If people do not know, I am a trekker, not a trekkie, a trekker. Calling a trekker a trekkie is like calling an Asian person oriental, it's an outdated term and some find it offensive. So now you reader is wondering what the heck does this have to do with King of the Ring? Well the very last episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation tv series was called 'All Good Things...' basically a shortened version of 'all good things must come to an end' and that was what I had in mind for King of the Ring: Requiem. It was a good thing but it was time to wrap it up and call it quits.
From day one I designed it and promoted it to be the last one, from the picking of the name 'Requiem' (it was also picked as a tribute to Dean, who disappeared from the scene). When I made the Requiem trailers I wanted an almost end of days feel. The Evanescence trailer (included in part three) ended with the scene from the Matrix: Revolutions of Neo confronting Smith and saying 'It ends tonight'. To put it bluntly the fat lady was doing warm ups.
I posted it up on TZ, I made an FAQ and people like always were signing up. I was excited it looked like we would have a good turn out. It turned out I was right. On the day we had a record 13 people signed up. Now KOR had always gathered a big bunch of people but 13 was unheard of. It was a fusion of past, present and new KOR players. Representing the past was Erks, Andrew, Henry, SEP. The present was of course me, Mario, Ric, Yous, Tara, Tim, Hussam and Alex. The new blood was Michael Jackson aka Oak (refer to my intermission 1 video if you want to see him).
The tournament started on a sour note, some people were late and therefore the tournament did not start on time. The bracket too was a nightmare, due to the large amount of people. 13 people and each person need to play every other person? That is a lot of matches. I should have realized it then and there that it was just too many and made a cut off the first 10 people and the other 3 couldn't play but I did not wanted to spoil anyones chances of particpating in the last KOR so I decided to run with it. There is an old saying "the path to Hell is paved with good intentions".
Andrew, winner of the second KOR finally made an an apperance and wanted to play, however, due to work commitments, he wanted to play all his matches in a row. I saw no problem mainly because playing all your matches in a row is usually a hindence as opposed to a benefit (saiyuk and Danis Kool both played most of their matches in a row and complained that it was too much in the first KOR), Andrew also paid his money so he deserved to play. Andrew went on to win almost all of his matches except against Erks. So what could have happened was Andrew would have won KOR without some of the people even playing all their matches. That I admit would have sucked however it didn't happen like that. Erks beat him therefore there was still a chance for someone to draw with him and force the tournament into a tie breaker. Someone could also beat Erks and win all their matches and make it a three way tie. However intend of rising to a challenge, people seemed to lose interest in the tournament and behind the back bickering started. Coupled with a long tournament (4 hrs), most people left the tournament early and worst, upset. In the end, Erks won most of his matches except one against Michael Jackson (it still blows me away to this day) so Erks had to play a tie breaker with Andrew the next time we had a chance. KOR: Requiem was not over yet.
Now I am going to man up and say, yes the tournament was too long. Yes I should have made a cut off 10 players. I admitted that in my post tournament post and I will admit it again now, years later. I however will not admit that I did anything wrong by letting Andrew play his matches in a row, he paid his tournament fee, he obviously couldn't stay due to work. If anyone else asked me to play all their matches in a row then I would have let them because I was trying to make everyone happy. It was a tournament by us, for us.
However in the aftermath of Requiem, a dark cloud started to form and people decided to critique everything and anything about the tournament. Now for me, this was a slap in my face. I ran this tournament with help from others, with money from my own pocket, I did the promotion and built the name of KOR to the point where even people who didn't play in KOR were looking at it and saying that it looked fun and wish there was character tournament for their own main characters. So for some people to express their opinions on a public forum and not had the decency to talk to me about on the day (SEP I am looking at you) or in a private message I felt like I was being spitted on. I knew before I ran it that Requiem was going to be the last KOR tournament but this cemented it. I went out of my way to run a tournament and just have fun. This tournament was never for me, I won two and each time I accepted it with humility. I created KOR for the people and the four other near perfect KOR's wasn't good enough for them, they just wanted to bitch about the one 'bad' one.
I went on to say that I would never run a KOR ever again and I was surprised by the reaction from some people. Aken, a person whom I can't say was ever a good friend of mine said
"man u dont have to stop running KOR coz of this.....even tho I never enter KOR but I like how alot of ppl are in galaxy during the tourni during KOR... just dont give up man let just say I am one of the KOR fan"
LOL spelling errors and all. I was happy to see someone people appreciated the effort me and other put into it but I was done.
An ironic post script, a couple weeks later we were able to run the tie breaker match between Andrew and Erks to decide who won KOR: Requiem and it was
Good on you Turk :D and Crimson joined previous winners, that included me, Andrew and Kaz King. So for everyone who was bitching about Andrew having it in the bag or that Andrew and Erks were friends that they would never play each other, in the end there was a clear cut winner and it wasn't even Andrew.
What makes me laugh to this day is something Snap wrote, Snap always wanted to participate in KOR but never had the chance due to scheduling. He is a rather well know King player. What he said was
"I think KOR is a great idea too. I really regret not being able to come to any. They usually sound like alot of fun.If Phil is a little hesitant to host again, I'm sure someone else would be willing to step up"
The thing is, in the couple years I have been gone from the scene, no one has. No one wanted to put in the same amount of work, the money, the promoting that I did. I wonder why?
Part four I must admit was the hardest part to write mainly because the fact that the last KOR was not a success... it made noise but it wasn't the noise that I wanted. When I started writing this retrospective, I wanted people to see how something that started so well ended up the way it did. I wanted people to know what I thought about it and how I currently feel. One of the things that has happened to me since the end of KOR is that I have became more involved in religion. I am living a transformed life now and praise the Lord as my shepherd and my Savior. I look back now and I realize that my feelings can be summed up by the Lord's Prayer
"And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us".
Is is the past now and I am done looking back and now ready to move on. The last King Of the Ring did not ended well but I am ready to take it back to it's glorious days. With T6 released and heading to console, KOR will be back and like always I already have a name picked out for it.
"King Of the Ring: Redemption."
pP
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