The first one is to find your own. Send out PMs, hit the chat, hand out fliers, whatever you want. Once you have a partner, simply have both members PM me or post it here.
Both members must mention they are a team for it to be official.
The second is to be paired up randomly. On June 27th, anyone without a partner will be randomly paired up with someone else without a partner, this gives you a chance to get together with your new partner and prepare something. If you don't like your randomly selected partner, well, tough luck, learn to live with them. If there's someone left without a partner, they'll be teamed up with a super special secret mystery partner.
I'd rather everyone find their own partners, but if you want to roll the dice and get a random person to carry to the top, that's on you.
Note that once you have your team, you're stuck with it. No backing out of it. So before you send off that confirmation PM, make sure you have the partner you want.
Oh, one more thing: Your team MUST have a completely kick-ass team name. An original one. If you want to send any promotional blurbs to post with your match, feel free.
So how does this work?
Um, I start a poll. People vote on it for 3 days, or less. People trash-talk and show off hopefully creative shit. The winners advance, the losers bitch about it in the chat room. Single elimination. The winner gets something, the prize last year was a custom title. No promises, but Syd may do that again.
The only hard-and-fast rule is you can't go off-site to garner votes, and you can't encourage people to sign up just to vote for you. You get caught doing this, you're out. Period. And so is your partner. (Getting people who are already signed up to the forums to vote for you, however, is kosher.)
I'm also going to ask that the Sydapedia not be used for shit-talking and uploading of images. That's not what it's for.
If there's a tie? Well, ties won't be a problem this year. I'm holding off on my vote, and if there's a tie, I'm breaking it with my vote (If I'm involved in the match, my assistant holds the tiebreaker vote. In the unlikely event both of us are against each other...fuck it, hacker has the tiebreaker.)
I reserve the right to end any blowout contest early.
There may or may not be a 1P VS 2P LET'S FIGHT! at the end.
So, can I help out in any way?
I need an assistant who is able to start and close matches for me on Thursday through Saturday nights, and maybe some other things. You can't also be my partner if you're my assistant. If you're interested, ask me.
Other than that, no. Just come out in the spirit of sportsmanship, fun, and creativity, and leave the SERIOUS FUCKING BIZNESS behind. If you can't enter this in the spirit of fun, please don't, and if you really, really, really want to win this thing, consider whether or not you're entering for the right reasons.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask them. You have plenty of time to decide, find a team, and get some stuff set up. Brackets will be determined the afternoon of June 30th, but I'll give a little time so you know who you're facing beforehand.
Good luck, and may the best team win.