diamondium Posted December 18, 2023 Share Posted December 18, 2023 (edited) Hey Everyone! I've long loved to play in Idolizer's iDOMINATION universe, and have made my own versions of the mod for each game update that's come out for personal usage. I personally find iDOM the funnest environment to play in, because you get wrestlers you're familiar with, companies that are very similar to real life ones you can take inspiration from, but it's separated enough from reality that you don't feel limited by the constraints of the real world, allowing more creative freedom. It's a perfect middle ground between real-world databases and the fully fantasy ones like CVerse. I hope you enjoy as much as I have been! For those unfamiliar with the iDOM universe, it was a database originally made for EWR, then ported into TEW, which is based on an alternate universe where WWF collapses following Wrestlemania being a failure, and NWA dominating the wrestling landscape instead. Here is a link to a fan-made wiki for the last official version (2010). https://idomination.fandom.com/wiki/Main_Page iDOMINATION 2023 - The Ashes of an Empire It is January 1st, 2023, the wrestling world is finally recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic after years of empty stadiums, and the National Wrestling Alliance, the organization which has dominated the worldwide wrestling landscape for nearly a century, is a shell of its former self after being on the verge of collapse. Most of the large companies of the world have withdrawn from the NWA and for the first time, the lack of NWA governance makes the packed landscape of companies looking to break out a bloodbath waiting to happen. Current Release - 0.2.0 Alpha Database Pictures (Includes 0.2.0 changes - make sure to get the updated version) Release notes Quote General Notes Overhauls all around for this version - huge amount of the credit goes to everyone who has pitched in so far - AboardTheArk, Chikbot, eriatarka, The Lloyd - all of these contributions have been huge in making things way better than I could have alone The general theme of the 0.2 update is reworks - reworks to many of the main promotions have shuffled things around massively - I’d say this is pretty close to the final ‘landing spot’ for most of the notable workers at this point, and for 0.3 onwards it’s now a matter of fleshing out what these reworks have done 0.2 Changelog NWA:EW & RFP merged into a single promotion - NCP - Mostly fleshed out “National Championship Promotions” named to evoke the similar feel of the promotion’s roots as a JCP/WCW continuation - this is now the company owned by Khan, with David Flair having sold it when the company underwent its struggles Increased its prominence in the world to slightly higher than NWA:EW’s old spot in the American scene Lineage/history modified to fit this - Roster fleshed out with bios TWE Fully fleshed out - Credit The Lloyd Bios for pretty much everyone, starting storylines, cleaned up teams/stables, tweaks to stats - pretty much a finished state WCCW Fully fleshed out - Credit The Lloyd Bios for pretty much everyone, starting storylines, cleaned up teams/stables, tweaks to stats - pretty much a finished state Japan rework in progress - Credit AboardTheArk Mens data is statistically close to completion - the details (bios/lineages/etc) are in progress, but the workers themselves are likely statted and settled in their final-ish locations Complete overhaul of companies/events/company relationships/etc. on the mens side New Company - RESIST Wrestling - inspiration credit eriatarka This company is on the cusp of being medium-sized, high-end of small - just below MCW in relative size and just above the more regional promotions like NWA:MC Partially stylistically inspired by DEFY - filling the void currently existing in the Northwest region - except this one has much more Japanese influence, more than any other American promotion RESIST has a reputation for developing young talent and as such has some of the best young American talent, as well as is a landing spot for young Japanese talent working for DDT looking to get more reps With this change, the former northwest promotion Pacific Northwest Wrestling relocates to Vancouver due to it’s market being captured by RESIST New Company - EVE - inspiration credit eriatarka Small hardcore womens promotion based out of the Great Lakes region Canada Rework - credit eriatarka CS rebranded SW (Stampede Wrestling) Heavy in-progress - A rough outline of the history has been provided but these details have not yet been reflected in-game fully The workers under contract and current state should reflect the new direction though - with the history of how it got there to reveal itself more solidly in-game when bios/lineages are finalized Company now has less reliance on pure top-end talent like Danielson/Omega and much more focus on the Hart-associated family members like Harry Smith/TJ Wilson/etc. Lore for this company is reworked entirely, but all the details associated with the new lore are in progress like bios/lineages/etc Placeholder title lineages are in there that roughly match the new vision, but eriatarka has noted he intends to do lineages in the future MLW rework No longer a Chris Jericho creation but rather a Scott D’Amore creation, much more heavily borrowing TNA elements Scaled down it’s initial size and star power, roster revamped to fit new vision Christian Cage is now it’s ‘veteran star’ filling the role formerly held by Chris Jericho BCW/NWA:FF have now gone out of business due to them being redundant in the data - Canada now has 4 promotions - PNW smallest out in BC, SW largest but Western-focused, MLW middle-sized hoping to capture the East, CLM as a small promotion in Quebec ECW Rework - Credit eriatarka Heavy in-progress - A rough outline of the history has been provided but these details have not yet been reflected in-game The workers under contract and current state should reflect the new direction though - with the history of how it got there to reveal itself more solidly in-game when bios/lineages are finalized Placeholder title lineages are in there that roughly match the new vision, but eriatarka has noted he intends to do lineages in the future Hardcore promotions rework - Credit Chikbot Project X, NWA:MC, GCPW (formerly CZP) reworks done on the surface level, with much more fitting workers/products/general feel for these companies to differentiate them from Project X is now heavily inspired from Lucha Underground - somewhat more subtle lucha influence than the IRL version Their prominence in the world has been increased somewhat NWA:MC now owned by Billy Corgan and has been freshened up to fit in the more modern scene CZP rebranded to GCPW borrowing many elements from GCW Many new static bios for the game’s most popular wrestlers Filled out all the smaller companies with current title-holders Created a number of future companies for long-term saves Lots of new logos for companies, particularly for some of the less-appealing ones Short-Term Roadmap Continued Japan work by AboardTheArk Womens side of the data to be done Bios/lineages/gimmicks/etc for mens to be done Continue fleshing out the details on a company-by-company basis to give more ‘heart’ to the data Worker Bios for the most notable workers at minimum Title lineages for the major companies which are still missing them Finish ECW/CS rework - use the outlines provided by eriatarka to sort through the data itself and translate to lineages/bios/etc that fit with what has been provided Continued rework of rosters, specifically for smaller companies that haven’t received focus, like WCW Long-Term Ambitions Older lineages for titles that don’t have it Arbitrarily set ~2010ish as the current date I went back to on most titles I give lineages to, some go deeper where I have the information from the previous mod - optimally long-term I’d love any lineage with history to go back farther to fill out the history Mexico pass-over Broadcaster pass-over to combine good game balance with the modern streaming era Lots of the ‘little things’ with the game world - Halls of Fame/Immortals, Some interesting narratives, etc 2010-2022 In Review The NWA: Quote 2010s The early 2010s started off on the back of Chris Jericho’s coronation as one of the top stars of the NWA. This reign would turn out to be his only decent run with the belt, however, holding it for about half a year before dropping it to Kurt Angle. Jericho would go on to win the belt twice more in his career, but both were short forgettable reigns. This era of the wrestling landscape sees the beginning of the end for RFP, with many of their top stars leaving for various reasons. TWE & SW were facing similar fates, with all their top stars they relied on retiring and both facing dwindling popularity. The waning popularities of these companies would be replaced by the meteoric rise of ECW carried by the rivalry of the decade in Punk Vs. Heyman, which lit the world on fire. WCCW remained as strong as ever during this stretch, mostly on the back of Lesnar’s unprecedented dominance but also on their older stars of Callous/Rocky/Austin. This time saw the beginning of increased tensions between various owners of companies within the NWA. Starting with Paul Heyman raiding the indies & Vince McMahon poaching Stampede Wrestling stars, Pandora's box had been opened on owners beginning to make big contract offers to stars contracted to other NWA members, a practice that was in the past an unwritten rule to avoid. Both of these two had to make notable concessions with their talent to smooth things over with the other owners, but undoing the actions could not be done, and trust was now eroded between members. By the time the mid-2010s rolled around, NWA saw the peak of ECW’s popularity as it attracted new stars from across the NWA. Outside the NWA, WSW is lighting the British scene on fire, which causes some members to be questioning whether NWA truly has the power it once did to stamp out competition. WCCW finds itself in a bit of a ‘retooling’ period, although many don’t even notice since Lesnar’s dominance reigns supreme. TWE, based on it’s poaching done earlier, starts to see a return to form in popularity. RFP, on the other hand, sees its fates plunging even further, being embroiled in scandal based on legal troubles with Ric Flair. We see the rise of womens wrestling across the industry, led by GLAM!, to true legitimacy. An area previously seen by many wrestling fans as a novelty and eye candy, womens wrestling by the end of the decade is seen as fully legitimate and even the bigger mens promotions have begun to invest more heavily into their women's division to try to compete against the continued rise of GLAM!. During this era, the NWA poured heavy resources into developing their own subscription network, the NWA Network. The intention was to utilize the network to broadcast all the various promotions worldwide, allowing fans anywhere to access their favorite promotion, regardless of where it’s based. The reality of this, however, was very different. Promotions, especially the large promotions of nations outside of the USA, feared powerhouses like the TWE & WCCW encroaching on their territories once it was shown how popular these external promotions were becoming