Altitis

So the 33rd America’s Cup is finally run, congratulations to Oracle who crushed the Swiss team Alinghi.

Ironically, despite writing about the shameful display of court action (that would continue for a long while) a couple of years ago, I almost missed that the race has taken place last week.

I wasn’t alone.

The America’s Cup used to be one of the most popular sailing contests the layman knew of, and being Swiss, I had been caught up in the enthusiasm of the 2003 win that helped capture the people’s imagination here.

When the next edition was held in Summer 2007 and Alinghi successfully defended their title, the mood in the country was the one you’ll see in any place when your favourite sports team is in a final and has solid chances to win the contest, no matter the sport itself.

At my workplace, for instance, we had an overhead projector showing all races live, and most of my co-workers (the vast majority of them who wouldn’t otherwise give a damn about sailing, and for good reason – for those among us who aren’t sailing aficionados, watching a regatta on TV is often barely more exciting than watching grass grow) would regularly mill around between their desk and the recreation area to watch the races, or at least part of it.

The contrast couldn’t have been more stark with what happened last week. Before even the first race saw our “champion” Alinghi severely spanked by its challenger, you’d be hard-pressed to find people giving a damn. The talk of last week, in terms of sports, was about the Olympic games and in what disciplines “we” would have chances to bring home a medal (incidentally, at the time of this writing, Switzerland didn’t just win the first gold medal of the games, we secured our third gold a few moments ago, marking this the most probably only time we’ll be #1 on the medal table. Woot. Ahem. Where was I? Oh yes).

Only the one colleague I know for participating in local sailing competitions himself admitted having watched both races. Everyone else was ‘meh’.

And the reality, plain and simple, is that the figureheads of both teams, billionaires Larry Ellison and Ernesto Bertarelli, have pretty much ruined everything that could even remotely be thought of as “sportsmanship” for this 33rd contest.

Spending more than 30 months fighting it out in courtrooms, both teams have first and foremost demonstrated that winning at all costs was way more important than the sport itself. Both teams have fought teeth and nails, with all means at their disposal, to try and win by default, disqualifying their opponents or running the clock so that they would not be able to compete. Setting totally unfair rulings favouring the defender, having these tossed out by the court in favour of an even more outrageously unfair counter-rule that would itself be overruled, most of the 33rd America’s cup was actually fought in the dirtiest arena in the world, a court of law, by the most dishonourably unsporting contenders, two armies of lawyers intent on only one thing, to crush the others, no matter the consequences.

At the end, two impressive looking boats were produced, in a size and format more removed from every day sailing than F1 is removed from a normal family car. The first two races had to be cancelled, one because there wasn’t enough wind to move those juggernauts, the second one because the waves were too high for these beasts.

What won on the water, in the end, isn’t even clearly to be attributed to the skill of skippers and crew, but first and foremost the prowess and the flair of the engineers who made a far superior technical decision.

Of course, what heavily contributed to the loss of Alinghi, beyond the inferior technical design, was also the unbelievable hubris of the very man the country had admired for making the two previous victories happen, Ernesto Bertarelli, who tried to helm the boat himself and mostly demonstrated that he lacked any skill on the water, just like he had shown, together with his opponent, that he knew no shame and no move so vile that he wouldn’t have his team try to win before the race could take place.

The disgust I’m expressing here isn’t just mine alone. For instance, the 32nd edition in 2007 attracted over 200M € worth of sponsorships. The 2010 disgrace just about 11M, and no matter how you slice it, the financial crisis isn’t the only factor to blame for this.

And speaking of the crisis, in the end, the amount of money thrown away in the court contest but also those two completely uneven boats, in the face of the crisis, is nothing short of obscene. A sporting event is something that very much can lift the spirit of the world even in the darkest of times, but the shameful spectacle that led to this underwhelming race pretty much achieved the contrary: It is, in the end, the mirror image of what led the world into economic downturn, greed without restraint, a will to win at all costs without regard to ethics nor consequences, a take-no-prisoner dog-eat-dog contest that leaves the bystander exhausted and thoroughly disgusted by what the rich, powerful and depraved billionaires are doing.

Oracle won fair and square on the water, but they won a pyrrhic victory. The reputation of America’s cup is in shambles, and nobody trusts the future to reintroduce “fair play” and “sportmanship” in the event. Only the insanely wealthy stand any chance of running another race of the same format, and the vast majority of the public is most definitely not going to care about a 34th edition if that, too, is held after the courts decide on every minute detail while the competitors try to out-cheat each other.

Is the event salvageable? Perhaps. It would require nothing short of a totally neutral and balanced set of racing rules where every boat is to be constructed within the exact same specifications (ideally under a similar budget) and not a single line exists to favour either the defender or the challenger.

