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On Friday the 2016 edition of the Torn City Dog Tag competition ended with a second straight victory for Kniv, who not only retained his title but also managed to acquire an astonishing 1287 tags and 22806 points in the process. In fact, so high were everyone's scores this year that Kniv's winning total from 2015 would only have been good enough for 4th this time around, making his margin of victory even more impressive.
I congratulated Kniv on his victory over the weekend, but I also asked whether he regretted taking part in the interview with me a few weeks back, as it seemed to gain both him and the others involved a lot more negative attention during the competition's early stages;
"Thank you, thought it couldn't be done, that someone was more hungry for it than me. But me winning the way I did proves that almost anyone can win this, so it's a fair competition for everyone. My average tag score is 18, so this competition is just down to who wants it more."
"The attention was no problem in the end, many defends lost every day, but didn't lose many tags on it. 2-3 a day. No regrets from being in the paper."
Having had access to the Dog Tag competition's statistics from the beginning, Kniv's retention of his title seemed inevitable from the end of week one, but the competition's early leader was actually Penicillin. On November 7th he had 7686 points from 174 tags, yet he eventually finished 12th, collecting only 74 more tags over the remaining 21 days for a total of 9474 points.
At this point Duke was his closest rival, being as he was in second place thanks to his repeated mugging of clients, but by the following week, the baton had been passed on permanently, as on the 14th of November last year's champion took the lead he would never relinquish. With 13,450 points from 570 tags, Kniv established a healthy lead which would only grow, as Penicillin slipped to third on 9,519 points behind Ofgortens in second on 11,907 from 454 tags.
The chasing pack was only a couple of thousand behind at this point, though, as Bodybagger found himself in 4th on 9,201, Nash was in 5th on 8,571 and Shif took sixth on 7,795. The top ten was rounded out by Madmiketyson in seventh, Cibber in eighth, Drieke in ninth and The Duke by now had dropped down to a lowly tenth position.
Little had changed at the top come the competition's final Monday, as on the 21st Kniv and Ofgortens still led the way, with the former adding 3127 points and 482 tags to his lead. Bodybagger had moved up one place to third, with Shif leaping two places to fourth, Nash remaining on fifth, Madmiketyson climbing to sixth and Penicillin plummeting to seventh. Drieke shifted up one position from ninth to eighth, Xiphias entered the top ten at ninth, and Chadio filled tenth position with 8,529 points from 486 tags.
The frontrunners mostly fought amongst themselves over the next four days, with several swapping places but only one of their number dropping out of the top ten come November 25th. But at 14.00pm the imaginary klaxon sounded, and it was revealed to the world what everyone involved in the competition had known for some time - Kniv was the champion once more, and his margin of victory was an incredible 5744 points and 500 tags more than his nearest challenger.
So with the Gold Tag remaining in the hands of Kniv, it was Ofgortens who managed to claim second place and a Silver Tag with 17062 points from 787 tags. After employing a similar strategy to last year's winners, he had this to say regarding his achievements;
"Since my in-game spouse Psychotica placed in top 25 last year I figured I would try at it with what I thought was a good strategyI can honestly say I looked at every player's personal stats from level 25-80 and hoarded as much of the inactive's tags as possible."
"The last week and a half they were all picked over so I resorted to looking for online people that seems to be hunting tags. Some people seemed to be offended that I continually took their tags since I would put their name down on a list if I knew they had lots of tags (I am still being bountied by one of them but always welcome the defends), but most of the people understood and even congratulated me after it was all over."
"It was a lot of effort and I'll likely not participate in the competition next year since I achieved what I wanted to this year."
Bodybagger improved on his 2015 result by two places with his 15,251 points enough to gain him the Bronze Tag position, and his placing seems all the more impressive given the aggressive return of Sifonjerce and the distracting presence of Duke midway through the competition.
After the beef between the two had seemingly been refrigerated, Duke summarily tossed it in the microwave on full blast and offered a $500million (later increased to $1billion) bounty for anyone who possessed the hardman's tag come the close of play. However, the billion-dollar bounty on Bodybagger's tag went unclaimed, as did the $500million bounty on Duke offered by Big_Al, despite Duke returning every one of his tags in the final hour of competition. Duke's efforts in calling Bodybagger out from his Swiss hideaway were mocked by the man himself once the competition was over;
"My strategy was quite simple, attack people over level 80. If I found a tag on them, I returned to them a few hours later. As well, people would send me a message or open a chat and tell me they've just been attacked. I would then attack that person immediately. With regards to Duke, he wasn't successful with his attempts to entice people to get my dog tags. Meanwhile, I'll just keep using him as an ATM."
