VGC11 Locations & Dates Announced!

[No. 1 Machop Fan]

What about the Australian VGC locations? :chaos:

/jealous sarcasm

 

[Feathers]

Hm. :/

I don't know if I will do Seattle again this year. Especially with medals... I mean, the main thing for me would have been a trophy since I can't exactly make it to nats. I'm in Disneyland for graduation from July 4th-8th. I suppose I could still try for Worlds, but I'm supposed to go to Florida on the 19th of August.

I could do my team up this weekend, but I don't know if it would be worth it to go just for Seattle. I mean, I'd get to see my friends again, but... I don't know.

I am frustrated that Canada was excluded yet again. At least stops where we had the B/W tour... even our own tournament like the one Aus is getting would have been good enough.

 

[Firestorm]

Eh, Seattle is close enough to Vancouver that I don't think Vancouverites can complain too much. Closest to me right now is all 8 hours away. I'd kill to go to Seattle and see everyone again =(

 

[Feathers]

Eh, Seattle is close enough to Vancouver that I don't think Vancouverites can complain too much. Closest to me right now is all 8 hours away. I'd kill to go to Seattle and see everyone again =(

My only complaint is that I currently have no way to get there without my dad driving me, which I pay for in gas money. I also lose a day at work and that is like $70 and I only work two days a week. I'd rather skip a day of work and not pay $60 on top of that... plus he never wants to stay so I can hang around with anyone. I might see what Caffwin is doing, if it's possible to get a ride with her.

Theoretically you could drive to one. We drove from Toronto to NY city last year. 9 hours but I got myself back to Nintendo World.

I just don't know if it'd be worth it for me to go.

Shit, never mind. My graduation is on the 13th and I stay up all night into the 14th. Looks like I'm out this year. I'll try and make Worlds work.

 

[Kikuichimonji]

Or can I sign up and attend? I'm thinking about heading down to Newark.

It's first come first serve, people usually start lining up several hours before the event but I have never seen registration for a regional event fill up; I went to San Jose last year (one of the larger ones from my understanding) and they were still more than 100 people short of the cap for the upper age division. And, looking at the website for San Jose regionals, it looks like they've doubled the cap from last year. Basically, if you show up before the registration deadline, you will get to play.

I just talked with Deagle and confirmed the obvious (he and Metabou will be attending the San Jose regional, which is less than a two hour drive away), and since I'll be in California for most of May I'll be able to accompany them. Huzzah!

Odds are pretty high that I'll also be in California in August, so there's a possibility that I might attend Worlds too (I don't expect to qualify, but there is always grinder).

As always, it seems like VGC and TCG take place simultaneously, which I consider unfortunate as someone who has interest in both.

 

[Scarmask]

Still...still no Australia? WHY DO YOU HATE ME?

 

[MasterSwordsmanGallade]

Still...still no Australia? WHY DO YOU HATE ME?

I feel your pain, fellow Aussie.

 

[No. 1 Machop Fan]

I feel your pain, fellow Aussie.

Me too.

However, I think the State Championships were created because of our constant rejections from the World Championships.

 

[The Shiny Umbreon]

No Midwest stop? Nintendo's being cruel. Just have to find a way to make another regional...

 

[Pokemafia]

I'm pissing my self laughing here at TPCi's choice of the exhibition hall for the UK qualifier,
they have actually chosen a smaller venue, despite people not being able to get in last year.

 

[RBG]

For those who have been complaining about Medals instead of Trophys.

I am the person most responsible for pushing this change. So even though past experience tells me that no good can come of this, I am going to respond to the criticism. I knew that this would not be a popular decision with many of the players. I don’t think that player’s complaining about it is unreasonable. We gave you something big and impressive and now we are taking that away. I didn’t expect that go over without having a few shots lobbed my way. I did it anyway because it is a good decision.

I think it was a good decision because I believe the trophies took up too large a portion of our limited resources for the benefit they provided. The POP team doesn’t get to decide how much money we have to spend but are often responsible for deciding how that money gets distributed. There usually aren’t direct correlations between saving money in one place and spending on another. In this case there is; I took part of the savings and bought new State Championships in Arkansas, Nebraska and Alabama with it. Without this change, those events would not happen this year.

I see posts dismissing the savings as unimportant and I have to believe you haven’t really thought about it. I don’t think that even the people trying to defend us really grasp the scope of the problem. I would love to rattle off some pricing here, but I cannot do that and expect to remain employed. However I can point out some tournament numbers, mention some shipping routes and ask a question to try to bring a bit of perspective.

Firstly, glass is fragile and those trophies did break. In order to combat this we had to pay a company to uncrate the trophies and put them into custom designed padded display boxes. They still broke, so the next year we put those custom boxes into large shipping boxes filled with packing peanuts. Now only a few break, but we have to ship the all trophies from the manufacturer in China to the Ohio box company and then to our South Dakota fulfillment house, before sending them off to the organizers.

