Good evening everyone.

As we all know and have seen, the last two seasons of the Jazz Jackrabbit World Championships (JJ2WC) have been very successful, thanks to a very well coordinated organization and a wide spread enthusiasm among the participating clans. Thanks to this success, we were able to organize a third edition of this precious tournament. It might be a little early to announce this third edition already, but I get loads of PM’s, MSN messages and e-mails almost every day so I decided to clear things up a bit already.

First, the date. Last season of JJ2WC was played during April and May of 2005, and was won by CC. Because it’s fair to have one world champion each year (like sports do) it’s logical that the next season of JJ2WC would take place in another year. The tournament is planned for January 2006, and it’s to be expected that all the upcoming JJ2WC’s will also be held in January of each year. Therefore, the winning clan can call itself JJ2’s 2006 World Champion. In advance of the third edition of this tournament, there will be another JJ2WC Duellist Tournament (formerly known as Pre-JJ2WC-duel-tournament) which will be held during November 2005.

The construction of the tournament won’t be changed much, but there will be some changes compared to the other two JJ2WC’s seasons. For the first time, JJ2WC will have, besides the original CTF tournament, a TeamBattle Cup. The rules of this new form of tournament are yet to be made, but it’s almost sure that the matches will be played with 3 players for each team, and that it will consist out of two rounds (like the CTF matches) which will last for 20 minutes, or 50 roasts.
Besides this new form of organization, there will be some other additions as well. From now on, all scores by each individual will be counted, as well as the number of roasts the player makes. At the end of the tournament, individuals can win awards for these things. Hopefully, we could use a modified version of ChatlogJJ2 which works under Windows XP to help us monitoring these statistics (it’s quite easy to extract scores and kills from a log file, but it’s extremely hard to do this from the game) About the rules system, it is not likely that much things will be changed. Same thing goes for the structure of the JJ2WC Duellist Tournament, which will be about the same as it was last time.

However, to get all these things started, I need cooperation from the rest of the community. It’s very difficult to organize such a tournament by myself, so I will need some active players who can help me during the tournament, as Officials (formerly known as Cupadmins). Officials will have a few duties during the tournament:
- Hosting games. It is not necessary for players to own a good server, as the hosting can be done by someone else. But it’s strongly recommended.
- Make sure that the games are played fair. I’ve seen it a few times last year that a fight broke out between members in a clan or between clans. It’s up for a Official to check that no fights are started, and that the players don’t use cheats, flame other players, move during a time-out situation etc.
- Log the matches and report scores. This can be done best by just sending the log to me (ChippieBW), and I will convert the raw stuff and insert it into the database.
- Write match logs and comment on IRC #JJ2WC will be used again as a public place where players will be informed during matches and stuff, and Officials can be assigned to do this.
The things above are the main tasks of a JJ2WC Official, here are some other requirements:
- Officials need to have a fast and stable internet connection. It should never happen that an Official drops out during a match or a comment because of an unstable internet connection, or a lack of speed. That’s why a good internet connection (i.e. Cable or ADSL) is required.
- Officials need to be ABSOLUTELY UNBIASED towards any clan. It’s a fact that some clans don’t like each other, and sadly that’s a thing we cannot easily change. To not let this affect the tournament, we won’t accept any people who have a reputation of hating special clans. Not many people are like this, but I will surely inspect it.
- Officials need to have certain experience in the game, be respected among the community and know the rules. This is the main rule, and I guess everything speaks for itself. Also, good knowledge of the English language will come in handy.
- Each clan can only represent 1 Official. This is to prevent that a certain clan influences the game too much. Most likely there will be an Official for each participating clan (unless the clan does not wish to send a representative), so the total will be around 10. At least I hope.
NOTE: I’ve had many people asking if they could be my co-Supervisor during this tournament, but I’ll have to disappoint them – I will do the supervising job alone. You can still try to become an Official.

Another very important thing, perhaps even the most crucial thing about the tournament, are the levels that are going to be played. I know this point caused a large discussion last year, and I think we’re probably going to have the same thing this year. As JJ2WC is meant to be a tournament of progress in the sometimes rusty JJ2 scene, it’s our aim to include as many new levels as possible. By new, I mean everything that has been produced since last JJ2WC (after May 2005, that is). A problem is that not much good CTF levels have been produced since then, and the same thing goes for TeamBattle. That’s why I summon every active and experienced level creator in the scene to get his butt moving and make a good CTF/TeamBattle level for JJ2WC III! Of course, if it turns out there’s a lack of decent levels a while before the tournament, we will consider playing with older levels. But that’s not what everyone wants, and to prevent that I get flamed afterwards for not announcing a level design contest, I decided it to announce it now already.
The levels need to have some certain requirements:
- The maps need to big enough to play a 3 vs. 3 match in (no actual size requirements, but 130x70 should be around the minimum, depending on the playable area)
- The maps need to be balanced (symmetry is a good idea, although it’s not required – balance is mostly needed for CTF maps but it could also come in handy for certain TeamBattle maps)
- The maps need to have a certain level of originality, look good, and have a well distributed amount of ammo, pickups and powerups.

That’s about all for now, I hope everyone will read this post carefully before asking any questions. If you still have questions, you can post them here, or send them to me in an email, the address is chippiebw@ncmv.net (also my MSN). If you want to be an Official or you made a nice TeamBattle/CTF level which you would like to see during the tournament, you can do the same. For now, I’ll inform you all later.

Regards,
ChippieBW