As most of you probably know the biggest change on the site has been the ISP change. The actual switch was fairly easy and quick but there have been some small glitches leading to the site going down for a few hours. Unfortunately, there seems to be a problem in the route between the new location of the server and a particular german ISP (T-Online) and it seems persistent as well. I have spent quite a bit of time together with ChickenBrain trying to find exactly where the problem lies and I've also been in contact with my ISP's support team (obviously, they say that the problem is not on their network). If anyone from networks other than T-Online is having problems accessing the site (consistently more than 20 seconds to load a page) I would like to know about it. Send me an on-site PM or catch me on the IRC.

The faction division is on the whole running along just fine. I haven't seen any storms of one particular style of teams in the top faction so it seems to be fairly balanced on that regard. The only problem I see now is that people tend to have a hard time finding games to play - In particular in the lower factions. To battle this, the structure of the factions is changing a bit, creating a large group of teams instead of levels 4 and 5. We are also moving to a biweekly schedule with at most 8 games allowed and at least 4 games to avoid being relegated. This should make it easier to "get started" in the factions.

If the difficulties of finding games persists, I will see to it that other measures are put into place to improve this situation. One possibility is to divide the factions into timezones, allowing teams to select "American", "European" or "either" preference. Another option is to allow cross-level playing, so that teams in 2a can play against opponents from 2b and similarly for the level 3 factions. Again, these ideas are only possibilities and I will run it as stated above for a while to see how it turns out.

After conferring with caileanhawk regarding a tournament he was running I decided to try to implement a new tournament format: Last man standing. This format will be a free-form tournament where players can play against anyone who is an active participant. The coach of a team (or the tournament organizer) can at any point choose to deactivate their team. This might also happen automatically based on some constraints (for example, the losing team gets deactivated) if the tournament is set up that way. This progresses until there is only one active team which is designated the winner of the tournament.

Related to this issue is a slight change in the rules: From now on, DivT teams may play more than once in a row against the same opponent. There was simply no reason to restrict this in the tournament division, so we changed it.

I expect to have the above format running before the next issue of GLN, or at least running as a closed test.

On my "long term to do list", I have progression options for tournaments / groups. The idea is that the tournament organizer should be able to choose between various alternatives for progression. For example, wanting the tournament to run without progression (like how the ladder division works at the moment), with a one-skill-per-game like some tabletop tournaments do or standard progression according to the LRB. Obviously, this will create a whole range of problems to be solved which is why the idea is still on the planning stage.

And with that, I conclude the admin corner for this issue. Catch you all next time!