Last year we had 125 SPTs worldwide. That is 1500 heavy glass trophies; plus a large volume of packing material that doesn’t ship for free. My guess is that your largest estimate of the shipping and handling costs wouldn’t get them to South Dakota let alone to individual tournaments all over the world. Now for the homework; how much does it cost to ship a 442 pound pallet from Sioux Falls SD to Melbourne Australia? Don’t forget insurance, it is a 442 pound pallet of glass. Oh, and import duties for a pallet of trophies that are considerably more expensive than the estimates I see bandied about.

I look at all that and have to justify those costs against the benefits and the trophies come up short. I imagine that is why you don’t see a lot of other game companies shipping 1500 big hunks of glass to 22 countries. We have wanted to replace them for a few years but didn’t have a better option.

We finally found a suitable replacement in the new medals. Besides being cheaper, smaller and blessedly lighter, I think they look really nice. My guess is if we had started out with these everyone would have thought they were cool and we wouldn’t be having this fuss.

The intangibles brought up by Meganium and others are also true. The glass trophies are not compelling in photographs unless you stage them like a product shot. Even the City medals look great in photos, and the new medals are bigger and more colorful. Somebody called wearing a medal to a tournament bad sportsmanship, I call it a photo op. We are truly excited over the prospect of all the juniors strutting around Worlds proudly wearing their medals. Whether you competitive players like it or not, Organized Play is a division of Marketing. Generating photographs of cute children decked out in Pokémon gear is one of our primary benefits to our company.

http://pokegym.net/forums/showthread.php?p=1915133#post1915133

Although that post was direct to the TCG events, the same could mostly be applied to the VGC events.

 

[Pokérob]

As much as I agree it's a shame we won't see the trophies this year and obviously would look nicer, I think the medal is good enough as long as they're quite big. Well will see what they look like when the winners claim them. :)

 

[Pokemafia]

It is a shame there are no trophies, but I can understand why, and I'm actually glad there aren't any because that money can be and has been spent in other ways to greatly improve the tournament for all of us.
I think we should be grateful of that fact.

 

[Oberon]

let's be fair, wearing medals instantly makes you more badass

gotta have that swag at nationals/words man

 

[Pokemafia]

This is true, and am I right in saying that only 1st and2nd place get the airfares this year?

 

[Havak]

I love how certain staff members from TPCi come out and explain things to everyone, I really appreciate it.

 

[Cybertron]

Here's an excellent post Mike wrote, describing the decisions about locations made this year.

 

[Roz]

Glad to see they actually wanted to have a Regionals in Canada. I think like him though, 3 age divisions is better than hosting a tourney here. Maybe we'll have one in 2012!

 

[Maestro Arena]

I think Europe should have a 6th championship. One hosted in Amsterdam, then move the German championship to Berlin. It would be more accesible to more people.

 

[mudkipmaster]

ATL 2 years in a row FTW!

Also, Washington DC is an interesting location...

 

[Shinryu]

I would not go as far as you, but i am quite upset about the removal of Phoenix from the list.

Eh don't worry, I have more than enough hatred to keep us covered.

So...I am depressed though...I'm definitely not bothering to go to Nats for sure, only reason I could even afford to think about it last year was because of that travel voucher I won (and even then still was living in the red thanks to stupid airline prices)...hell I don't even want to bother saving for Worlds; grinding in, meh...

 

[DM]

I'm not gonna lie, I couldn't give two shits about their budget. Every tournament they have put together since JAA in 2006 has paled in comparison, and last I checked you're supposed to be trying to OUTDO yourself. Why is there a budget anyway? They should be THROWING money at this event.

 

[SupremeDirt]

I'll see you guys at nationals.

But I'll only be going for TCG.

 

[breh]

I'm not gonna lie, I couldn't give two shits about their budget. Every tournament they have put together since JAA in 2006 has paled in comparison, and last I checked you're supposed to be trying to OUTDO yourself. Why is there a budget anyway? They should be THROWING money at this event.

What money does this generate exactly?

It's a relatively little-known event that really does little for pokemon's publicity. I mean, if there was a 1$ entry fee or something, I could see that happen to an extent, but for now it's more entertainment than truly amazing advertising.

To put it simply, it attracts few new customers (the people attending are mostly well-familiarized with pokemon and obviously must have bought games to attend).

 

[Atlas]

I did have a National Championships planned for this Canada year. I was even talking to Marvin about tying it to TCG Nationals. However, I was way over budget and had to choose between having Canadian Nationals or adding a third age division. I felt having a three division system was more important to the long term health of the program than having a Canadian Nationals this year would be. I still have a strong desire to have events in Canada, Australia and other places. I just need to get to a point where I can make the existing events more cost-effective so that I can make that happen.

oh fuck off...

having an age group consisting of only 4 ages is totally justified for not giving canada an event