Introducing Your CSM16 Representatives

Yesterday CCP did the big reveal stream for CSM16, going through the election round by round to both demonstrate how STV elections work and to try and milk some suspense out of the results.

Unfortunately there wasn’t that much suspense because CCP accidentally posted the results archive up on their site before the stream, so they were up on /r/eve before hand.  CCP tried to pass that off as just “test data,” but when the results lined up it was clear that was just a smokescreen.

The winners were:

CSM16

Congratulations to those who made the cut for CSM16.

In order of election they were:

1. Merkelchen – Goonswarm Federation (first round)*
2. Gobbins – Pandemic Horde (first round)*
3. Innominate – Goonswarm Federation (first round)*
4. Brisc Rubal – The Initiative*
5. Kenneth Feld – Pandemic Legion*
6. I Beast – Method Synergy
7. Suitonia – We Form V0lta
8. Vily – Test Alliance Please Ignore*
9. Progodlegend – Test Alliance Please Ignore
10. Mike Azariah – The Scope*

*CSM15 incumbent

Seven of the eight incumbents who ran were re-elected and seven of the ten total seats when to sov null sec bloc candidates, which is about par for the course for CSM elections.  Null sec blocs tend to take between 6 and 8 seats.

Total votes cast were 38,086, up from the 36,120 cast in the CSM15 election and the 32,994 cast in the CSM14 election.  The votes by country saw the US contribute the lions share of ballots making up close to a third of the count.

CSM16 Election – Votes by Country

As happened last year, Merkelchen and Gobbins, who topped the Goonswarm and Pandemic Horde ballots respectively, met the ballot quota of 3,463 to get themselves elected in the first of the 36 rounds of elimination.  Interestingly, there were enough votes for Merkelchen in the first round, 7,726 to be exact, that his spill over elected Innominate in the first round as well, being the next candidate on the Goonswarm ballot.

Innominate, having made quota, then sent another 204 excess votes to Brisc Rubal, third on the ballot.  In the past, those voting the straight Goon ballot have generally only sent votes to the first two candidates, but there were enough voters for some to trickle down to Brisc this time.

The round one vote bounce

From there it was quite a few rounds before Brisc Rubal and then Kenneth Feld met quota and were elected.  By round 36 the final three candidates neither eliminated nor elected were Progodlegend, Mike Azariah, and Arsia Elkin.  Arsia was the last candidate eliminated, so they will be the first called up should somebody on the CSM drop off or be removed.

The State of the Final Round

Being in 11th place used to give you a pretty good shot at serving on the CSM at some point, as we had a pretty long streak of councils where somebody ended up getting tossed for non-participation or leaking NDA related information.  CSM15 was a bit of an outlier on that front.

One thing I observed from a ballot analysis (linked at the post end) was that Silent Company, the largest alliance in the game, which I mentioned in yesterday’s post, had an official ballot.  But of the 30K players in the alliance, only 133 voted their ballot. (Mike Azariah got those votes as he was the top pick on their list.)

People bitch about sov null sec candidates winning 6-8 seats every time, but there was a potential tide-turning number of voters who didn’t bother voting.  Guess what, you don’t get your act together and vote your ticket, you don’t win.

The eliminations, round by round, were as follows:

1. Elimination: “TDor Clau” with 30.551773 votes
2. Elimination: “knockerwrench Alduin” with 51.510715 votes
3. Elimination: “hurleyalex hurley” with 56.163352 votes
4. Elimination: “Styxx” with 57.628965 votes
5. Elimination: “Reicher514” with 62.725040 votes
6. Elimination: “Xenuria” with 63.810632 votes
7. Elimination: “Kay-Lynn Tsero” with 67.353259 votes
8. Elimination: “Micromancer” with 69.549025 votes
9. Elimination: “Lucrative Business Opportunity” with 99.172650 votes
10. Elimination: “Xeromus Plague” with 109.192879 votes
11. Elimination: “Broodin” with 122.813039 votes
12. Elimination: “Robert Downey Iron” with 156.601009 votes
13. Elimination: “Gay Pride BOOOOOM” with 191.050778 votes
14. Elimination: “White 0rchid” with 225.780072 votes
15. Elimination: “DutchGunner” with 231.144089 votes
16. Elimination: “Winzentowitsch Madeveda” with 244.139180 votes
17. Elimination: “Angry Mustache” with 251.063735 votes
18. Elimination: “Rich Richman” with 285.158034 votes
19. Elimination: “Baculus Orden” with 306.315076 votes
20. Elimination: “Mantis Akiga” with 309.669628 votes
21. Elimination: “Evie Kouvo” with 326.396510 votes
22. Elimination: “Eluwien” with 352.996941 votes
23. Elimination: “Shui Jing Jing” with 420.596216 votes
24. Elimination: “Jim Halescott” with 519.031531 votes
25. Elimination: “Maldavius” with 600.084464 votes
26. Elimination: “Jurius Doctor” with 671.064656 votes
27. Elimination: “Phantomite” with 720.975725 votes
28. Elimination: “teddy Gbyc” with 750.116022 votes
29. Elimination: “Dr Spodumain” with 775.232211 votes
30. Elimination: “RonUSMC” with 850.020410 votes
31. Elimination: “Rixx Javix” with 972.755342 votes
32. Elimination: “Stitch Kaneland” with 1048.711892 votes
33. Elimination: “Seddow” with 1227.656965 votes
34. Elimination: “Uriel Paradisi Anteovnuecci” with 1509.087582 votes
35. Elimination: “Mark Resurrectus” with 1736.691925 votes
36. Elimination: “Arsia Elkin” with 2241.771743 votes

And so it goes.  As I have repeated ad nauseum, CCP is in the driver’s seat when it comes to the CSM, so it is up to them to pay attention or ignore its advice.  The current relationship with the CSM seems pretty good, but CCP always talks up the CSM, even when it is in the midst of trashing its relationship with it on a whim.  We will just have to see how the next year turns out.

Related:

• CCP – CSM16 Results Announcement
• CCP Twitch – Results Video
• INN – CSM16 Election Results
• TNG – CSM 16 Election Results
• Reddit – Ballot analysis spreadsheet from Suitonia

BlizzConline and Burning Crusade Classic

We had the first day of BlizzConline yesterday.  There were some interesting announcements.  But what I was really there for was WoW Classic and The Burning Crusade expansion.  Holly Longdale got up there on the main stage… alone, no audience in the pandemic… during the opening ceremony and told us a bit about the coming of The Burning Crusade.  It wasn’t much more than a confirmation that it was coming, but it was at least that.  (Though, we knew it was coming due to that leak, but it is always good to hear somebody say it officially.)

Then, the first panel up was about that very topic.

How deep will they dive?

This was not what would have passed for a “deep dive” at past BlizzCon events.

The panel consisted of:

• Holly Longdale – Lead Producer for WoW Classic
• Patrick Dawson – Production Director for WoW
• Brian Birmingham – Lead Software Engineer for WoW Classic

The panel started with the three of them talking about their impressions of TBC back in the day for a bit, then moved on to some tales of getting the old code working within the current WoW framework, all of which was fine and interesting, but wasn’t delivering a lot of details that many fans… myself especially… were looking for.  There were no slides with bullet points or diagrams or any of the items one might have come to expect from such a presentation.

Towards the back half of the talk… it was only a 30 minute panel, so it wasn’t a long wait.. they finally started spilling out some details.

The first solid nugget in my notes was about Blood Elves and the Draenei.  They will be released into the game with the TBC pre-patch to allow players to have a chance to get leveled up some before everybody jumps through the dark portal.

Then details for characters and servers came up.

The current servers will become progression servers, a term many of us from EverQuest will remember, as SOE started doing that back in 2006 with The Sleeper and The Combine servers.  (see timeline) All of the current WoW Classic servers will move forward to TBC.

