2.7. Round End/2.8 stuff

If you haven't read Jerle's thread on the webboards, this round is ending on Friday. On Saturday, a new round will begin. 2.8 will have 2.6 mechanics without the alternity elements, double speed, and will last six weeks.

I won't mince words: this round has been terrible. More than that, we have been terrible this round. We are effectively second in most major categories, we won two insignificant "wars," and we won the jump yesterday, but our performance this round has been far subpar by our standards.

This can be blamed on a number of things, including the atrocious mechanics, general disinterest in the round, all the vacations and inactivity and so forth. However, more importantly, we failed to ever really commit to any objective. We started things but didn't finish them. We did not plan or execute like ourselves, and we paid for it. We will not make that mistake again.

Even so, we're near the end and we've made it though. We've lost some players, but we're still here. It speaks volumes about the quality of people we have here that we can have as poor a round as this without turning on eachother. I want to thank those of you that made the effort to play this round and contribute to the alliance. We've had a bunch of good members this round, but Matrim, DCD, Pingu, Detmer, hybridxaos, z0r and MrM in particular all deserve special mention for their outstanding effort, activity, and attitudes.

We're going to approach 2.8 differently than we did this round. As it's a short round with double turns, we're not going to field a raid team and we're not going to run any ops. Hunting, jumping and getting kills is going to be our one and only focus, with the aim of building skills and activity and having fun. It is NOT going to be a "do whatever the hell you want" free for all, but with no ops, our style will be different than usual.

One thing to be aware of: we need to be in top form for 3.0. We are going to hit that round running and not look back, and we are not going to be able to afford the kind of dead weight on the roster we've had this round. The activity and turnouts we have had recently will not cut it in 3.0, and when Nomad starts, we WILL trim the roster of semiactives and noncontributors. Through 2.8 we will get a sense of where our roster's at and what changes will be needed for 3.0. Keep that in mind.

Specific plans for 2.8 races and such will be posted in a day or two.