on the network. They invoked a clause within the NWA’s rules to protect their territory, enforcing regional blackouts of all promotions outside their territory, effectively killing the experience. This caused a huge dispute among the members, and eventually it led to the demise of the network in 2019. The larger promotions which maintained their long-running traditional TV deals welcomed this, however the smaller promotions which had come to rely on the exposure the network provided found themselves really suffering. We start seeing questions as to whether the concept of the NWA is an outdated setup and if the wrestling landscape would be better off without it. By the late 2010s, Stampede Wrestling found itself having gone through its rebuilding period and caught on fire due to it’s strategy of importing foreign workers on short-term contracts for supershows. TWE, with Roman Reigns at the head, was surging. WCCW’s retooling period is starting to pay off as successors to Brock Lesnar’s position start popping up. ECW enters a cooling-off period as their hot angle finally starts to get a bit stale. GLAM!’s rise continues, and at this point is a low-end national promotion. As a whole, things are pretty decent for the NWA during this period. One interesting development is we see the first-time NWA World Heavyweight champion from a member of the WSW, when Kenny Omega was working a short-term contract with SW. This enraged some owners within the NWA who believed the organization needs to remain firm in being hostile against non-NWA companies otherwise it encourages people to think of leaving the organization. In this era, RFP was in full-blown crisis. David Flair refused to distance the company from Ric Flair’s tainted image, and instead changed the only part fans still liked - the product. The company was taking massive losses and was getting horrible PR, eventually leading to the NWA stepping in and issuing an ultimatum: sell the promotion or be kicked out of the NWA - In late 2018, David Flair sold the RFP to a new comer on the scene, Tony Khan. Khan rebranded the RFP as National Championship Promotions, aiming to position the company as a ‘return to form’, establishing a product aimed to be a modern tweak on it’s classic product, and ensuring the branding is no longer tied to a singular person’s reputation. The company saw a reboot at the start of 2019 under the NCP banner, and found itself starting to finally claw back some of their lost popularity. COVID Pandemic The NWA changed forever in 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic spread the globe, causing entire economies to shut down. When it became evident that this was not going to stop in just a few weeks, governments worldwide imposed hard limitations on events to try to fight the pandemic. 2020 all the way through mid-2022 saw wrestling performed in empty arenas. Smaller promotions went on indefinite hiatus through this, and had their operating costs funded by the NWA to keep them alive through the pandemic. Larger promotions kept themselves afloat primarily on their TV deals, many of which negotiated favorable revenue cuts in exchange for lower shares of revenues once the pandemic ends, however even they needed top-up funds from the NWA to keep running. In mid-2022, the pandemic finally passed enough for governments to allow venues to run at full capacity, and wrestling was back, however by now many fans had lapsed, as two full years of no fans made people find other forms of entertainment. Wrestling industry, even after the return of fans, was considered weaker than it’s ever been, alongside with global economies in shambles. The NWA enforced a system of revenue sharing to subsidize the continued existence of the smaller promotions, who were struggling from the death of the NWA network even before the pandemic and now had ceased operations during the pandemic, which led to massive uproar from the larger promotions who were themselves barely staying afloat, who found it unfair that they are now keeping effectively their own competition afloat against their will. The Domino Effect By late 2022, the NWA was in disarray. After the long-awaited return of fans to events, it became clear that the financial problems facing companies wasn’t going to be solved easily. The NWA itself was in debt and the larger promotions were all tired of funding the smaller territories. The grievances of the last decade came to a boiling point all at once: the Pandora's box being opened on talent poaching within NWA members, the softening stance by NWA on non-NWA promotions, the failure of the network and the tough position that left lots of companies, and most recently the revenue sharing agreement. On November 19, 2022, Shane McMahon, owner of TWE, submitted articles to withdraw from the NWA and become fully independent. This move spurred a domino effect, as all of the other large promotions knew that for every withdrawal, their share of the revenue sharing agreement would go up and with TWE not being limited by the NWA’s restrictions, they’d have a leg up on the competition. In the past, the NWA would prevent this from being an issue as a strong NWA can squash any promotion who dared go independent, but with a weakened NWA, members thinking of leaving had no fear of repercussions. As a result of this, all the other large members had no choice but to withdraw as well in the coming days, with the exception of one - Tony Khan’s NCP. It was agreed that the promotions would exit over the course of the remainder of 2022, and effective January 1st, they would become fully independent. The New NWA Tony Khan, son of a billionaire and owner of NCP, a long-time fan of classic RFP & NWA, opted to use his father’s funds to bail out the NWA’s debts and buy the organization, partly due to a soft spot he had for the organization and partly due to the opportunity even a weakened NWA wold have in bolstering the lost prestige of his promotion, hearkening back to the 80s where the RFP was the exclusive holder of the NWA’s supershows and titles. Knowing that he could not solely fund the revenue sharing agreement, he negotiated a one-time cash injection for the remaining regional members of the NWA in exchange for them remaining in the NWA without a revenue sharing model. Knowing that it was either this or NWA collapse, the regional promotions agreed and opted to remain in this new NWA, but are now on their own for generating ongoing revenues. On December 20, 2022 at NWA Starrcade 2022, the company’s belts were unified with the NWA world championships, confirming that the NWA belts would become the company’s exclusive belts. As of today, at the start of 2023, the NWA is comprised of NCP and a number of smaller regional promotions, with every other large promotion being fully independent. Will NWA rise from the ashes like a Phoenix or is Khan’s NWA too far diminished to be worth anything? Disclaimer: Quote First off, this mod is 100% noncanon of the iDOM universe. This is my personal interpretation, and if Idol made a new version that would take all priority over mine. Additionally, straight up, I hold no delusions about my ability to make a good mod. This is my first ever publicly released mod and it’s certainly rough around the edges. This is almost entirely me rejigging the work of far better modmakers than myself to fit the universe as I imagine it. It will be missing history, parts of it will surely make no sense, I’ll aim to slowly chip away at parts of that over time but as of today the mod is playable. I’m mostly releasing it because I know this has always been my favorite universe to play in and I’ve always been a bit sad at the lack of offerings available for it in recent TEW versions. Last, this is entirely freeware. Mod Decisions: Quote A very national-focused landscape The idea of the mod is to really lean into the way the game runs to alleviate some of TEW’s problems. My problem with the way the game runs in most mods, even CVerse, is that the game quickly snowballs - even small companies all get coverage near-globally right from the get-go, one company gets all the talent and runs away with things, etc. Whenever I play CVerse and each of the Zen national variants become fully global companies with like 50 popularity across the whole world has always seemed silly to me, but that’s just because the game doesn’t handle international coverage of small companies well. By making the landscape extremely nationally focused, I try to use the lore of the iDOM universe to work better with the game mechanics than most real-world mods. The iDOM universe has promotions that are very national, but very little international exposure. Even the biggest like WCCW barely have a presence outside of USA because Canadians are covered by CS, people in the UK are covered by WSW, etc. I liken it kind of to a soccer/football landscape, where each country has it’s own domestic league that the fans care about, and outside of the megastars, people in one region don’t care too much about the external regions. By giving each region its own dominant promotion large enough to satisfy it’s viewers, I can justify making the big company’s international pops very low, meaning they don’t begin to snowball into global dominance until at least a few years of simulation without player input. I also facilitated this by adjusting broadcasters so that it’s tough to get coverage outside of your country without at least having a base level of exposure there, no single ‘Youtube’ broadcaster that has coverage worldwide and barely any popularity requirements for example. The results of this, I’ve found, is that the simulation can go at least a few years before things start to break down TEW-style and one company starts to inevitably snowball and become a global powerhouse. Abandoning the NWA Dominance It seems a bit silly to make an iDOM mod and say ‘NWA is now a small power’ since that’s basically what it’s like in real life. I agree that it does feel, at the surface level, like you’re saying ‘well what’s the point of doing iDOM then in that case’. Over the years of playing with my own versions of the iDOM universe, I’ve found that the game simply cannot do a large powerful NWA well at all. It’s a bad experience as a player, straight up. Seeing that dominant NWA World Heavyweight Champion Brock Lesnar get loaned out to an NWA:MC show where he loses the championship to some rando with 19 pop simply breaks all immersion into the game, and there’s nothing you can do about it as a player and there’s nothing you can do about it as a modmaker to set the title up in a way the AI can even remotely handle them. TEW, as it sits currently, does not have the capability to handle alliance titles of any level of real importance. So something’s gotta be done about that. At the end of the day, I’ve found what makes iDOM great isn’t the NWA factor per say but rather the ‘fantasy variants of real companies’ and the extremely competitive landscape with a wackload of medium-sized companies all competing in the extremely saturated landscape to come out ahead. So I figured, what if we kept the big competitive landscape of companies - keep the lore of all the NWA’s domination, but have the starting point of the mod be right after it’s collapse. The COVID pandemic gives a good excuse to how