A few imaginary words with a HT-God.

Have you ever read interviews with HT-staff? They are incredibly stupid. We reasoned we could do it even more stupid and not even have to waste time contacting them. Listen in on this IMAGINARY interview with head of PR relations, HT-Tjecken.

Hi Tjecken, Thank you for doing this imaginary interview.

It's my pleasure, thank you.

Thank you.

No problem

Thank you

Okay, first question, why are you spending your time doing silly interviews like this one when you should use all your energy and time to fix all the problems with Hattrick? Isn't that a perfect example of how bad the HT-team is at prioritising their time? A perfect example of incompetence?

I see your point. However, we don't separate things that way. Our customers are an important part of this game. Without them there would be no game. So it is tremendously important that we keep them informed.

What is your opinion on the Swedish conspiracy?

http://www.student.cs.uwaterloo.ca/~dwhelton/

It's so obvious you would say that. Don't you think it's rather striking that the Swedish league games take place on Sundays while many other leagues are played on Saturdays and during the big crash the site was kept down until Saturday so only Swedish people had a fair chance to set a line up while for instance Balkan people didn't?

No. We don't see the world like that. We like to think that Hattrick brings the world a little closer together.

Almost 1 million people play Hattrick. Don't you think it's unethical to make them hooked on an Internet game when there are so many problems in this world. If these would help Africa instead of wasting time online, most problems in this world would be solved? Have you considered this?

Actually, we have. However, we see things in a different perspective. We don't think one eliminates the other. We think Hattick contributes to a global awareness. I think many people help Africa because they play Hattrick. We like to think of this as the Green Revolution.

Thank you. Last question: What is the dumbest question, you have ever been asked in an interview?

This one. LOL. Nah, I was just joking. Well, we see things a little different. There are no dumb questions. Only paranoid users.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You are welcome.

We know.

3nlarg3 your squad!

Do you feel you are missing something in your HT-life?

Check this player: ID=80262088.

Inconvenience

Is this the end? The Middle East is on fire and our favourite virtual hide-away is closed. Closed! There is nowhere to go. All in all a very inconvenient situation.

I think we have all had several days or weeks without access to hattrick. But normally it's something you choose yourself - often because something exciting is going on real life. When nothing exciting is going on, it's a different story. It's supposed to be there to entertain, enlighten and frustrate us - and now the green room is just closed. Like a restaurant where the staff is sick.

We can only imagine what a boiling sea the conferences will be for the first hours. Backup sounds like some people are about to lose the cup matches they already won and miss players they already bought - and what about the training? History tells us that some people will find this highly inconvenient and they will have a great urge to inform the rest of the ht-world about their feelings.

That will be entertaining. But until then we have to get by somehow. I have been walking my imaginary dog and chatting to my imaginary friends. What have you done? Please leave a comment. Entertain us.

The HM, divinity, capitalism and black holes

The second edition of the Hattrick Masters has gone by and has left us with a nice controversy. The winning team, The Insane, dazzled us all by resorting to a wide and varied display of tactical skill (he made all his way to the title by playing an ingenious 3-5-2 with one winger towards the middle in all the matches, except for the first one). Ahem.

Leaving the tactical matters aside, he’s been a polemical winner, again, for one main reason: he has, oh my god, dared using the divine trick. Or at least a soft version of it given the new rules implemented recently.

Much to my surprise, a few players don’t seem very happy about that (some of the messages in his guest book are quite rude and ooze a jealousy worthy of a fourteen year old on his birthday, who opens all his presents only to realize his 60 gb iPod is still awaiting him in the shop). And I can’t help but wondering why. I can understand people’s rage in the past because if you did the divine trick properly, you could get away with it with minimal losses. But now you have to pay the astronomical salaries of those players since the moment you hire them and you lose a huge amount of money when you resell them due to the agents’ transfer fees.

So why all that fuss? AltF4 was patient enough to save a couple of euros (and I bet it was a deadly boring process) and then decided to spend them all at once and go for the title. So? Where’s the problem? It’s pure capitalism, like real life. If you have money you can spend it in any way you like it as long as it’s legal. Why do people like moaning so much? What do we want, a leveled out game, with hyper strict rules that over-restrict the market? HT communism? Come on, we should all be more tolerant. Our Estonian friend won the competition, you might not like the path he chose but it’s not like he hit his father with a wet and smelly sock. There are worse things in life.

The HM is an interesting and much longed-for competition by many user and for many seasons. It might have some imperfections, but with some minor tweaks it could become a classic. For the game’s sake, however, I do sincerely hope The Insane survives this HM. Otherwise we might as well start calling this competition the Black Hole Masters, because all the winners seem to be sucked in by the trophy after their success.

Countries come and go

Montenegro voted for independence some days ago and in our little green world that immediately resulted in threads asking what would happen to the Serbian-Montenegrin league. The most likely answer is that the current league will be renamed to Serbia and a new Montenegro league will be opened. And that also makes sense.