Nevertheless, Duke's act of generosity did have one notable effect, as it resulted in him slipping to 41st place by virtue of the 5,000 points gained for owning his own tag. A similar drop was experienced by Nash, who fell to ninth despite holding fifth place just a few days prior, although he was somewhat consoled by the $150million prize awarded by Duke for acquiring the tag of Torn's elusive governor Chedburn. Chedburn's tag was secretly made available for pilfering on the 22nd of November with no announcements until Duke's offer of a bounty, however, we have yet to receive confirmation at the Torn City Times that Duke has actually paid out Nash's prize, or if this was merely yet another one of his notorious scams.
Continuing with the placings, Drieke enjoyed a late surge into a stunning fourth place finish, with Level 70 Xiphias beating his 2015 thirteenth place by taking fifth. Madmiketyson managed to keep hold of sixth, Shif dropped three places to seventh, Chadio gained two places to finish in eighth, and after Nash in ninth came Level 50 Logout, who scraped into the top ten despite not being in the top 25 until well into the final week.
An honourable mention must also go to the impressive Zoltar55 in 11th, a 31 Level Cleaner at The Chaos Devils who became the second lowest-ranked player to finish inside the top 25. He took on the advice of 2015's winners as published in this very paper, and clearly it proved a recipe for a success most delicious.
"Quite frankly, I was ready to give up and then I read your first article "Is Dog Tags 2016 Over Already?" It got me motivated to try to be the little guy who slips past unnoticed, and it worked. I don't think I would have slogged through to the bitter end without the news articles."
"By the one-hour mark, most of us had our end-game strategy locked in and all energy usage allocated to specific targets. There was brief discussion in the faction about jumping Duke, but there really wasn't time to organize it."
Zoltar55's achievement was extremely impressive, but the honour of 2016 underdog extraordinaire undoubtedly goes to Riverninny; a farm delivery driver who ended up in 23rd place, and whose Level 23 status proves without a doubt that new players can place highly in the Dog Tag competition with a little hard work and a whole lot of cunning.
Conversely, it was a poor showing by many of last year's top 25 players as only a fifth of them managed to place in this year's tournament, with Kniv, Bodybagger and Xiphias joined by Kickrocks and Rainbowsaurus; both of whom either equalled or beat their 2015 ranking. But the tournament's unluckiest player has to be Milked, which is their name rather than an instruction, as he agonisingly dropped outside the top 25 in the last hours of the competition, having spent much of the tournament entrenched within it.
And so, with the statistics themselves milked dry of their intrigue, we bring to an end our coverage of the 2016 Dog Tag competition. With a total of 316,194 tags stolen from 21,526 participants, this year's event has proven rather popular with players, and even though last year's champion reigned supreme once more, the fact that so many new and young players entered the top 25 proves that the Dog Tag tournament is the one place in Torn where the underdog can truly shine...if they're willing to keep their head low and their mouth shut.
I congratulated Kniv on his victory over the weekend, but I also asked whether he regretted taking part in the interview with me a few weeks back, as it seemed to gain both him and the others involved a lot more negative attention during the competition's early stages;
"Thank you, thought it couldn't be done, that someone was more hungry for it than me. But me winning the way I did proves that almost anyone can win this, so it's a fair competition for everyone. My average tag score is 18, so this competition is just down to who wants it more."
"The attention was no problem in the end, many defends lost every day, but didn't lose many tags on it. 2-3 a day. No regrets from being in the paper."
Having had access to the Dog Tag competition's statistics from the beginning, Kniv's retention of his title seemed inevitable from the end of week one, but the competition's early leader was actually Penicillin. On November 7th he had 7686 points from 174 tags, yet he eventually finished 12th, collecting only 74 more tags over the remaining 21 days for a total of 9474 points.
At this point Duke was his closest rival, being as he was in second place thanks to his repeated mugging of clients, but by the following week, the baton had been passed on permanently, as on the 14th of November last year's champion took the lead he would never relinquish. With 13,450 points from 570 tags, Kniv established a healthy lead which would only grow, as Penicillin slipped to third on 9,519 points behind Ofgortens in second on 11,907 from 454 tags.
The chasing pack was only a couple of thousand behind at this point, though, as Bodybagger found himself in 4th on 9,201, Nash was in 5th on 8,571 and Shif took sixth on 7,795. The top ten was rounded out by Madmiketyson in seventh, Cibber in eighth, Drieke in ninth and The Duke by now had dropped down to a lowly tenth position.
Little had changed at the top come the competition's final Monday, as on the 21st Kniv and Ofgortens still led the way, with the former adding 3127 points and 482 tags to his lead. Bodybagger had moved up one place to third, with Shif leaping two places to fourth, Nash remaining on fifth, Madmiketyson climbing to sixth and Penicillin plummeting to seventh. Drieke shifted up one position from ninth to eighth, Xiphias entered the top ten at ninth, and Chadio filled tenth position with 8,529 points from 486 tags.
The frontrunners mostly fought amongst themselves over the next four days, with several swapping places but only one of their number dropping out of the top ten come November 25th. But at 14.00pm the imaginary klaxon sounded, and it was revealed to the world what everyone involved in the competition had known for some time - Kniv was the champion once more, and his margin of victory was an incredible 5744 points and 500 tags more than his nearest challenger.
