Signups for Character Battle 11: Kingdom Hearts have begun!

It's here! Signups for the 11th Character Battle have begun!

Welcome to Character Battle 11! The theme of this contest, if you haven't guessed by now, is Kingdom Hearts. Sixty-four characters from the KH universe have been divided up into two divisions of 32 characters. With help from you by way of suggesting characters from such a large pool, I've made our contest bracket, and now, I open the door for entries.

To new players and those interested: this is a single-elimination tournament-style bracket. The characters have been broken down into pairs. When the contest begins, I post polls, and people vote on which character they want to win. Characters advance round by round until we get to the final battle, and there, a champion is chosen in one last battle. Here's where you come in. Before the contest starts, you will be asked to make your own tournament bracket, predicting characters you think will win each battle. You do this for each round until you predict a champion. When the contest begins, you vote for your winners. At the end of each contest day, I tally the votes, and declare a winner. If your characters win, you gain points. With each round, the point values increase. If you have the most points by the time the contest ends, you win a prize from me, usually in the form of a video game of your choosing, or another prize of your choice. The best part? It costs nothing to enter. It's free. So what are you waiting for? Enter the contest before the deadline, and take a shot at winning that prize! It's no cost to you, so what do you have to lose? If you're still interested, read on.

To returning players: there have been some major, major changes since the end of Character Battle 10: Metal Gear. Some are permanent, and some are experimental. The changes are as follows:

1) A brand-new site. No more will contests be held on my LiveJournal and on Joshie's (C&T) website, Late to the Party. Joshie has been nothing short of awesome for allowing me to run my contests on his websites for these past 5+ years, and I thank him immensely. These are a lot of fun to do. But, I chose to move on for two main reasons. One: his sites are about gaming. Articles are written by gamers, for gamers. My contests, unfortunately, got to the point where they were dictating traffic on his site. During contests, his site would receive a lot of traffic, and in between, the site would be dead. And that wasn't his intention or mine. By making a site totally devoted to the contests, I hope we can revive his site. Secondly, Joshie is now a man of responsibility. Between school and work, if anything should happen to his site while one of these contests are going, getting in touch with him can be tricky.

So what I've done is gone back to the old-style message board type site, back to basics. A message board site allows easy customization, and it also provides a great way of archiving contest data. Therefore, the site where all contests will take place from here on out is called The Battling Arena. On this site, you can find news, podcasts, and old data from past contests. There's not much now, but more stuff will be added as time goes on. Important note: you do NOT need to be a member of the message board to be able to vote in the contest. However, you will need to register if you want to be able to post anything. Registration is free.

2) Reduction of votes to 1 vote per battle. Since everything will be done on The Battling Arena, everyone will now just get 1 vote per battle. Before, when the contest was going on at two sites, everyone could vote twice per battle--once on my LJ, and once on Late to the Party. However, not too many used this particular function (only God knows why, since the double vote could sway battles to your favor), and in the end, it just made double the workload for me. So now everyone gets one vote, and one vote only.

3) Increasing the prize pool. In contests past, I've given prizes to the top 3 people who gained the most points. In an attempt to gain a bit of a large entry pool, I'm going to experiment by making it so that the top 5 finishers will receive a prize. That's right. If you finish 1-5, you will get a prize. And the prizes themselves have undergone a little makeover as well. Here's the prizes for this contest:

From each prize pool, winners pick ONLY ONE:

Winner:
---video game of their choosing
---$60 gift card to EB/GameStop/Amazon/iTunes
---$60 via check/money order/PayPal
---$60 worth of Wii Points

2nd place:
--video game of their choosing ($40 or less)
---$40 gift card/money/Wii Points

3rd place:
---video game of their choosing ($25 or less)
---$25 gift card/money

4th place:
---video game of their choosing ($20 or less)
---$20 gift card/money/Wii Points

5th place:
---$10 gift card/money
---One free Virtual Console or WiiWare game

4) I won't be entering the contest. Why? Simple. In the last 3 contests, I've finished 3rd, 2nd, and 1st. Kinda anti-climactic when the host and creator of the contest wins his own contest. I'll keep my own unofficial bracket and keep my own score, but I'm not putting in an official entry.


Returning players, the process on how to make your bracket has not changed. To begin making your contest bracket, click here. For new players, I suggest you read the Contest FAQ for details. You will need to register at Bracket Maker (also free) before you begin making your entry. It's really easy and self-explanatory, but if you have any questions, PLEASE email me, IM me, whatever. Heck, post a message at The Battling Arena, and either I or someone who's played before can help you.

Finally, dates and final important info. Deadlines are as follows:

Entry deadline: 4 AM ET, January 1, 2010. I will NOT accept late entries. Also, please make sure to print or save a copy of your brackets. When the deadline passes, I will be deleting the contest from Bracket Maker. This is to prevent cheating. I will have a hard copy of everyone's bracket for scoring purposes.

If you don't know what the characters look like, I refer you to my CB11 Character Pics. Every character is listed, with their names in the filename.

Contest begins: 7 PM ET, January 4, 2010.

Start making those brackets, and good luck, everyone!