However, I started to wonder how Hattrick would have dealt with the end of the Cold War - especially the German reunification. That would have been tricky. I imagine something along these lines:

9/11/1989 West and East Germany

We wish to congratulate all Germans on the reunification of their country. However, we also understand that this real life event raises questions about the future of the two current German leagues. Unfortunately we are not able to transfer teams into other leagues. Therefore we have no option than to rename West Germany into Germany. Managers from DDR will get the chance to receive a new team in the renamed league - or to stay in DDR. We understand that it might be inconvenient for the DDR-managers to start from scratch with a new team, so as a special treat we will offer 1000 D-mark extra in start money. If they decide to stay in the DDR league, they will not get any money. We think that is fair.

Charge!

Recently I've discovered two things that have brought a great joy to my life. Two things which, apparently, are not related in any way but which, a twisted mind like mine, has managed to connect. The first one is ht-related: forwards towards the wing. I think it's the best invention since the 5 litre draught beer kegs. The other one is a group called The Divine Comedy.

I like wingers and forwards towards the wing because they allow me to play very offensively. When I grow up my dream is to play 3-4-3, with two inners, two offensive wingers, one forward and two forwards towards the wing. I might not always win, but when I do, I'll thoroughly thrash my opponent. And it will be fun. I don't care if I lose sometimes as long as I fall with honour.

I like The Divine Comedy because I think Mr. Hannon has a nice voice, a nice sense of humour and I have the gut feeling he basically does what he likes. One of my favourite albums is Casanova, and from that album my favourite song is Charge.

Now, where's the relation between Charge and HT? The song is a sort of martial hymn encouraging battle. If you're a pacifist person like me, but plan every match as a battle, you'll see what I mean. And if you just take a look at the lyrics you'll agree with me that it should be the official anthem for winger trainers. Let's see what the chorus says:

"We’ll fight them on the beaches
Yes, we’ll fill ’em full of lead
Fighting naked in the open air
We’ll fight them in the kitchen, in the bathroom in the garden shed
Fighting the good fight any-fighting-where

So sound the charge breathe your final breath
And charge into the valley of death
Cannon to the left and cannon to the right
They’ll go bang bang bang all night
There’ll be a cannon to the left and cannon to the right
They’ll go bang bang bang bang bang bang bang all night..."

Cannon to the left and cannon to the right, they'll go bang bang bang all night: Winger to the left and winger to the right, they'll go bang bang bang all match! Just listen to Neil Hannon's powerful voice, especially at the end, last time he attacks chorus, when he just unleashes his vocal chords ("Charge I’m gonna hit you where it hurts /Charge, so sound the red alert! / There’ll be a cannon to the left... / ...and a cannon to the right...).
Can't you just picture your wingers attacking your opponent's wingbacks, running along the touchline and, when reaching the end, delivering an excellent cross pass which will soar the sky like a bomb until a your striker hits the ball into the net?

Now if that's not a message, what is it then?

Who wants to reach the top?

I suppose most Hattrick players aspire to reach either the top division of their country, to win the Cup or the Hattrick Masters. I don't. Mainly because it's too much of a hassle. I'm sure you'll get thousands of ht-mails a day, people writing in your guestbook, friendly requests and your series conference must be full of opinionated players eager of drawing a bit of attention. Plus, what do you do once you've reached the top? Let's take a look at some examples:

You all probably know the story of the first Hattrick Masters winner, FC Barentin. He won everything you can possibly win, I suppose he got tired of it, so he decided to quit the game. But before that, he put all his eggs in the basket of the HM, and managed to win it in quite an agonic way. Actually it was a bit like in the Night of the Living Dead, because he had used his last login to watch the semi-finals. So, technically he was a bot when he won the final. A victory from the limbo. That's class!

The other case that's called my attention is quite funny. Some time ago a rumour spread in the Spanish conferences — two of the most famous and successful teams in the Spanish league (wonder brothers Tamariz and Asakopako, 11 league and cup trophies between the two of them) seemed to have quit the game and turn into farm teams. Actually, it wasn't the case. I suppose that, again, they got bored of winning. However they also have 4 players of Spain's National Team who earn an astronomical salary. So what have they done? They've adopted a rather nationalistic approach. Instead of selling them, they have showed their love and support for a handful of binary code lines, and have resorted to sacrifice their successful career for Spain's sake. ¡Olé!

Oh no...

Well, it's not that surprising. It happened before - most notably in Oceania. But still it feels a little odd. And rather inconvenient.

HT-Tjecken today visited the German conference with an official announcement regarding German ex-GM Graf:
"Truth is, Graf didn’t choose to leave the game himself. I know he talked about leaving the game and maybe he would have done so later on, I don’t know. But the reason of his sudden disappearance was because he had violated his GM powers which forced me to lock his account."

At the same time you lose and gain faith in the system. You cannot help wonder how many GMs out there cheat without getting caught, but it's not nice and not fair towards all the GMs who invest days and nights to help make this game run smoothly and nice.

Therefore it's in all ways disgraceful what this guy did. The good thing, however, is that he was caught.