things get to that point. We can assume that in this world it has an even larger affect than IRL, it makes sense that it would be heavily in debt after subsidizing all of its affiliated promotions running shows with no fans for 2 years, giving everyone an excuse to want to withdraw from it, on top of some additional grievances that build up over the decade. This also helps explain why the moment the game starts things start to change - everybody is in a new situation, so it doesn’t break immersion that the company you chose to play suddenly is snatching up all the talent in the game like it might playing any regular database. Additionally, it makes sense that Tony Khan would buy it out at this point, mirroring our world where he bought a dying ROH because he had a soft spot for it. You can imagine this world’s version of Khan probably grew up on the NWA and was a big fan of old RFP. So him buying out NWA and keeping it alive under his banner, with just small regional promotions and his NCP affiliated with it gives it an interesting new dynamic where you can have those titles and their lineages attached to a promotion rather than an alliance so the game doesn’t immediately sully them, and if it does it sullies them in ways consistent with the lore, and you now have this ‘shadow of its former self’ NWA present in the world. It gives NCP access to some regional workers to pad out their roster in lieu of a developmental promotion, and it gives the company some titles and events with deep prestige. This gives us a fun starting point of the mod. You can play as NCP and lead this new Khan-led NWA back to glory - you can play any of the other companies, newly freed from NWA enforcing their subsidiaries to play nice with each other, in hopes of breaking out as a dominant power. Lack of focus on Mexico I’ll be honest - I know almost nothing about Mexican wrestling - I was able to build things enough so that they don’t look out of place in the world, but at the end of the day this mod is admittedly built, as things stand, for the companies of this region to be factors in the background more than anything. If somebody wants to take the mod and make these regions better and release their own version, I happily welcome it. Game World: Putting it blunt - the game is too easy financially, for AI and Players. I like the game mechanics to actually work as much as possible with mods, rather than relying on the player to pretend their company isn’t just running away with money. As such, I used the excuse of this world taking longer than our world to recover from COVID to give every game region ‘low and rising’ economy starting point, and most regions except for a select few to have the same wrestling industry starting point. I’ve found that in simulations, most of the big companies lose money hard right from the get-go and stabilize over a year or so as they adjust their production and whatnot - this is exactly what I was going for here - the idea that with every big company is experiencing lots of hiccups internally as they transition to their post-NWA state makes sense that they’d all lose money until stabilizing their finances. In some simulations I’ve seen some surprising companies go under, which opens up their roster to be claimed by their many competitors - it all seems to play really well together with the heavily competitive landscape and not enough talent to go around. If you disagree with any of this and want to have more normal economy and industry states as a starting point, by all means go for it. Credits: Quote Idolizer - Original creator of the iDOM universe TheWho87 - Creator of the 2015 iDOM update, of which much of the data was used and imported into this mod as a starting point Questlove/Devil Cyborg - RWC data used as a starting point for almost the entire mod Lukkearthur - Brand Spankin New Pic Pac is the picture pack used in this mod for workers/broadcasters/titles/etc AboardTheArk - Complete revamp of Japan to help turn it from a ‘background region’ to a fully fleshed out, detailed, part of the game world Chikbot - Provided outlines for the revamp of CZP/GCPW, MWA:MC, Project X Eriatarka - Provided outlines for SW & ECW Revamps - Provided extra details & suggestions which led to NCP revamp, EVE creation, RESIST creation The Lloyd - Fully fleshed out TWE & WCCW - has provided misc other suggestions & ideas as well The original starting point was a mod which used a mishmash of sources as a starting point, I think I removed all of the uncredited sources for public release but if you spot something that was created by you that snuck in without credit, please let me know and I can either remove it or credit you. Edited February 15 by diamondium 5 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diamondium Posted December 18, 2023 Author Share Posted December 18, 2023 (edited) Promotion Highlights USA WCCW Quote WCCW has had a mostly smooth run through the 2010s, without too many hiccups or problems. The early 2010s saw a changing of the guard. “Superstar” Steve Austin, “Mean” Mark Callous, and the company’s newest late-blooming star, Rocky Johnson Jr. all wound down their in-ring careers, all 3 would be gone by the end of 2014. For most companies, such star power all retiring in a short span would be a huge issue, but WCCW didn’t have this problem for they’d successfully built the star many would consider the GOAT wrestler in NWA history - Brock Lesnar. Lesnar’s dominance ran through the decade, much as it had for much of the previous decade. At any given time throughout the 2010s, it’s a safe assumption that he had one of, or both of, the WCCW World or NWA World Heavyweight titles in his possession. This dominance did, to an extent, come at the cost of the other potential stars of WCCW, who seemingly had to wait a bit longer to round their way to the main event scene than they may have otherwise. One such example of a superstar who took a long time to find his true potential is Cody Rhodes - who has been a staple of WCCW, and part of the legendary Rhodes family. Seen forever as a near-guaranteed future world champion, he never made it out of the midcard for most of the decade, winning the TV Title on 4 occasions and the Tag titles once with his brother. His ascension did finally come in 2019 after a long stretch of challenging and failing to win the world title on numerous occasions. Since this point, he has been a 3-time WCCW World Champion and holds the honor of being the last pre-NCP-exclusivity NWA World Heavyweight champion on his first run with that belt. Other stars who saw their way to the top of WCCW in the late-2010s include Tyler Black, who made the jump from ECW in 2015, finding his way to the WCCW World title on 3 occasions since and NWA World Heavyweight championship once. Windham saw himself on the cusp of becoming a true star for quite a long time, having one short and forgettable run with the world title in 2019, however he found his stride in 2022 when he formed the “Big Game Hunters” stable and started to establish himself as a threat, putting Brock Lesnar on the shelf long-term and also taking down Roman Reigns to capture the NWA World Heavyweight title. The COVID years had not too much effect on WCCW relative to other companies. As with everyone, they stalled a bit as the stretch drug on, however being Texas-based, lenient government regulations allowed them to have some fans in seats for the majority of the duration. Randy Orton, who has always had a tangible sense of ‘something’, across the NWA, winning the NWA World Heavyweight Championship twice previously but both reigns being heavily panned and having bounced between many companies over the years due to rumored personal issues, signed a long-term contract as the pandemic was beginning to finally wind down, and his short time in WCCW has been incredibly well-received. Many say he’s matured lots behind the scenes, and now acts as a well-respected veteran. Coming into 2023, there is some concern that WCCW could see it’s first challenges in over a decade, with Brock Lesnar beginning to wind down his career taking limited dates. They have a strong roster of stars ready to take the mantle, most notably Cody Rhodes & Tyler Black, however their undercard leaves room to be desired and some question whether that’s enough in the absence of Lesnar. Newly freed from the NWA, will the WCCW continue to be the top dog or will someone else take the top spot in America? TWE Quote TWE had an eventful decade, kicked off by a serious fall-from-grace. There had been concerns through the 2000s that if they don’t build new stars to replace JPL/Michaels/Bautista, they were in for a reckoning, and that’s exactly what we saw. JPL & Michaels both, having already extended their career longer than they intended for the sake of the company, retired in the first couple years of the decade (they did un-retire for a short tag run in 2013, but otherwise were out of the picture by 2012). Having a remaining main event scene consisting of Dave Bautista, who was also past his prime, and Nero (Jeff Hardy), a popular wrestler who never was pushed to be quite on the level of the megastars, and not much else due to factors like Mordetzky’s personal issues preventing him being entrusted with a push to the main event, and a barebones roster outside of that. During this period, TWE fell as low as 4th in America in popularity. Knowing something had to change, in 2013, Vince McMahon saw Paul Heyman in ECW ‘break the seal’ on throwing aside long-established norms regarding poaching other territories talent, and decided to get in on some of this action himself. Vince looked north of the border to Stampede Wrestling, where he saw two superstars who fit the mold of TWE perfectly, one established and one for the future. He made huge offers to established vet Sexton Hardcastle and blue-chip prospect Joe Anoa’i, who later became known as Roman Reigns, who Vince saw as having everything he’d look for in a guy to carry the company. This move enraged Bret Hart, who refused to allow any co-operation with TWE going forward despite NWA’s attempts to smooth things over - these hostilities still stand to this day. Vince cared little about the repercussions, however, as these two signings reinvigorated the company. Around this time, McMahon also offered a huge contract to Bill Goldberg, one of the UFC’s biggest stars of the early 2000s who was famous for an unprecedented undefeated streak within the promotion. Always willing to make bold moves, the first of these 3 signings to win the TWE Heavyweight title was actually the youngest, Roman Reigns, who won shortly after joining in 2013, and had a roughly year-long reign with the belt. Fans rejoiced at the fresh new direction in the company, having grown tired of nearly a decade of the ‘same old’ for the company. Reigns became an overnight sensation and is often considered ‘McMahon’s last great success’, and quickly started to be seen on the level of Brock Lesnar due to his immediate dominance. Reigns would go on to win the TWE Heavyweight championship 7 times and the NWA World Heavyweight championship 4 times - the latter is particularly notable given that NWA has historically tended to overlook TWE’s stars for the big gold belt. During the mid-to-late 2010s the TWE started to see some of its