Hello everyone! My name is Cake, one of the coordinators of Tournament of Ages and would like to address some of the comments regarding our timeline and why we have decided to approach things this way.
Tournament of Ages is something that is planned six months in advance publicly, and something coordinators start working on the day after ToA finishes. Even if just small notes we scribble down, or ideas we throw at one another throughout the downtime months. Once January hits; however, we start really cracking down and really getting to work. We decide on charities, set up spreadsheets for prizes that vary from gold to actual physical items, assign staff to games and tournaments, the list goes on.
We love roleplay and hold it near and dear to our hearts. Nothing makes us happier in this game than knowing we could bring the server together and provide a week of entertainment and roleplay for everyone. But we can’t predict everything. When we began planning we did not even know what the prepatch was going to be like, we did not know when these things would begin happening. As much as we wish we could throw Tournament of Ages into its own special time bubble and avoid major plots that have already occurred, we have decided it is for the best we do not.
It would be far too difficult to control the entire server for this event, so we stick with canon time.
Burning of Teldrassil: We understand how hard this will be for the Night Elf community. Why would they want to show up is one of the major questions we get asked almost daily. But it is difficult to push this before the burning and expect the entire server to not acknowledge this. We want to remind people this is ICly run by Argents, a neutral faction. But we do have some ways for people to attend if they feel they do not know how.
1. Attend on a patriotic character by having them plan to give moral victory to their cause by beating the combatants from the other faction.
2. Attend on a character more aligned to peace or one of the neutral factions on Azeroth.
I understand this is not what everyone wants to see, but there is far too many logistics behind ToA to make such a last minute shift.
We have been asked why we choose to ignore the early release for those who preordered.
It would not be fair to exclude people who have not preordered, so we are choosing to keep with the lore we have been given and will not be counting it. We also do not want to release during expansion drop, obviously and want to keep ToA as the normal dates due to people, staff, and coordinators taking days off work to run and attend this. We are sorry for any confusion this may cause and hope you all still find ways to attend ToA if new reasons are needed.
I also would like to restate: Many Coordinators and Staff take time off work for this so we cannot change the IRL physical date to be sooner. We also have too many things listed and locked in date wise that regard charity.
We also would like to state that you do not have to follow our timeline. We as the coordinators and staff have set this time, but in the end it is your account and your character. If you want to show up and not acknowledge wars have happened yet, or previous server campaigns, you do not have to and we will not force you. But please understand that people may choose not to acknowledge you or that subject at least during roleplay.
I myself am just planning to not discuss the wars and such on my character when I attend unless the person speaking to me brings it up first. I just want to enjoy the hard work the community has put together to create various booths, games, and charity events.
I really hope this has answered some of your questions, if you have more you are welcome to reblog this and I will try to answer as soon as I can.
Or just tag @ cake in the ToA discord. Thank you and we look forward to seeing you all at Tournament of Ages!
