advanced booking & storylines

[MythicalMino]

A storyline I am running will have a tag team match take place on my next card. BUT....there must be a challenge, and the announcement of a surprise partner. How does that work with the advanced booking? Should I go ahead and advance book the tag team match? Does it even matter that storyline-wise, the tag team match is not "known yet"? Thanks Chris

[Comradebot]

From my experience, it shouldn't have any effect to go ahead and book it now, unless you want to stick to realism and not announce the match. But other than feeling a bit weird, no, I don't recall any downside to advanced booking a match that hasn't been booked storyline wise yet.

[The Shape]

Perhaps the most realistic way of doing things would be to create an angle whereby the match is booked storyline wise but also in the game, even if it is on the same show you could still do it so that it builds up hype beforehand, though I'm not sure how significant.

[Irish Wolf]

If a match isn't actually announced until a challenge on the day of the show I usually don't advance book it. But when you a challenge angle or any angle that's purpose is making a match you can have match made for the show you are running. It means that the fans will expect to see the match but if the angle is good it'll add to the match.

[lovestruck420]

Why not advance book it. You can in the real world Literally go to ticket master the next time wwe is scheduled to be in your area and see if they don't basically have a complete match listing. Or call the arena it is going to and ask them, they will tell you match for match what is going to happen. This is wrestling, fans know its fake, they don't care if the wrestlemania match for this year was most likely decided prior to last years wrestlemania event. And anyway you could also see it as the many hints given to suggest a match is going to happen. Example, People saw the DX reunion coming months in advace due to several hints given on tv in regards to Shawn and Hunter's Friendship and various mentionings by Jim ROss about DX.

[Nechevo]

I've only played around with the demo version so I may be wrong. But doesn't the advanced booking screen allow you to set one of the tag teams to have a mystery partner? Quickly booting up the game and starting up a small test game to check... Yup you can. You can set one of the tag team members to be "To be announced". For that matter you only need one wrester to be listed, the rest of the participants can be set to "To be announced". The only limitation it seems is that at one has to be set (can't have all of the participants set as "To be announced"). Now whether having most of the participants unknown means the advanced booking does less for the match than it would for one that has all the participants known is the question... My other question is what happens when you change the participants in the advanced booking. In my first test game I ended up advance booking a wrestler who was out due to injury and didn't find that out until the night of the show. I was able to change the booking so that someone took his place but not sure if I got dinged for that or not.

[D-Lyrium]

To Be Announced bookings are generally based on the level of the worker they're facing, in my experience. For example, advanced booking Rex Reeves vs. To Be Announced won't generate much more interest than Rex Reeves vs. anyone else. Whereas Tommy Cornell vs. To Be Announced would be a much bigger deal, as there'd be tonnes of speculation, and it might prove more interesting than Tommy Cornell vs. Tyson Baine would, since then you *know* it'll be Baine, so if you're not a fan of his you won't care so much. As for changing an advanced booking, it almost always reduces the interest by a grade or so, unless it's Jobby McJobberson being switched out for a momentum-grabbing monster heel, of course. You can also change To Be Announced bookings to actual wrestlers at a later date.