Hwbot might play one of their best card so far since the past few years, the Pro OC League that gathered all the professional overclockers such as K|ngp|ng, HiCookie, Nick Shih and the other sponsored overclockers is changing.
The Pro OC League appeared in Summer 2011 with the fourth revision of Hwbot, it was a good move at the time to differentiate overclockers getting support by manufacturer or event directly being paid by them to overclock. Since then, it’s was mainly a battle between individuals for the top spot and basically ‘Who will stay at the top spot the longest.’. While this challenge was fun at the beginning it became less and less interesting as this could always change depending on who is benching what and when. Let’s remember Vince (K|ngp|ng) that didn’t posted a lot of score during few month that dropped in the ranking by few spot then claimed them back in a matter of weeks (days !).
So this is where the Pro OC League was pretty much for my opinion, and the lost of interest was combined with the growing interest in the Competition system promoted by Hwbot where partners can set up a competition and even the Hwbot’s run Country Cup is held.
As Massman point out in his editorial the main reason of interest in Competitions compared to the Pro OC League was the fixed time and the different kind of hardware you have to use to succeed.
After long discussion, explanation and hours spent on the HwBot Forum gathering feedback and comments, the HwBot Team is giving the Pro OC League a well deserved retreat and give space to create a more entertaining process.
I encourage you to go and read Massman’s Editorial about the 5th revision of Hwbot that explain well the reason behind these changes. What is important to know is that now the Pro OC Cup will make people compete for a ranking every 3 months, that mean we will know at least every 3 month who is the best Pro OC Cup Team.
Each overclocker will be able to gather with up to 4 others peoples, this Pro OC Cup Team will not influence the Team ranking actually in place. That is a really good move because it will avoid having a username for multiple user or the splitting of big and active teams in useless smaller ones.
You can gather in the Pro OC Cup for 3 month, then leave, go to another group, stay there for 2 season then leave and create your own, all that while still being in your Hwbot Team, counting point for your team but competing in the Pro OC Cup with other Pro OC Cup groups.
I personally thing that this is a great opportunity to build a new kind of Overclocking group, not just gathering per interest, region or forum but more like a real Pro OC Cup group. As the time of writing this text there is already a Pro OC Cup group called: European Union composed of SF3D / Rbuass / Xtreme Addict and I can’t wait for more group to join.
Everyone can register in the Pro OC Cup, but keep in mind, once you’re in, you will be in until the end of the 3 months period, and if you don’t register, you will be out with no way to step in and participate. This is the main difference with the team ranking and competitions that you can join pretty much an anytime depending the requirement for the Sub phases. You can register from now until April 1st – and it’s not a joke!
This is the opportunity to make overclocking interesting again and reach people outside of the daily overclockers by making it entertaining.
Well done Hwbot, Let’s see how this turns out now! :)
NB : The opinions expressed in this article are the ones of the writers.
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