nwo-gaming :: Trackmania Nations ::

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Dignitas	2/1
Devoted	2/0
Excello	3/0
[K]arma	3/0
ReV	3/0

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nWo closes it’s doors
Posted by Zell on Wednesday June 25 2008 @ 19:48

Tonight I’m presenting to you a long news post, but it might be the last news posted on this website.

Why?
Last night, Ddie and spy left nWo for the new Belgian organization Cryo. At the same time, Frostbeule migrated to n-faculty. All three players moved due to the promise of LAN support for their ESWC endeavors.
While three players leaving wouldn’t usually be a fatal hit on nWo by any means, the release of TMNF has not helped with regards to motivation, rather it has impacted negatively on players such as Gnom and Sandder. Tannis has also voiced his intention to leave nWo after ESWC.Fr in July, and of the players remaining, only half still have the motivation/time to consistently train hard for upcoming tournaments such as STC5, which only counts 3 players.
With these prospects, we have decided to retire from all serious competitions while we are still #1, and to let nWo remain a legendary team in the annals of Trackmania Nations.

The sponsorship issue…
While nWo started off as a fun team with a strong competitive spirit, and most players were only interested in these two things alone, there were some who wanted more for our results.
This is where the idea of sponsorship came about, and after testing the waters of sponsorship through contacting hardware companies and multigaming organizations, we joined H2k-Gaming, who were at the time a highly successful organization that could offer all of our players LAN support and hardware.
However things went sour, and after Moriah left nWo due to payment complications, we decided to leave H2k-Gaming and find greener pastures.

With our experience, we contacted many interested multigaming organizations, and received a very good response in general.
Many organizations promised us LAN support if we wait a while, or tried to coax us into joining with the promise of LAN support to come, however all of them without exception either turned out to be hoaxes, or just could not deliver on the requirement of LAN support.
While things were looking bad in early 2008, we came into contact with a very successful German organization that was interested in adopting our squad and building on that. They apparently had set a very nice budget aside in order to send our players to LANs of our choice until after ESWC, where we would then sign another contract. We would also be receiving hardware support, and our players would participate in events to advertise the brand. All that remained was for ktd to meet the CEO and sign the contract.

These were very nice prospects, and when Ddie contacted me saying he is searching for LAN support, we told him the situation, and then recruited Ddie and spy into nWo, bolstering our force.
However, scheduled meeting after scheduled meeting, the CEO of this organization came up with excuses as to why he could not make the meeting, and in the end we found out that a strong advertising organization in Germany was really in control. After much negotiation with them, they decided that they did not want to build a racing brand just yet.
With all this time wasted, our backup option which was to return to H2k-Gaming fell away, as the money that was reserved for us was spent elsewhere.

So with no other option, ktd decided to sponsor nWo until other options became available.
He sponsored a few LANs of Frostbeule, spy, Ddie and Tannis, most notably XL Party Loures where Frostbeule beat Moriah with an impressive advantage. Unfortunately due to personal problems, ktd has been unable to continue this sponsorship, and this left us back to square one on this issue.
With the help of Ddie and spy I contacted many multigaming organizations, and even a hardware manufacturer, but barely received responses… I made it clear that we are only interested in LAN support, as I had wasted enough time speaking to people who wanted us to change our tag for “the name” or mouse pads. Perhaps this straightforwardness and the lack of interest in TMN as an esport is what led to the dismal results in our final attempt to get nWo sponsored.

A look back at TMN’s new World order
nWo was created by a bunch of the best online racers in 2006, who had already formed a strong camaraderie by playing fun matches/mixes often, and yearned for more competition.
We thought that TMU would become the new game of choice, but soon after its release we realized that TMN was here to stay, and became an exclusively TMN team.

Our first goal was to defeat the arrogant Dignitas back in 2006, and we joined the ESL in order to achieve that and to make a name of nWo. Unfortunately, after many online fun-wars and ESL matches, we did not get the opportunity to face Dignitas, but that opportunity was going to come soon. Or so we thought.
At the prime of our success, when we were wearing the H2k-Gaming tag, we arrived at the STC3 final where we were set to face Dignitas. Sadly they forfeited, and although we were happy to be crowned STC3 champions, we were disappointed by the fact that our goal would have to wait.

This opportunity finally came in 2008, in the Tech Tournament organized by Portuguese player RastaDocta and his team. We were set to face Dignitas in the final, but were missing Frostbeule and L3gend, thus we were not sure we could achieve victory. Nonetheless the motivation returned to all available players for that one week before the final, and we were ready.
Dignitas dominated us on the first map, and on the second map things were quite close, with our players really nervous as defeat was looming. We managed to take the second map, and then dominate on the final map, thus beating Dignitas 2-1, and finally achieving our first goal when nWo was born.

Among our more memorable moments are our first match as nWo versus BL, which was a 10vs10 match on 10 tracks which we won 10-0, and our match as the TMN All-stars versus XXX before we even thought of being in the same team together. By now we have almost 50,000 unique visits to our humble website, and an impressive list of achievements as solo players and as a team spanning almost 2 years.
While the early days of nWo might have been the most fun as we were new to the competitive TMN scene, and professional gaming scene, our time spent in H2k-Gaming was probably our most successful.
We had a very motivated lineup that dominated STC3, was voted #1 in the last community world ranking, and had a large following of fans. A video of our team in those days made by Gnom can be found here: http://82.211.19.201/video/H2k_FILM.wmv

Although we lost the STC4 final, we cemented our position with the victory in Tech Tournament, however soon after that is when a lot of motivation was lost.
TMNF came out with a huge landing bug problem that has ruined the fun for some of us, and the ESL decided to hold a tournament right after major teams tournaments, and during a time where most ESWC qualifiers were to be held, resulting in us not participating.
As you now see, the sponsorship issue was too big of a problem due to unfortunate events, and with the release of TMNF much interest has been lost in the competition.

Final thoughts
Many people were hoping for the release of TMNF to change things for the fortune of Trackmania Nations squads regarding e-sports. Some were saying that the dropping of “ESWC Edition” from the name would allow it to spread out into other international LAN tournaments. However for now only Digital Games 2008 has decided to feature TMNF in its long list of games, but this tournament will not help gamers with travel expenses, nor will there be any prizes up for grabs for the winners. So far this is not a victory for the progress of TMNF.

In my experience of multigaming organizations and TMN, Dignitas are the black sheep with regards to their good fortune. We have seen many teams come and go thanks to broken promises from organizations, and I have met many charlatans who dominate the lower-mid bracket of multigaming organizations. I truly hope for the sake of Ddie, spy and Frostbeule, and for the sake of the community that Cryo, Begrip, n-faculty, and other organizations will keep their promises and give them adequate support for a long time to come, but only time will tell.
With regards to this new update from Nadeo titled TMNF, I believe that the competitive part of the community is going to grow smaller, which we are already seeing with the loss of motivation, and retirement of players, the latest being Maxou from W1. The constant growth seen during the TMN ESWC Edition era has stopped, and unless these bugs are fixed, it may not return.

With regards to nWo, we still have the “nWo for life” spirit, however this will not continue in TMNF.
We have formed strong bonds the last 1 year and 9 months, and will continue to play online games together and just have fun. Some of us may play TMUF competitions or even fun TMNF competitions if ET decides to host them, but these ponies are now migrating in search of better pastures.
We want to thank all our friends, fans, and supporters in the community for a wonderful year and 9 months, and wish all the best to everyone.

And lastly I’d like to present to you all the influential members, honorary members, and ex-members who have worn the nWo tag and helped us be the best.