internal stars beginning to flourish as well. While Reigns/Hardcastle/Goldberg/Bautista ran the main event, new stars like Ettore Langston, Keith Lee, & Ryback would emerge, and longtime midcarders like The Miz, Bobby Lashley, & Chris Mordetzky would begin to find, or re-find their momentum. Ryback and Goldberg was long-considered a huge matchup due to many drawing comparisons in Ryback’s style to Goldberg, but as of the end of 2022, injuries or other commitments have prevented the matchup from actually occurring. Over this stretch, TWE climbs back into it’s long-held position near the top of the pack in popularity within America, trading punches with WCCW. The decade saw a long-overdue change in the womens division, although many still to this day consider it a superficial division focusing more on looks than talent, none can argue it’s not better than it was at the start of the decade. The division started to see some light through the clouds with the rise of Alexis Laree who showed the company a new standard womens matches can achieve, however Vince remained hesitant to give any real focus even with her making the most of any opportunity. It wasn’t until the meteoric rise of GLAM! that things started to change, mostly out of necessity due to bad press starting to come out about TWE’s lack of focus on the division. The company began to push some of their more-salvageable in-ring talents like Brie & Nikki Bella & Angelina Williams to work alongside Alexis Laree, and young star Alexa Bliss was showing huge promise. The division mostly spun it’s wheels, Vince calling it ‘good enough’, through the mid-2010s. In 2019, Stephanie McMahon made it a personal project to try to turn this division around, courting massive UFC star Ronda Rousey, in hopes that she can bring the crossover appeal that Goldberg had on the mens side. Initially expected to sign with NCP, Rousey shocked the wrestling world when she signed with TWE in 2019, coming in dominant and winning the TWE Womens title 4 times & NWA Womens title 3 times since then. The division shines brighter than ever as of the end of 2022, with Rousey & Bliss both long-established and new star Liv Morgan looking like the next to join them. Starting in 2019, the company made an overall direction change with the talent they aim to pursue. Seeing the hype Bill Goldberg brought, they realized there’s opportunity to grow their audience by pivoting to stars with crossover appeal to other sports and forms of entertainment, not far off Vince’s vision with the original Wrestlemania in the defunct WWF, but fixing the core error that these crossover stars need to actually compete in the ring with legitimacy. This initiative is what brought in Ronda Rousey, as well as had limited impressive runs by recording artist Bad Bunny and UFC crossover Paige VanZant is currently also in developmental. Most notably, this initiative led to TWE signing social media sensation Logan Paul. A man who lives in controversy, he showed an uncanny ability to pick up the sport, and actually committed himself full-time to becoming a wrestler. Debuting in 2021, shocking the world by winning an open challenge from Ryback to capture the TWE East Coast title in his debut, he found himself in the 2022 Royal Rumble and actually won, leading to him headlining Clash of the Titans XXIX against Roman Reigns, coming close to ending his 3-year reign with the world title. Logan Paul is seen as the most promising young star the company has as of the end of 2022, and he’s actually been starting to see segments of the crowd cheer him, implying a Babyface run might be in his future. On June 14, 2022, Vince McMahon passed away, passing the company to his son Shane McMahon and creative control to Jean Paul Levesque, both of whom had been running ESW for most of the decade. Early reviews of the new leadership are positive, with fans pleased with JPL’s meticulous booking style, but time will tell if they can reach the heights their parents have. Vince had always dreamed of breaking away from the NWA, and this dream was fulfilled after his death when Shane McMahon began the wave of companies leaving the NWA in November 2022 at a members meeting where long-running tensions between the various owners boiled over. Will Shane & JPL pull off what Vince always dreamed and become the top dog without the NWA present to limit them? ECW Quote ECW saw itself on shaky ground to start the 2010s. Some good young raw talent on their roster, but also a weak tag division and aging originals taking up most of their screentime. Favorites like Baldo the Destroyer left to NJPW early on leaving some gaps in the main event. While there’s popular promising talents like CM Punk & Samoa Joe relatively established, neither have fully caught fire as of yet. Some fans begin to resent Viacom for limiting what the promotion can broadcast, viewing it as being overly sanitized, meanwhile Viacom was growing increasingly frustrated with Heyman for refusing to hire guys who look like credible athletes, and weren’t a fan of what they considered fairly ‘trashy’ programming. Heyman caved and hired a few talents who fit the network’s visions, most notably Shelton Benjamin from RFP. Shelton came in with a bang, winning the ECW World title in 2010 and going on a dominant reign to start his time in the company. Hated by loyal ECW fans as being the ‘Network’s Champion’, all the seeds were planted for the next megastar to emerge if they could dethrone him. This megastar came in the form of CM Punk - a long-time ECW project, who had a short reign with the world title previously but had yet to truly connect with the fans. In Early 2011, CM Punk finally dethroned Benjamin and began his 2nd reign with the title. The reign was a long one, which planted many seeds of Heyman growing increasingly frustrated with Punk’s success on-screen. In mid-2012, recognizing the hatred the fans had for Viacom with Benjamin, Heyman refined this idea and created the Corporate Heyman character, a villainous boss insistent on sanitizing ECW with the help of cronies such as Shelton. Immediately setting his sights on Punk, this sparked the feud that lit the world on fire, as Punk Vs. Heyman captured headlines across the country and even the globe, causing ECW to skyrocket in popularity. During this time, CM Punk even has a short reign with the NWA World Heavyweight championship, famously defiling it with a spray-painted X for the duration, making him a massive babyface in ECW and a heel when he defended it in other territories. Punk traded victories with Heyman and his chosen Corporate wrestlers during the 2012-2014 stretch in the feud that never seemed to cool off. Meanwhile, in the undercard, established main eventer Samoa Joe is lighting the world on fire through 2013 with a dominant run with the TV Title, bringing the title a much-needed prestige boost, dubbing himself the ‘King of Television’ and having top tier matches with whoever he encounters. This reign is eventually ended by an up-and-coming Tyler Black, which establishes him as ‘one to watch’. Tyler Black never entirely reaches his full potential in ECW, but later-on finds that an unlikely move to WCCW, being an ‘odd man out’ among their roster helps him stand out and become a true star. Behind the scenes, Heyman’s off-screen antics began ruffling the feathers of other NWA territories as he supplemented ECW’s roster with a whole lot of young talent from the indies, including names such as Brodie Lee, Jon Moxley, Adam Cole, Roderick Strong, Austin Creed, ontop of having previously pulled this move with Kevin Steen & El Generico a few years earlier. This is for all intents and purposes a goldmine of talent for the company, however the means of which he attained these signings violated lots of ‘unwritten rules’ among NWA members. Heyman is able to calm down the other owners when he agrees to generously loan out much of his main event talent to rival shows for free over the next few years, which ends up having the benefit of just getting even more eyes on ECW. The hot streak continued for ECW through 2013, as CM Punk enjoyed a long run having seemingly humbled Heyman for the time being. At this time, he finds a new arch-rival as recent arrival Brodie Lee is repackaged as a suit-and-tie-wearing pessimist aligned with Heyman, who preys on CM Punk’s insecurities & acerbic wit. The storyline is praised for its surprising thoughtfulness and culminates in a dog collar match in early 2014, considered by many to be ECW’s greatest match of the modern era, where Brodie Lee beat Punk for the title. 2014 is considered the absolute peak of ECW’s popularity, with the undercard delivering as well with Steen beating Generico in a Mask Vs. Career match, spawning Sami Zayn as Generico’s unmasked persona. The year saw big arrivals of Bryan Danielson, initially debuting as an ally to CM Punk but later a rival when he stole Punk’s NWA World Heavyweight championship, making a deal with Heyman, as well as Kurt Angle, one of the world’s most popular workers making one last run in his career. All of these combine to a hot main event scene for the company, which at this stage is the top company in the USA. The next few years see the company start to cool off somewhat - Danielson missed most of 2015 due to injury and left for Stampede Wrestling in 2017 after putting over some upcoming stars. The continued ascension of Jon Moxley helps offset this somewhat, however the company loses Tyler Black, Kurt Angle, Adam Cole, Roderick Strong, Austin Creed, among others, and finds itself increasingly relying on the big names of Punk/Joe/Moxley/Brodie. Some gold bits do come out of this era, like an excellent CM Punk heel run when he shocked the world and joined with Heyman, proclaiming himself a ‘Paul Heyman guy’, but some feel that by aligning with him, ECW jumped the shark. The COVID era saw continued struggles for ECW - the company was built on an intimate relationship with the fans in the arena, and the lack of fans in seats led to the company trying to make up for it with increasingly gimmicky matches and locations to compensate, which did help with some excellent cinematic angles & matches between long-time rivals Kevin Owens and Sami Zayn, who finally broke through to the main event scene. The return of fans to seats has benefitted them more than their competitors as the rabid fans have come back louder than ever. Rounding into 2023, ECW remains one of the top promotions in the country but the fire they had in the mid-2010s is long-gone, and much of the stars who comprised that era are aging and on their way out. They have some promising new additions who might crack into the main event scene shortly in Darby Allin, Matt Riddle, and even the young Hook who might freshen things up. Can Heyman find magic once again and usher in another boom era for ECW or is it destined to never reach its former glory? GLAM! Quote GLAM! Started the decade as, for all intents and purposes, a regional promotion with a strong Claifornia fanbase, but an all-womens promotion still seen as more of a novelty than a serious competitor on the national landscape. The roster at this stage was filled with decent enough in-ring talent but nobody who has ever been a true draw. Trish Stratus, Amazing Kong, Jazz, Beth Phoenix, Lisa Varon, all in hindsight are