If you don’t want to go there, you will have an option.  On launch day you will make the choice for all of your characters, to stay and progress forward into TBC or to move to one of the new WoW Classic servers that will launch the same day that will remain forever vanilla.

If, at a later date, you regret your choice of committing to forever vanilla, there will be a paid service option that will let you copy a character from one of those servers to a TBC server.  You will then, at that moment, have two identical characters in each realm.  They will diverge as soon as you go through the portal and get your first gear drop, but you can be in both worlds.

Meanwhile, if you don’t want to play through all of that WoW Classic crap because TBC was your favorite part of WoW, Blizzard will have an option for you as well.  They will be offering a level 58 character boost… no Blood Elves or Draenei, sorry… so that you can jump straight to the dark portal and get going.  Oh, and you can only have one character boost per account.  If you want to raise an army of level 58s, you’ll have to do it the old fashioned way.

No pricing was announced for either the copy or the level 58 character boost.

In fact, few hard details were shared.  There were certainly no dates.  Beta will start “soon,” for whatever value you care to assign to that variable.  The rumor about a May launch seems even more laughably wrong than it did when I first heard it give how little concrete we got from this.  The tone of the discussion indicated to me that they have more work to do and want to allow time to find and fix issues before it goes live.

If you are keen to see the panel, Blizzard posted it to their YouTube channel almost immediately after it was done, so here it is.

I do want to say how weird/wonderful it was to see Holly Longdale, so long the voice of EverQuest and something of a champion for the “classic” retro experience being not just a valid desire for fans, but a lucrative direction for companies to pursue.  There is clearly a synergy… and I use that word here unironically, which is so very rare for me… between her experience and where Blizzard now wants to go with their retro WoW experience.

Anyway, that was the WoW Classic part of BlizzConline.  Tomorrow, the rest of it.

Related:

• Kaylriene – Burning Crusade Classic
• Blizzard Watch – Burning Crusade Classic in Now Officially Announced
• Blizzard Watch – Burning Crusade Classic Changes
• Blizzard Watch – Burning Crusade Classic Content Phases

 

BlizzConline Spoiled

I was going to write a night before/morning of prediction post about BlizzConline, which kicks off at 2pm Pacific Time, 22:00 UTC, today.  There were some likely bits of news we were going to hear as well as some speculation as to what other items Blizz might announce.

BlizzCon Online Today and Tomorrow

And then somebody at Blizzard accidentally let the WoW press kit out of the bag and the gaming news sites raced to publish every detail a day before the event.  That kind of takes the edge off of guessing whether or not we’ll get The Burning Crusade in classic form or what the next step for Shadowlands will be. (Here is the WoW Head version, if you’re dying to see it.)

Yes, there always seem to be leaks of some sort when it comes to BlizzCon.  The company even attempts to signal things to the fans now and then.  But when you straight up get the press release a day and a half in advance… well, the anticipation is somewhat drained.

I am still going to watch the presentations.  As I have said before, you can glean a surprising amount of information from somebody speaking about a topic that might go unmentioned in a groomed and vetted press release.  Naturally, there will be a post-con write up of my impressions.

And there are still questions about other Blizzard franchises.  What will be the news of Diablo IV?  When will Diablo Immortal finally ship?  Will they confirm a Diablo II remaster?  Does Blizzard have anything else new and/or exciting to announce?

The event schedule looks fairly anodyne, but we have seen in the past that Blizz can update the schedule based on announcements during the keynote.  Remember in 2018 when all the Diablo panels became Diablo Immortal panels?  Okay, forget that one, that was a bad example.

Who knows.  Maybe the WoW press release was just a plant, a diversion, and J. Allen Brack will go up on stage and tell us we don’t really want The Burning Crusade and we’ll be retweeting variations of that Willy Wonka “You Get Nothing!” meme all next week.