Tournament
Tournaments are contests of skill between players usually held in The Crossing Cemetery. In a basic tournament, two teams fight in the three designated areas of the cemetery until one team kills all the members of the opposing team. Teams are picked by team captains, usually volunteers or chosen from a list of participants. The two captains will then ROSHAMBO, the winner has the option of taking the north room and first pick from the list or south room and second two picks. Another method is to pick one for one. The captains should discuss which method to use prior to the first pick being made.
After the teams are picked, a countdown period of 3 - 5 minutes is granted for teams to develop strategy and buff each other. The teams must start in designated rooms when the countdown reaches 0. The current generally accepted rules for tournaments are as follows:
Crossing Cemetery Tourney Rules
- Violation of any rule means consent to be hunted by any other tourneyer.
- Don't leave the three rooms (North, middle, South) once the fight starts. Doing so is automatic disqualification/death.
- Don't cast anything during the fight that effectively nerfs an area of combat entirely (like Banner of Truce).
- Don't use items or abilities that mimics the same (no Fortress of Ice houses or crystal sanctuaries where you generate a temporary room to just hide out).
- No interference in the fight by anyone dead once or outside the list, and no stealing gear. Doing so is immediate consent for anyone and everyone to kill you and everyone you know.
- Don't rob or otherwise hinder triage.
- Leave IN CHARACTER DRAMA AT THE GATE-TOURNEYS WILL HAVE OOC CHATTER AND ARE GENERALLY CONSIDERED OOC. Brush this off as everyone needs to train to kill even with enemies, just like hunting grounds.
- Uninvited interruption of a tourney is considered bad form and consent for anyone and everyone to kill you when they want.
Tournament History
Tournaments in DragonRealms started sometime in the late 1990s. Players would frequently use The Cemetery as an ideal spot for PvP as it was conveniently located right outside of town. Groups of players would often gather there for spars and other types of PvP challenges such as "King of the Hill". Tournaments were a logical progression once large crowds of eager players were gathered. During the peak of DragonRealms, tournaments were held almost daily for several hours at a time; there was no need for special announcements or days in advance planning. The popularity of them increased as players formed websites where logs of tournaments were posted and the losers ridiculed. Most popular of these websites was the infamous House of Ownzing
With the release of DragonRealms: The Fallen many of the frequent tournament participants migrated to the new game, which lead to the steady decline in activity in Prime Tournaments. Other factors contributed to this decline and soon The Crossing Cemetery became desolate.
It wasn't until a group of players associated with the Smelly Cat Forums started scheduling and hosting tournaments that the contests started to regain some of their popularity. Currently those forums are the best resource for finding out about the latest tournaments and for reading tournament logs.