credited with getting the ball rolling on the growth of the company but alone had a ceiling in how much they could really draw, outside of maybe Stratus who had name value from her TWE run. Masusa Miceli had had greater ambitions, however. Knowing that growth had to come from within, the company put a huge focus on internal development, with their first dojo coming early in the decade. The first real homegrown star to come out of this push to internally develop was AJ Lee, who became a fixture on the roster in 2012. Micelli also in this era negotiated an end to TWE’s exclusivity of the NWA Womens Championship, allowing GLAM! workers to win this and tour across other territories. Eager to push fresh faces on the roster, AJ Lee was given a quick push early on, winning the REAL Womens title in 2013. Not far behind her, were 4 other graduates all hitting the roster running in the next couple of years. These 5 women would eventually become known as the ‘Fabulous Five’, coined due to them being the faces of GLAM! during the mid-to-late 2010s. These five were the aforementioned AJ Lee, Becky Lynch who made the jump from Stampede Wrestling, the extremely talented Charlotte Flair, the extremely marketable Sasha Banks, and the eternal underdog Bayley. With each of these 5 establishing themselves in the middle of the decade, and GLAM! beginning to supply the majority of the NWA Womens champions, more and more eyes turned to GLAM!, and the company started to see national attention. Some of the more prominent women from other companies start to get in on the momentum and make the jump, one example of which being Alexis Laree. Going into the pandemic, GLAM! had secured a national television deal, and was continuing to fire on all cylinders of the back of its Fabulous Five. The pandemic hit the company just as it did everyone else, however the company maintained a strong presence by transitioning to a bigger focus on using social media as a distribution platform for storylines and characters - Some of its ‘next generation’ of stars started to really flourish using this platform, such as supremely athletic Bianca Blair and Australian sensation Rhea Ripley, the latter of which has become fairly famous even in non-wrestling circles due to her TikTok presence. The company has a much younger demographic than the other American companies due to this strategy, giving it a strong footing to build on. As of 2023, GLAM!’s Fabulous Five are starting to exit their prime and transition to more veteran roles, with a strong roster of future stars primed to take over once their reign ends, putting them in a very strong position to go forward in theory. The other promotions of the world, however, have taken notice of them and have started to put more legitimate focus on their own women’s division. Some are concerned that the promotion might lose some momentum now that they’re not the only game in town for womens wrestling, especially with the NWA no longer there to try to prevent hostile contract offers to their stars. RFP Quote The early 2010s were fairly tame but trending negative for Ric Flair Promotions; it saw a good chunk of its stars move on to other promotions, mostly for various unrelated reasons, and with it struggling to secure replacement star power, viewers started to turn towards other promotions instead. By 2016, the company would firmly be considered in ‘rebuilding mode’. Typically this would be part of the natural ebbs and flows of a promotion, but this was when disaster hit the promotion. Ric Flair, former owner, regular on-screen personality, and namesake of the promotion found himself the subject of numerous Sexual Assault allegations, finding himself in extremely public national headlines and in and out of courtrooms over the course of the next couple years. Taking the wrong move in response to this, David Flair opted to reposition the company’s on-screen product, moving to a more sports-entertainment product rather than its historical focus on technical displays with just enough flair ontop of that, but refused to change the branding from Ric Flair Promotions. Not understanding that the fans were still generally pleased with the product before the change, just felt dirty supporting the brand, the company’s fortunes continued to tumble. With so many other options for wrestling in the American market, fans were quick to ditch a company in favor of the other options, and the company found itself a glorified regional promotion by 2018. Upon a guilty verdict being reached in late 2018, NWA issued an ultimatum to David Flair, who had refused to distance the company from his father: sell the company or be kicked out of the NWA. It was at this point that Tony Khan, son of a billionaire and long-time fan of classic RFP, stepped in to buy the company. The company was swiftly rebranded “National Championship Promotions” to try to evoke its old-school flavor while preventing its brand from being so directly tied to a single individual and it had a soft reboot going into 2019. Under Tony Khan, NCP immediately pivoted its presentation & product back to its more traditional position, but with a slightly more modern focus, caring less about exclusively technical prowess and becoming more of a general ‘work-rate’ promotion with other styles accepted as well. Re-implementing the ‘Code of Honor’ where handshakes begin every match, refocusing the focus of the shows to in-ring action, and supplementing its roster with some top young talents such as Adam Page & the young prodigy MJF, as well as luring the Young Bucks back to America from Japan, the fans began to flock back to the traditional powerhouse. In December 2022, after a wave of withdrawals from the NWA left the alliance on the brink of collapse, Tony Khan managed to use his personal wealth to buy out the organization at a bargain, allowing NCP to have sole control over it’s prestigious titles and events, as well as access to a network of smaller promotions still aligned with the NWA to help supplement its roster. On December 20, 2022, they unified these titles with their existing ones and retired the original NCP titles in favor of using exclusively the NWA championships. With this, the NCP was once again the exclusive ‘premier promotion’ of the NWA much as it was in the 80s, but at great cost to the NWA itself. Can this restructured NCP & NWA find its way back to the top of the wrestling landscape or has Tony Khan bit off more than he can chew in trying to keep the past alive? Project X Quote Project X, the successor of NWA:LA, has been a source of controversy and innovation since its inception. At the start of the decade, the company was still early in its transition from NWA:LA, in the process of finding its new identity. The company primarily relied on controversial wrestler/rapper John Cena as its figurehead. During this era, it relied on a ‘trashy’ crash TV style, which did set it apart from the competition in the market. The company was able to grow to being a strong regional promotion over the next few years, but found itself beginning to stall in popularity, with it’s product starting to feel a bit dated at this point. Mostly reliant on an aging Cena, the company freshened things up a bit with a former TWE midcarder who never found his potential there, John Hennigan. Hennigan was able to embrace the controversial nature of the promotion and found himself really letting his natural charisma shine for one of the first times of his career. In 2017, in an attempt to freshen things up and also to begin Cena’s transition out of the ring, John Cena took over as head booker for the promotion, and with it had a set of fresh new ideas. Being a fan of Mexican Lucha style wrestling, Cena borrowed elements of this, as well as negotiated a working relationship with AULL to trade workers. Alongside this, PX changed it’s production from the outdated crash TV nature to a more episodic, cinematic style - something not seen in American wrestling before. Almost like a hybrid of an HBO drama and wrestling. These Lucha stars helped fill out their roster as well as new workers like Prince Puma, Luchasaurus, later on Killshot, all found themselves flourishing with this innovative new style. This new direction worked wonderfully for them when the pandemic hit, as the cinematic nature of their weekly show allowed them to make creative cuts and directive choices, making it so that one barely noticed the lack of fans - during this era they worked out of an abandoned warehouse that they dubbed ‘The Underground Temple’. Going into 2023, the company has now established into this new direction and is starting to see it’s growth finally start to plateau, having reached the level of a low-tier national promotion. It might need another bold new twist to keep the momentum going. RESIST Quote Jim Perry, having seen the success Pacific Northwest Wrestling was having in the Northwest region, made the astute observation that the traditional style PNW was offering was not a perfect fit for this market, and believed another, more innovative promotion could have even more success based out of here. Shortly after, co-operating with Rocky Romero, the two of them formed RESIST Wrestling. The company negotiated a working agreement with DDT in Japan to bring some of the Japanese style to America. It would act as a home for DDT wrestlers looking to do an excursion, and this heavily influenced it’s product, which attempts to borrow aspects from both areas of the industry which it calls Pacific Fusion. The company, struggling to get established wrestlers upon launch, relied on scrubbing the local area for young talent. Out of these efforts produced Shane Strickland & Darby Allin, who would go to become the company’s first big stars. Seeing the quality of these two, the company started to develop a reputation for developing young talent, and some of the more promising youngsters from across America started seeking out RESIST as a way to propel their careers. Going into 2023, Darby Allin & Shane Strickland have both been signed by bigger promotions, however RESIST has some incredible young talent at it’s disposal to create its next wave of stars to build off of. Edited February 14 by diamondium Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diamondium Posted December 18, 2023 Author Share Posted December 18, 2023 (edited) Canada SW Quote The top promotion in Canada for as long as anyone can remember, Stampede Wrestling (Formerly Calgary Stampede) has seen a decade of highs and lows, but despite the swings has continued to remain true to its style of offering fans great in-ring action and familiar faces. The 2010s started off with struggles for SW. Lots of the former stars from their early-2000s boom period had left or retired, Benoit being the most recent, retiring after suffering severe head trauma. Several of his close friends, such as Andrew Martin & Greg Pawluk saw his struggles and retired early to ensure they don’t end up the same. Lance Storm retires from the ring and becomes the head trainer of the Hart Family Dungeon Wrestling School. With all of this, SW found itself severely lacking in Main Event talent, relying heavily on long-time fan favorite Sexton Hardcastle more and more. Having failed to produce reliable talent ready to take the position, Owen Hart, formerly