sorry for the long post ... just wanted to get most of it all in one place ...
First, full disclosure .. I’m a statistician and wedded to logic … but you don’t need to be one to follow the math or the other logic below …. just think about the things that you don’t know and that you’re depending on a German-based company to be objective about whether or not German-based players “win”…
1) It’s a baseline thing - The easiest way to ensure that one server would win against any other is to fuss with the baseline. For example, if you’re in charge of counting “active players”, you simply DECREASE the number of active players on the preferred server and INCREASE the number of active players on the server you want to lose or, to make it seem fair, on ALL the other servers. You change the baseline and make the goal easier to reach for the preferred server(s) and harder – potentially MUCH harder – for other servers to reach. We were not given the number of supposedly active players per servers. So we’ll never know what baseline was used, and we will never know if those numbers were accurate anyway. Using "percentages of completion" seems fair until you consider how that baseline can so easily be moved.
2) It’s a counting thing – Even if you assume that the baselines were honest, you have no idea how many completed quests there were. Were the rumored incomplete quests on another server counted? Who really knows?
If the math on this doesn’t make sense to you, let me know and I’ll show you.
Another theory … differences in server maintenance …
The Zeus server had (and continues to have) serious server problems. Ares has some, but not all of these problems. Do these problems exist on other servers? What proportion of US players can’t access the game? Were they counted as ‘active’ players if their problems are recent and they now can’t access the game? Do the European servers have these problems and if so, are these problems ongoing there? We will never know. Are all servers ‘down’ for the same amount of time all of the time? For the implication of this, see above: it’s the same idea of decreasing the baseline for the preferred server and/or shortening the amount of time that other servers get to play. (On a personal note here, those daily postings from our board mod have been really annoying as they don’t account for the supposed time lag differences - or if they did, that little fact was never mentioned, and the effect on morale was immediate …. And very, very predictable….)
And third, the time frame thing:
Supposedly this event is adjusted for starting times, with European servers getting to start first and servers in other countries having a different amount of time to complete. The results were not posted this way (US servers would ALWAYS be at least 6 hours behind) … and btw…. If the language used on Zeus is any indication, quite a few players are NOT US based since their command of English is more than a little bit tenuous. They are likely in different time zones altogether, and I have to wonder whether or not they can synchronize with the time of the Zeus server. I’m happy that we are a multi-national server, but some (how many????) of our players may have been at a distinct disadvantage.
Overall, I suspect that the intent here might have been good… but then, I tend to think kindly of most folks … the execution of the idea hasn’t been good enough to deserve the label of “poor” … all of which is a real shame. When the competition was announced, I thought it was an interesting idea .. but the total lack of transparency on the part of the organizers is very disheartening … as I said in another post, let’s take what good we can from this event …. And think long and hard about participating in anything like it in future.