So with the Gold Tag remaining in the hands of Kniv, it was Ofgortens who managed to claim second place and a Silver Tag with 17062 points from 787 tags. After employing a similar strategy to last year's winners, he had this to say regarding his achievements;
"Since my in-game spouse Psychotica placed in top 25 last year I figured I would try at it with what I thought was a good strategyI can honestly say I looked at every player's personal stats from level 25-80 and hoarded as much of the inactive's tags as possible."
"The last week and a half they were all picked over so I resorted to looking for online people that seems to be hunting tags. Some people seemed to be offended that I continually took their tags since I would put their name down on a list if I knew they had lots of tags (I am still being bountied by one of them but always welcome the defends), but most of the people understood and even congratulated me after it was all over."
"It was a lot of effort and I'll likely not participate in the competition next year since I achieved what I wanted to this year."
Bodybagger improved on his 2015 result by two places with his 15,251 points enough to gain him the Bronze Tag position, and his placing seems all the more impressive given the aggressive return of Sifonjerce and the distracting presence of Duke midway through the competition.
After the beef between the two had seemingly been refrigerated, Duke summarily tossed it in the microwave on full blast and offered a $500million (later increased to $1billion) bounty for anyone who possessed the hardman's tag come the close of play. However, the billion-dollar bounty on Bodybagger's tag went unclaimed, as did the $500million bounty on Duke offered by Big_Al, despite Duke returning every one of his tags in the final hour of competition. Duke's efforts in calling Bodybagger out from his Swiss hideaway were mocked by the man himself once the competition was over;
"My strategy was quite simple, attack people over level 80. If I found a tag on them, I returned to them a few hours later. As well, people would send me a message or open a chat and tell me they've just been attacked. I would then attack that person immediately. With regards to Duke, he wasn't successful with his attempts to entice people to get my dog tags. Meanwhile, I'll just keep using him as an ATM."
Nevertheless, Duke's act of generosity did have one notable effect, as it resulted in him slipping to 41st place by virtue of the 5,000 points gained for owning his own tag. A similar drop was experienced by Nash, who fell to ninth despite holding fifth place just a few days prior, although he was somewhat consoled by the $150million prize awarded by Duke for acquiring the tag of Torn's elusive governor Chedburn. Chedburn's tag was secretly made available for pilfering on the 22nd of November with no announcements until Duke's offer of a bounty, however, we have yet to receive confirmation at the Torn City Times that Duke has actually paid out Nash's prize, or if this was merely yet another one of his notorious scams.
Continuing with the placings, Drieke enjoyed a late surge into a stunning fourth place finish, with Level 70 Xiphias beating his 2015 thirteenth place by taking fifth. Madmiketyson managed to keep hold of sixth, Shif dropped three places to seventh, Chadio gained two places to finish in eighth, and after Nash in ninth came Level 50 Logout, who scraped into the top ten despite not being in the top 25 until well into the final week.
An honourable mention must also go to the impressive Zoltar55 in 11th, a 31 Level Cleaner at The Chaos Devils who became the second lowest-ranked player to finish inside the top 25. He took on the advice of 2015's winners as published in this very paper, and clearly it proved a recipe for a success most delicious.
"Quite frankly, I was ready to give up and then I read your first article "Is Dog Tags 2016 Over Already?" It got me motivated to try to be the little guy who slips past unnoticed, and it worked. I don't think I would have slogged through to the bitter end without the news articles."
"By the one-hour mark, most of us had our end-game strategy locked in and all energy usage allocated to specific targets. There was brief discussion in the faction about jumping Duke, but there really wasn't time to organize it."
Zoltar55's achievement was extremely impressive, but the honour of 2016 underdog extraordinaire undoubtedly goes to Riverninny; a farm delivery driver who ended up in 23rd place, and whose Level 23 status proves without a doubt that new players can place highly in the Dog Tag competition with a little hard work and a whole lot of cunning.
Conversely, it was a poor showing by many of last year's top 25 players as only a fifth of them managed to place in this year's tournament, with Kniv, Bodybagger and Xiphias joined by Kickrocks and Rainbowsaurus; both of whom either equalled or beat their 2015 ranking. But the tournament's unluckiest player has to be Milked, which is their name rather than an instruction, as he agonisingly dropped outside the top 25 in the last hours of the competition, having spent much of the tournament entrenched within it.
And so, with the statistics themselves milked dry of their intrigue, we bring to an end our coverage of the 2016 Dog Tag competition. With a total of 316,194 tags stolen from 21,526 participants, this year's event has proven rather popular with players, and even though last year's champion reigned supreme once more, the fact that so many new and young players entered the top 25 proves that the Dog Tag tournament is the one place in Torn where the underdog can truly shine...if they're willing to keep their head low and their mouth shut.
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