retired, returned to the ring in 2010 due to pleas from the rest of the Hart family to help ease the transition while they built their next generation. Their only other main success of this era is the rise of the Irishman Sheamus, who is able to partially fill in the gaps. Adding to the company’s struggles, Harry Smith & TJ Wilson, the Calgary Bulldogs, both earmarked to anchor their next generation, leave for Japan in 2011 and Harry Smith pursues an MMA career at the same time. Both would eventually return the company in 2014. Extremely promising prospect Kenny Omega leaves ACW partway through a development stint to join Project X, later moving on to WSW. Many of the company’s otherwise promising young stars find themselves with increasing behavioral issues, wrestlers such as Ted DiBiase Jr., Carlito Colon, and Teddy Hart. DiBiase & Colon are put on careful watch and are kept in the midcard before both eventually move on to other promotions. Teddy Hart receives a huge push to try to capitalize on his ‘rockstar’ persona, which goes down in flames, being arrested multiple times, and ends up blackballed from the NWA entirely. This, as a whole, leads to what many Canadian fans dubbed the ‘lost generation’ of once-promising wrestlers who could have become stars in the SW under other circumstances. In one more gut punch to SW, the company becomes victim of some controversy, with Vince McMahon joining Paul Heyman in breaking lots of ‘unwritten rules’, poaching talent from other NWA promotions, most notably Sexton Hardcastle, a long-time Main Eventer for Stampede Wrestling. They also poached Joe Anoa’i, a former Edmonton Eskimos CFL player, who looked primed to be a company-carrying talent before he shocked Canadian fans and signed with TWE in 2013, who would go on to be their single biggest star in the next year. With their backs against the wall, dwindling attendances (leading to The Stampede 2011 not even selling out the Saddledome, a first for a company that has sold out full-size stadiums for this show in the past), the company finally starts to see some wins in the next few years. One such win is the womens division - having spotted the impending rise of womens wrestling early on, the company invested heavily into their division. Building the division primarily around some promising talents such as Nattie Neidhart, Becky Lynch, Beth Pheonix, and Syuri Kondo, they received lots of interest from new fans, women in particular, which started to give the company some much-needed buzz. On the mens side, the company begins to bolster its main event with some pivotal signings in 2012-13, such as an aging Eddie Guerrero, who was going through some personal struggles but was able to turn things around with the fresh start to give a great career wind-down run, and Prince Devitt, an extremely talented wrestler who captures the fans imaginations with his elaborate entrance. The midcard/upper-midcard gets bolstered with signings of Lance Hoyt & Rene Dupree. Life is shown in the formerly lacking tag division with Drew Galloway/Paul Burchill & James Storm/Bobby Roode putting on great performances. A new star begins to emerge as well, Jinder Mahal, a man of Indian heritage appealing to the diverse population of Canada, begins to see an organic following. By the time 2015 rolls around, SW’s roster had firmly rebounded - Owen Hart, Prince Devitt, Sheamus, Lance Archer, Drew Galloway, Jinder Mahal, a returned Harry Smith & TJ Wilson who come back looking like stars, Apocalypse being a newly rising star with a crazy look showing lots of promise on the mens side and Nattie Neidhart, Becky Lynch, Alexis Laree, Gail Kim,Taya Valkyrie, and others delivering on the womens side. With a strong roster, for a company focused on in-ring talent, naturally came a strong boom period, but this particular era was quite short-lived. Shortly after, with the rising tides of WSW in the UK, some of its overseas talent began to jump back home. Drew Galloway, Nigel McGuiness, & Fergal Devitt left the company however Sheamus opted to stay put in SW. Owen Hart finally called it a career again, along with Lance Storm calling it quits for good. The rise of GLAM! south of the border lured away some of the more promising women talents such as Becky Lynch & Alexis Laree. Not able to afford another ‘bust’ period, so soon, the company pivoted their strategy in 2017. They realize part of their strength is the prestige of their promotion’s name and start advertising their monthly shows as NWA ‘supercards’, finding it much easier to draw big-name wrestlers in for short stints leading up to a supercard rather than long-term deals. During this stretch, huge names such as Bryan Danielson, AJ Styles, Rey Mysterio, and most notably the Canadian the SW could never nail down Kenny Omega. This strategy turned out to be a massive success for its time, growing SW to heights not seen for decades. Unfortunately, however, a strategy continuously relying on flying in international talents for big shows would come crashing down on SW when the pandemic hit, making it extremely challenging to move across borders. The entire strategy came to a stop, leaving them only with their core roster, which had dwindled significantly when not being band-aided by foreign draws. Sexton Hardcastle, having returned just before the pandemic to begin a retirement run, and Sheamus were still big names but both on the old side. Jinder Mahal, Harry Smith, TJ Wilson, Apocalypse, all strong talents but were pushed aside in the last few years due to focus on international draws, don’t have the drawing power they could have. Without fans in seats and lacking in star power, the company went from biggest boom to biggest bust overnight. A decent war chest from the last few years weathered the storm, but the company struggled to adjust to the COVID landscape, with the only high spots being that it finally allowed them to focus on some of their ‘lost generation’, with Mahal, Smith, Wilson all becoming bona-fide main eventers. Going into 2023, with the fans back in seats and the fall of the NWA, Stampede Wrestling is hoping to finally find some stability. Sexton Hardcastle, having delayed his retirement until fans are in seats, is ready for one last run. Prince Devitt having recently returned joins Sheamus as the UK stars in the company, and Jinder Mahal/TJ Wilson/Harry Smith/Apocalypse all have solidified their spots in the main event, giving the company a main event scene lighter on star power than it’s been in the past but still respectable. The company will have to contend with a new competitor out east, however, in MLW, who is preparing to run its first show in the new year. MLW Quote Stampede Wrestling’s dominance on the Canadian market was always a point of controversy within the NWA. On multiple occasions in the past, there have been attempts to open up an Ontario-based promotion which have been blocked by the NWA due to the entire country being recognized as SW’s territory, despite the fact that SW tends to focus the majority of its shows in the West, meaning that only small local promotions are permitted without their permission. When the exodus of members from the NWA occurred in November of 2022, however, Scott D’Amore saw an opportunity. Having long worked as a writer, manager, or road agent for many companies over the years, most notably MCW, D’Amore set off to fulfill his long-time goal of opening up a 2nd Canadian promotion. He quickly started work on pulling personal funds to create Maple Leaf Wrestling, a new promotion based out of Ontario, quickly negotiating broadcasting rights with FITE and setting off on building a roster. In a perfect storm, local promotion BCW was courting buyers to sell off lots of their physical assets and close down, giving MLW all the physical goods needed to start putting on shows quickly. It is rumored that D’Amore has ordered a custom-built 6-sided ring to visually differentiate the promotion from its peers when it debuts. Much of MLW’s opening-day roster came as a result of D’Amore’s connections within the industry, specifically from his time in MCW. Christian Cage, Bobby Roode, Petey Williams, Eric Young, MCMG (rumored to be interested in working as singles stars within MLW) all signed on as a result of D’Amore’s time working with them in MCW. These workers join a slew of other talented but often-overlooked talent to create a shockingly impressive opening day roster, especially for a company starting at the size it is. The MCW-heavy roster as well as D’Amore’s time spent writing for the company makes many fans believe it will adopt a similar fast-paced in-ring style, although many are interested to see how the 6-sided ring affects their work. Going into 2023, MLW is preparing to host its first show this week, live on FITE TV. They don’t have massive cash reserves, however, so they will have to play their early years carefully if they wish to be a long-term competitor. UK WSW Quote WSW at the start of the decade had some momentum on its side and some growth, but a roster that was struggling to match its popularity. There was a long history of UK talents leaving and going overseas to places like SW or elsewhere in search of greater opportunities, due to the limited reach of WSW and NWA:UK. Despite the limited roster, the company was putting on great shows and showing that you can have a national reach without association with the NWA. As the decade went on, the WSW saw a trickle of star power bolster its ranks. First was Canadian star Kenny Omega, who found himself falling in love with British culture on a vacation and leaving Project X to join WSW full-time. This was joined with the young PAC who was one of the UK stars who jumped to the Americas, the first of the wave of UK nationals returning home. These two had absolute classics in the 2014-2016 range which elevated both to the main event scene. Shortly following was Drew Galloway, who had floated around USA/Canada’s national promotions but never reached his true potential. Upon returning to WSW fans were shocked by his new physique and immediate main event aura. The above names led the company through the late 2010s, flanked by an ever-strengthening undercard. Names like Prince Devitt, originally developed by NWA:UK and recently SW member, made the jump to WSW to supplement this action. This era also saw the breakout of a new young talent, Will Ospreay. Ospreay, whose talent was spotted by WSW early on, was paired up with Kenny Omega both on and off screen. The two formed the tag team “Love Bruvs” and developed what many call ‘the best bromance in wrestling’. Their eventual breakup based on Ospreay’s jealousy of Omega, which included Ospreay winning his first British Heavyweight title from Omega in 2021, was voted ‘feud of the year’. Since then, Ospreay has been in the process of a ‘passing of the torch’ from Omega as he is likely to become the figurehead of WSW for 2023 and beyond. As with the rest of the wrestling world, they did struggle through the pandemic, however unlike the other big promotions that were part of the NWA, they were not forced to make subsidy payments to keep the regional promotions alive, helping them use their TV revenues to get them by fairly unscathed. Going into 2023, the company is in a strong position, with an unreal amount of in-ring