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| - This is the best possible match you could ask for in a fourway format. All 4 games close early, all 4 games breaking 20% late and all four games taking awhile to establish anything on one another. The general consensus here was Halo and Diablo 2 getting some order of 1-2, with Grand Theft Auto 3 still having some people retain faith in the series. No one really expected anything of KOTOR while sharing a poll with fellow Xbox smash hit Halo. Little did we know how awesome this poll would be. When it started, all four games were virtually dead even for a few minutes, with GTA3 straggling behind a bit. It would fall behind pace relatively quickly, and by the 30 minute mark it was clearly not going to threaten a second place finish. It obviously still ended up doing extremely well for a last place game, and it even managed to shave a 700 vote deficit down to 250 with the dead hours, and threatened to steal third place for a time. If you used Vice City's 2004 performance to gauge Grand Theft Auto 3, I guess one could call GTA3 a disappointment here. Its sales and critical acclaim (once upon a time, GTA was actually a good series; now Rock$* just rehashes GTA3 with different color tones and the fans eat it up like drones) should have meant it doing better than it showed here, but it was simply not to be. GTA has fallen off the map more and more with each passing year on this site, though I won't trash 3's performance in this match. It helped create one of the best fourway scenarios possible. The true match however took place between Halo and KOTOR. Even though this poll is close in percentage, Diablo 2 established control of first place within 30 minutes and did about as well as a game can do in a close match. After the first freeze, it never lost the lead and shocked casual and Board 8 bracketmaker alike with its first place finish. Diablo 2 placing wasn't a giant surprise to the Board 8 people, but outdoing Starcraft and scoring first place was. Its first place prediction percentage was 18.7%, and partial was 15.05%, one of the lowest of the entire first round. Part of this was casual underestimation (Diablo 2 being stronger than Starcraft was a HUGE leap of faith given 2004), but most of it is Halo time and time again being the most overbracketed series we'll ever have. Everyone always picks Halo stuff to go far every contest, and every contest it falls flat on its face. Which at last brings us to one of the most surprising performances of the entire contest. Can anyone look at this poll and honestly tell me expanding character battles to all fictional gaming characters is a bad idea? Star Wars KOTOR not only performed well, but it performed well in the face of two fanbases -- PC and Xbox -- that should have stolen all its votes and sent it packing to an easy last place. The reason for this is inexplicable to me, unless the name "Star Wars" really means that much. And putting Darth Vader or Luke Skywalker in a contest would be a bad idea? Are you kidding me? I'm all for it. Halo actually spent the first 90 minutes of this match struggling to build a 200 vote lead, but it all fell apart overnight. Star Wars came all the way back during the dead hours, built a small lead, tailed off a bit in the morning and built up a 700 vote lead during the DSV. Halo predictably made a furious comeback with the ASV and won second place (and even cut its deficit on Diablo 2 down to 1900 after trailing by something like 2600-2700 votes), but this was a rare comeback where I didn't notice too much whining. Halo's ASV is well-documented by now, so people saw it coming well before it happened. However everyone was so surprised and happy by Star Wars' initial effort that they didn't mind the end result loss too much. Threatening second place in the face of two stronger games from your two main fanbases is an unbelievable effort, and one of the most commendable results of the entire contest. You won't find many 0-2 games more impressive than Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. For Halo, despite the win and my risking a broken record here, casual shooters were bombing all over the place. This was a bomb regardless of it winning; if you're Halo, you don't rely on a monster ASV to come back on a weaker game from your own system. You just don't. This was one of the most embarrassing contest wins I can remember. On a more personal note, Diablo 2 winning kicks all sorts of ass. It took me forever to get into online, but I did eventually get hooked. How I have two level 90 characters (Hammerdin and Meteorb Sorceress), but I might sell all my stuff on d2jsp given the impending ladder reset. Anyway, awesome to see Diablo 2 get its due. This was an amazing result.
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