Hey, I'm just going off what I've been told by Wiz on several occasions. Overall, the reception was fine, but a number of top players (I hear Wiz point out PC Chris the most when Melee 2k7 ever comes up) really made a bad impression last year, much like the finalists of GG did (in a different way and not nearly as bad of one, however). But that's beside the point. It's only a part of why we see Brawl as we do today in Evo.
Wiz is hardly a good source for objective facts.
In his thread about discussing the ruleset, where he claimed to be "open for discussion" though he was not, one of the rules were "Any uncivil language will result in an automatic ban" (not verbatim). Guess what, someone said "You're a ****ing idiot" to me. And despite the fact that I was perfectly civil and almost not even sarcastic at all (in order to not even come close to challenging that rule) before
and after that post, the user was not banned.
In order to guarantee that Wiz saw the post at hand, I PM:ed him. No response. A few days later, I PM:ed him again. No response. Needless to say, Wiz, not so objective. His "facts", not objective at all.
I can't remember the name of the member who insulted me at the moment, but according to other SRK posters, he's one of the most hated SRK-members so it's not like they'd hesitate to ban him. I can only assume Wiz thouroughly ignored the matter because I was one of the most vocal anti-item debaters and as such, he thought I didn't deserve the same rights as any other SRK-members and that the rules that
he himself put up did not apply to me (lest they could be used to ban me, I guess. I doubt
I would've gotten away with saying the same thing).
The real fact is that the three primary members of the Evo staff (the Cannons and Wiz) all wanted to see items in Brawl, and there wasn't really much that could be said to change that, aside from showing them precisely why they were detrimental to play. Hell, when Melee was first presented to them in 2k4, the Cannons (before the Nintendo fiasco) practically insisted to leave items in, as it was then that the community started to split on the notion. It was never truly shown to be a problem, just a preference, and the compromise was created.
1) Yeah, this is obvious. We tried to reason with Wiz. We told him a bunch of things. He didn't even
try to debate us, as opposed to many of the other SRK members who at least tried to debate and refute us. Wiz just went "The rules are set, we made some tests, they proved items don't skew results too much (these were limited testing done by less knowledgable people who do not even know what to look out for other than obvious gimp kills)." and that was the end of that.
And this is why we're upset. It's not that they just went "We'll do it our way". They didn't even listen to us, even though they claimed they would,
and they claimed to have proven their standpoint, even though they hadn't.
2) What compromise, really? The fact that not
all items are allowed? What items compromise arose out of this? Evo 2K7 didn't have items because Smash was a last-minute addition. They didn't have the time to "test" items out to determine a good items list. There was no compromise, they just didn't have enough time. For 2k8, I see no compromise at all. Have they even revised the banned items list after we protested? I mean, last time I checked, Golden Hammers and
Smash Balls were still on.
NOTE: This is not mindless whining. This is setting facts straight. I was there in the eye of the storm. Even though I didn't read all of that big thread of suck, I read a lot of it. Don't come here and spread misinformation, even if it comes from Wiz himself.