Only under such conditions will the next edition pit sailors against sailors and decide what racing team is actually the best in the world, instead of who has the better lawyers and smarter engineers. But just as the early warnings in 2007 and 2008, like the January bust of French trader Jerôme Kerviel, went unheeded by the finance world, there is little hope to see that happening. Team Oracle has most definitely demonstrated that victory could be acquired by extending every mean no matter how low or dirty (and again, Alinghi’s approach was the very same on the other side of the Atlantic), and I’d be highly surprised that they would suddenly look at restoring honour to their disgraced cup.

And coming full circle with the long series of posts that occupied my Warcraft gaming days, where in retrospect PvP completely fails is in the possibility to build totally unbalanced match-ups where superior gear and the right team composition removes most of the player skill before the match has begun.

Truly meaningful PvP would require that the teams duking it out be as evenly matched as possible before the gates open, including wearing the same level of preset gear as everyone else. That would of course be a lot less attractive, because people aren’t looking for a fair and challenging fight, the vast majority is playing to crush at any cost.

And therein lies the misery of these contest. In the immortal words of XVIIth century author Pierre Corneille, “A vaincre sans péril on triomphe sans gloire” – “Triumph without peril brings no glory”.

So it was on the Sea near Valencia, and so it is in our MMOs.

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From last Wednesday to Sunday, the Swiss canton Wallis was host to the biannual Alpine competition Patrouille des Glaciers. This is pretty much one of the biggest races in Ski-Touring, an otherwise not very widely-known sport combining running, mountain climbing and skiing.

I have a certain fondness for this race, not least because two years ago my annual tour of duty in the Swiss military had my unit participate in building and managing the communication network used both for the race organization and participant safety. To set the backdrop of the race, a couple of numbers:

The competition, originally a military event which was meant to verify the fitness of our mountain troops during and after WW2, has been relaunched in 1983 and is open to civilian and military teams. There are actually two routes available, the “grande Patrouille” or long route, which goes from Zermatt to Verbier, and the “petite Patrouille” or short route, going from Arolla to Verbier (Arolla being one of the checkpoints for the long route).

A couple of figures to give the scale of the race:

• The short route is 26km long but spans altitude changes of +1881m / – 2361m for a flat distance equivalent of 53km
• The long route is 53km long and spans altitude changes of +3994m / -4120m for a flat distance equivalent of 110km
• The winners for the short route close the distance in about 3h of time, whereas in order to participate the teams should be able to run the distance in 8h30
• The male record for the long route stands at 6h 18 minutes since 2006 whereas the female record was broken this year and stands now at 7h53mins.
• There were 1412 teams of 3 registered this year, for 4236 participants. 1818 ran the long route, 2418 ran the short route
• Each team must cross the finish line with a distance below 100 meters between the first and the third member of the team.

What’s interesting with this event is that you have about 100 pro teams competing, the rest is comprised entirely of amateurs. The oldest participant I’ve heard of this year is 66 years old. The race is split across two nights, with teams starting in smaller groups at different times of the night. The long route starts in Zermatt at 10 pm, with additional starts given every hour until 3am. The short route starts in Arolla at 4am and has additional starts every 30 minutes until 6.30am.

In 2006, my own military unit, 200 people strong, was scattered all over the canton, with 6 manned and 7 unmanned stations to oversee during the whole event. We had 40 metric tonnes of equipment, which spanned a surface of half a football / soccer (depending on where you come from) field. Although military-grade equipment is particularly robust, we nonetheless had to arrange the exchange of key equipment pieces about every 1.5 days due to extreme temperature conditions (our highest relay was having some nice warm -30° C at some point). That wasn’t too bad though, as we were collaborating with one of the local civilian telcos who plugged into our network to provide GSM coverage for the participants. Contrary to us, their electricity generators were more sensitive to cold, and they had to worry about having a special and customized fuel mix available so that their own kit would continue to run in both extreme temperature and altitude conditions (ask any standard manufacturer of electronic devices, including computers, and you’ll find that their normal operating conditions are limited to 3000m in altitude, not to speak about temperatures of course. Good luck having LCD displays working in sub-zero temperatures).

All in all, our activity was taxing but very rewarding – contrary to what often happens during our annual tour of duty, we all worked in the certainty that our contribution wasn’t a waste of time (something which isn’t always as certain, which is a bit the curse of militia army systems). But enough of my military recollections, if you want interesting, funny and well-written accounts, BRK among others has much more interesting stories to tell than me.

What does this all have to do with raiding? Well, there are actually a couple of parallels between the Patrouille des Glaciers and raiding. First of, there’s only a small amount of teams which have a shot at winning the race – for the long route, the average amateur team takes about 10-11 hours from start to finish (up to 18ish for the last to cross the finish line) compared to the 6h and 18 minutes for the male record, a gap not unlike the difference between the guilds competing for world and server firsts, and all the other. The rest of the people race first and foremost for themselves, to overcome a challenge they have set to themselves.

From speaking to teams racing both in the short and the long route, the most common trait is that no matter their final standings, every single participant I’ve ever talked to (and I have both work colleagues and business partners racing) will always acknowledge the efforts made by everyone else. You would be extremely hard-pressed, for instance, to find someone racing on the long route to sneer at the teams running the short route. Or at those who, for whatever reasons, had to drop out. You’ll never find a team talking down the accomplishments of teams who started later in the night than them (it’s obviously a completely different matter to run through the night or through mostly daylight), or earlier when the snow conditions are better.

All the participants respect each others, because what counts for them is overcoming the challenge the mountain and the weather conditions present them with. Similarly you wont find any of the amateurs accusing the pro teams of cheating, doping or similar things, nor would you find a pro team talking down the amateurs because they run the route in twice or even thrice as long as they do.

Contrast that with raiding, in particular the competitive aspect of it. The tone, the mentality is, unfortunately, entirely different. Look at what happened recently on the Eredar Twins: When Nihilum announced their world first, the reaction of other guilds, including some of the future US-first holders, was a complete disgrace. From accusations of cheating to ugly US / EU stereotypes, non-stop play and other nasty things, to Nihilum’s own reply in kind, you’d be hard-pressed to find solidarity or respect as the dominant trait (though SK Gaming, who got the world second, was in fact extremely gracious about it, setting an example of a different attitude), many congratulation posts were also complemented with a couple of cheap shots.

This isn’t reserved to the World First race either – the vocal fringe of hardcore raiders often and routinely talk down and dismiss anyone else’s accomplishments in the game if they are even 15 minutes behind them, and God help them if they actually PvP or take advantage of badge loot or removed attunements to clear instances.

I’m mentioning raiding here but the same can be said, to a point, to arena play (and the delusion of turning it into an e-sport). There’s just something completely different in terms of spirit between the people who go out in the cold and harsh weather and accomplish a big physical effort, and us computer warriors pretending that our button-pressing skills are something particularly remarkable in the grand scheme of things.

That’s where much of the cultural disconnect happens between me and the more vocal fringe of the hardcore raiders. I value progress for itself, regardless of when it happens in the broader context of wowjutsu ranking. The important part, for me, is beating content or overcoming a ranking objective with online friends, and seeing content many won’t have access to (including myself for that matter). You do it for yourself first and foremost.

I believe the hardcore playing scene in WoW would greatly benefit from having a bit more sense of sportsmanship and fair play. That obviously ties into valuing other people’s honest efforts more rather than separating the world into elite and scrubs (where the cut is always made so that one is elite and those below scrubs, no matter where one stands).

One can always dream, of course.

All pictures courtesy of Patrouille des Glaciers www.pdg.ch copyright

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So the next America’s Cup will be a 2-boat competition between Alinghi and Oracle. This hasn’t been decided gentlemanly between sportsmen valuing competition and a challenge. It has been so ruled by a judge.

Just behind that, the Kiwis, who have been beaten by Alinghi twice in a row (after holding the cup for several years themselves) are expecting a ruling from the same judge on their complaint that the delay caused by the first ruling is harming their finances. Never mind that Alinghi boss Bertarelli bailed them out of bankruptcy for a whopping 7 millions so they could actually compete in 2007. In today’s highly competitive sports, “Fair Play” appears to be an outdated concept.

I don’t know what I find most disgusting in all this, whether it’s the lawsuits themselves or that a Court actually presides over lawsuits which have nothing lost in a courtroom in the first place. Note that the news aren’t talking about mediation or settlement but a formal ruling (yes, I’m aware that the original 1887 document establishing the competition named a court as trustee. I still fail to see how antitrust lawsuits mesh with sports, sorry).

Needless to say, there’s little chance I will get excited by watching millionaires playing boat under the eyes of their ambulance-chasers lawyers ever again. Sports is (or used to be) essentially about competition in a healthy and sane environment. It is probably a sad reflection of our times that an activity which was supposed to be uplifting and inspiring comes down to the dirty, money-laden, backstabbing, below-the-belt play which leads to a court room.

What happened to Mens Sana in Corpore Sano? Where is the inspiring example, the sportsmanship in there? If any of Pierre de Coubertin’s ideals had survived through the 90′s IOC games attribution bribery scandals, the 21st century definitely killed off.

What has all this to do with WoW? Just remember Blizzard is trying to turn Arenas into an e-sport. While RMT and its associated cheating, hacking and exploitation is far from being under control. If physical sports have already demeaned themselves by fighting through lawyers and courtrooms, just figure where virtual sports are headed.

Courtroom decisions over sports turn the whole America’s Cup into a farce. Let’s not get a taste of this in what is no more or less than a game, please.

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