talent rounding out their main event scene, however an undercard that still has a ways to go. The company is also pretty heavy on contracts, with many of their top stars recently inking new high-dollar deals, so their finances are a question mark going forward if they are looking to keep all their stars. Can WSW stay atop the British scene? NWA:UK Quote NWA’s effort to push WSW out of the top spot of the UK market has not been too successful throughout the 2010s. Unable to get many top stars, it lacked and still lacks the star power to really compete on the national stage with WSW. It mostly survived on the financial backing of the NWA, subsidizing the losses throughout the decade because of its strategic value if it can overtake WSW. Not all negative for the NWA:UK, the company does have a history of producing some great talent like Sheamus, Prince Devitt, and WALTER. The latter is still with the company, and his hard-hitting meticulous style has been a shining light among the otherwise struggling promotion. Still a member of NWA in 2023, NWA:UK is in dire straits at this point. Historically reliant on NWA funding to stay afloat, that revenue is now cut off under the new NWA’s arrangement so it will be on its own to survive financially while it has heavy production costs from its weekly TV show - if it is to survive, it will need serious restructuring. Mexico ILA Quote The ILA has remained a consistent force dominating the Mexican landscape for the last decade. Their transition to a more American-style product in 2008 did have some pushback, which gave momentum to their competitor FMLL, however as time passed people began to come around to this style and they started stabilizing again. Going into 2023, ILA has a roster of massive stars across varying stages of their careers, giving no indication that there’s changes on the horizon in the landscape, however FMLL has made a recent resurgence in its push to try to challenge ILA, stealing the megastar Mistico to their roster. A big loss for ILA, but nothing they can’t replace. Will ILA continue to reign supreme? FMLL Quote Being created in response to the more Americanized ILA in 2008, the FMLL focuses on traditional Lucha Libre offerings in hopes of creating an alternative for that market of fans. It spent the whole of the 2010s and ealy 2020s as the distant second promotion, carving out a niche of dedicated fans but being unable to grow past that. Going into 2023, they did recently dish out a massive contract to Mistico, one of the biggest stars in Mexican wrestling, in hopes of making a renewed push for growth in the market. Will this be the start of their rise or will they continue to stagnate? Europe UEW Quote The UEW has seen slow, steady growth over the last decade as they remain the primary promotion aiming to serve the European landscape. With no significant competition, it has had the opportunity to create a market for itself as it plants the seeds of interest in wrestling among a region historically more interested in other forms of entertainment. Going into 2023, it is on shaky financial ground having weathered the pandemic similar to other companies, but with more modest expenses it doesn’t need to make too many huge cuts to remain viable. Oceania PWA/PWWA Quote This duo of companies has been serving the Oceanic market for the last decade, similarly to UEW, experiencing slow & steady growth. The mens side has seen more success financially, having secured a weekly TV deal. The PWA for the past while has been almost single-handedly carried by the homegrown star Jay White, who has turned down numerous offers from bigger companies due to a desire to stay in Australia with his family, although many fear one day the money of an overseas run will tempt him. PWA recently made a bit of a push to legitimize it’s starpower, looking at the nearby pacific promotion of HCW and making contract offers to Jimmy & Jey Fatu. The two have slotted in nicely, but word is they’re looking to move on shortly. Going into 2023, there is concern that the womens side of these companies might struggle if it doesn’t secure some sort of broadcasting coverage soon, otherwise it will have to dump some of its roster to cut costs. The mens side is more stable, however the limited market could make growth limited. Japan NJPW Quote <Note this is old lore - updated lore to come once Japan rework is complete> NJPW remained the top promotion in Japan, with little challenge from the other promotions. They recently suffered a bit of a setback when it was discovered that one of their biggest stars, ‘Rainmaker’ Kazuchika Okada, was forced to end his career early due to injuries in 2022. Intent on staying a factor in the company, he's been training to transition to commentary, but his loss in ring is massive, even if NJPW has ample talent available to step up and fill his role. Edited February 14 by diamondium Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Evilman Posted December 18, 2023 Share Posted December 18, 2023 Oooh yeaah! I remember iDOM from back in the day! Hyped up for this! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaysin Posted December 18, 2023 Share Posted December 18, 2023 NWA stands for National Wrestling Alliance, not Association. I love the iDom mod though so I'll give this a go when I can. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Adelwolf Posted December 18, 2023 Share Posted December 18, 2023 iDom was my favorite mod for ewr and tew05 for many years. Very excited for this! Although I loved the whole "alliance" concept of the universe, I can understand your reasons for breaking away from this system. If you ever want to revisit Mexico, I'd be more than glad to help you flesh out that region. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diamondium Posted December 18, 2023 Author Share Posted December 18, 2023 (edited) 4 hours ago, Jaysin said: NWA stands for National Wrestling Alliance, not Association. I love the iDom mod though so I'll give this a go when I can. Huh, now that's quite the early oversight. Somehow I've went multiple decades just assuming it was association all this time haha. Thanks for the heads up, I've got some tweaks to make in the writeups. Quote iDom was my favorite mod for ewr and tew05 for many years. Very excited for this! Although I loved the whole "alliance" concept of the universe, I can understand your reasons for breaking away from this system. If you ever want to revisit Mexico, I'd be more than glad to help you flesh out that region. Good to know! It's an offer I may happily accept! Once I get the first version out, I'd be happy to see what you think of how it sits as a region and how it can be improved. Edited December 18, 2023 by diamondium Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaysin Posted December 18, 2023 Share Posted December 18, 2023 32 minutes ago, diamondium said: Huh, now that's quite the early oversight. Somehow I've went multiple decades just assuming it was association all this time haha. Thanks for the heads up, I've got some tweaks to make in the writeups. There was a governing body called National Wrestling Association formed in the 30's that was an early attempt at a governing body. After the Alliance formed in 48, the Association lost steam and ended up recognizing the Alliance World titles and eventually dissolving completely by 1980. There's some really fun articles and pieces online you can find on the subject. It's fascinating. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheWho87 Posted December 18, 2023 Share Posted December 18, 2023 So TL;DR, due to COVID, the NWA collapses and most promotions go independent, so TK buys in to give it a reboot? It might be an idea to take inspiration from IndependentWrestling.tv, someone starts up a streaming network that draws away the smaller promotions with an easy way to broadcast their shows, and over time they create their own titles as a smaller variant of the NWA for smaller promotions. Also one way I found to fix the immersion issues mentioned in Abandoning the NWA Dominance regarding the World titles on small shows, was to have the main National Wrestling Alliance limited to the bigger promotions, and then to have seperate alliances for each region with "regional" NWA titles for the lower promotions, it keeps the world titles among the bigger promotions and gives smaller promotions their own belts. I was tempted to revive iDOM but instead decided to take it back to the original idea and do my own take on NWA Domination, I did build something for TEW but I have since reworked it for Pro Wrestling Sim. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diamondium Posted December 18, 2023 Author Share Posted December 18, 2023 16 minutes ago, TheWho87 said: So TL;DR, due to COVID, the NWA collapses and most promotions go independent, so TK buys in to give it a reboot? It might be an idea to take inspiration from IndependentWrestling.tv, someone starts up a streaming network that draws away the smaller promotions with an easy way to broadcast their shows, and over time they create their own titles as a smaller variant of the NWA for smaller promotions. Also one way I found to fix the immersion issues mentioned in Abandoning the NWA Dominance regarding the World titles on small shows, was to have the main National Wrestling Alliance limited to the bigger promotions, and then to have seperate alliances for each region with "regional" NWA titles for the lower promotions, it keeps the world titles among the bigger promotions and gives smaller promotions their own belts. I was tempted to revive iDOM but instead decided to take it back to the original idea and do my own take on NWA Domination, I did build something for TEW but I have since reworked it for Pro Wrestling Sim. That's the general gist of the TL;DR, yeah. Some good suggestions there, very much appreciated. I can't say I'm too familiar with independentwrestling.tv, but I like it conceptually, I know the AWA is still present in this universe and competing (without much success) with NWA - its possible they can make a play like that especially if the NWA is weakened That way of organizing the alliance is an interesting take I hadn't thought of to keeps the titles working. You can absolutely bet I'll be playing with those setups to see if it's possible to get it to play well and potentially making an alternate version that doesn't have the collapse if one can get that to work at a satisfactory level. Perhaps two versions of the universe can be released, one with COVID as above and NWA collapse, one without COVID where NWA stands strong, organized similarly to how you've noted there, because I agree it's a fun setup to work within if it can play well with game mechanics. In the meantime, main focus will for sure remain on getting the current version to an initial alpha release as that's the closest. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheWho87 Posted December 18, 2023 Share Posted December 18, 2023 Streaming should be a big factor, logically the NWA would start their own network, maybe with the big players pushing for a revenue split for views which benefits them and punishes the smaller feds, leading them to break away and creating their own network. The key downside of that alliance concept is you can only be in one alliance at a time, so it would limit the AI feds in it if they grow, I just liked it since it added having a few more NWA titles, but it's also the issue of how many titles can you have before it's too much. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diamondium Posted December 18, 2023 Author Share Posted December 18, 2023 4 hours ago, TheWho87 said: Streaming should be a big factor, logically the NWA would start their own network, maybe with the big players pushing for a revenue split for views which benefits them and punishes the smaller feds, leading them to break away and creating their own network. The key downside of that alliance concept is you can only be in one alliance at a time, so it would limit the AI feds in it if they grow, I just liked it since it added having a few more NWA titles, but it's also the issue of how many titles can you have before it's too much. I agree conceptually, and definitely agree that's a concept that makes sense to have as a large looming factor over the industry. Worth doing some testing to see how well it can be implemented without throwing off the game balance too much - Thus far I've generally leaned towards steering clear of services with large coverage and low requirements, because that is one of the biggest contributing factors of the game struggling to simulate popularity correctly, leading to small companies that have high international popularity. The fact that such things can't be specifically attached to alliances also makes it a bit challenging, having for example an NWA network that has lots of non-NWA companies after a couple years. I kind of like the idea of having it just built into the background without being a factor on the current state - especially if the NWA collapsed, I could see the previous collapse of a network previously having contributed to that - that lets it be a factor on the game world without needing to deal with the game balance implications of networks, allowing the 'current state of things' to still have a more traditional broadcasting situation that simulates better within the game mechanics. This also lets it mirror reality again, what with the creation and eventual slow demise of the WWE network - Part of the iDOM magic I feel is indeed the mirroring of reality in events. There could be some interesting ways to tie that lore into some of the quirks of the NWA too - for example perhaps part of why it didn't work is that it had heavy regional blackouts (as an NHL fan, I can relate to how much that ruins the experience) as a result of local promotions protecting their territory and using outdated NWA rules initially meant to prevent physical shows running in other place's home regions to prevent the network from showing other company's shows, which leads to the network as a whole not catching on as it should and dying out, which can be cited as a contributing factor into dissension among the members and financial struggle of the alliance. A smaller network hosted by a chain of regional promotions such as you noted could be present within the game, but it would have to be region-limited for sure so as not to give everyone an easy path to international popularity gains. Part of the game world's goal here is to really make it a challenge to break out of the status quo of promotions being really nationally limited. Worth exploring, I suspect the initial alpha release will have traditional broadcasters attached to things, with a pass over broadcasting/streaming to be done later before the final release. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diamondium Posted December 21, 2023 Author Share Posted December 21, 2023 (edited) After working away at it for the last week or so, I think I'm happy enough with the state of it to release the first public version! I hope you all enjoy! If anyone does play it and want to give some feedback, I'd happily welcome it. you can find a section at the bottom of the notes with areas I'd love to hear people's thoughts in particular. Happy to hear any feedback and areas to improve though, as I'm sure I glossed over some important areas, being my first public mod and all. Current Release - 0.1.0 Alpha Database Pictures Release notes Quote General Notes All in all, it’s in a playable state - I think the initial balance is pretty good - various 1-year simulations have had different companies on top at the end each time, different wrestler of the year award winners each time, different company of the year award winners each time - Very much the aim of balance I was going for To-Do Short Term Put in some narratives for after game starts Fill out current champions secondary titles and smaller promotion ones - currently a good chunk of the smaller ones are vacant Put vaguely accurate work history for at least the most popular wrestlers Long Term Ambitions Do a pass over broadcasters/streaming & TV shows for balance purposes Go over the smaller independent companies with a more detailed touch Consider tossing in a couple more small indy companies for each region if it makes sense to do so Stretch goals Flesh out Mexico/Japan one day - currently the bare minimum is done for those Things I’m looking for feedback on How does the game ‘feel’ for the company you choose to play? Is there anything that feels completely wrong in its current state? Are there any workers you see in a certain promotion and think ‘no way that would happen’? If so, can you list them out and why? Or just any sort of decisions that seem nonsensical. Any actively incorrect information about like worker ages, accidentally forgot to tick a box in the settings for something, etc. Do you have any suggestions for universe-specific developments which could be implemented into the database? A wrestler adopting a gimmick that didn’t come about IRL, a wrestler you think might have got more/less over in this situation, just general new ways to differentiate it from the real world timeline a little more Obviously, happy to receive feedback on any area, not just the areas outlined above Edited December 21, 2023 by diamondium 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nob0t Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 5 hours ago, diamondium said: After working away at it for the last week or so, I think I'm happy enough with the state of it to release the first public version! I hope you all enjoy! If anyone does play it and want to give some feedback, I'd happily welcome it. you can find a section at the bottom of the notes with areas I'd love to hear people's thoughts in particular. Happy to hear any feedback and areas to improve though, as I'm sure I glossed over some important areas, being my first public mod and all. Current Release - 0.1.0 Alpha Database Pictures Release notes Congrats on the release! IDOM was a huge fav of mine when I was getting into TEW. Cannot wait to give this version a try, and book till my heart's content. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AboardTheArk Posted December 22, 2023 Share Posted December 22, 2023 Ι think I could help make Japan less of a background region. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diamondium Posted December 22, 2023 Author Share Posted December 22, 2023 6 hours ago, AboardTheArk said: Ι think I could help make Japan less of a background region. That would be an offer I'd happily accept! I'd be happy to pretty much hand off the region off entirely to someone who knows the region better. If you get the desire to tackle it, feel free to take a look at the data and let me know what you think, or even just go wild on it yourself, whatever you prefer. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chikbot Posted January 4 Share Posted January 4 (edited) Nvm it was originally as I thought, some guys have contractual issues unless there's lore reasons why certain teams are just not together. Ross Von Erich is in NWA:AA and Marshall is in AWA but yet it says they still team together Dezmond Xavier is in WCW but it still says him and Wentz team together as the Rascalz Creed/Kasper Brothers are also separated too for some reason Edit to my full edit: Yeah, this is the problem with using organic bios. You really shouldn't have teams active if you know you're not going to actually team them up at the start because it puts that info in the bio. Edited January 4 by Chikbot Not seeing them is my bad Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diamondium Posted January 5 Author Share Posted January 5 19 hours ago, Chikbot said: Nvm it was originally as I thought, some guys have contractual issues unless there's lore reasons why certain teams are just not together. Ross Von Erich is in NWA:AA and Marshall is in AWA but yet it says they still team together Dezmond Xavier is in WCW but it still says him and Wentz team together as the Rascalz Creed/Kasper Brothers are also separated too for some reason Edit to my full edit: Yeah, this is the problem with using organic bios. You really shouldn't have teams active if you know you're not going to actually team them up at the start because it puts that info in the bio. Noted, thanks! Much of the teams were mass-imported from the real world mod, so that's one area that will definitely be rough around the edges. Those particular ones will be adjusted for the next release, and I'll add it to the list to take a pass over teams in general for stuff like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chikbot Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 (edited) 1 hour ago, diamondium said: Noted, thanks! Much of the teams were mass-imported from the real world mod, so that's one area that will definitely be rough around the edges. Those particular ones will be adjusted for the next release, and I'll add it to the list to take a pass over teams in general for stuff like that. If I notice any other wacky team situations or anything else weird, I will let you know. Edit: Just standard contract weirdness, but Zach Gibson is in Chikara without James Drake also JD Drake is in UEW without Anthony Henry I also saw that the Street Profits were separated but I wasn't sure if that was intentional or not. Similarly the Hardys are seperated but again, given Jeff...being well Jeff, maybe his problems weren't as easily rectified and that's why he's in CZP Also, last time the iDom-verse was checked in on, Sami Zayn was still El Generico, I'm assuming lore wise something happened when he was in CS where like OTL he was told to lose the mask? Also another lore related question, why is Matt Bloom, who was mainly an ECW guy in this timeline as Baldo the Destroyer, working as a road agent in TWE? You figure he would've stayed in ECW unless TWE got to him in the intervening years like his Tensai run Also too, Misterioso Jr. is in the data twice Edited January 5 by Chikbot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diamondium Posted January 5 Author Share Posted January 5 (edited) 35 minutes ago, Chikbot said: If I notice any other wacky team situations or anything else weird, I will let you know. Edit: Just standard contract weirdness, but Zach Gibson is in Chikara without James Drake I also saw that the Street Profits were separated but I wasn't sure if that was intentional or not. Similarly the Hardys are seperated but again, given Jeff...being well Jeff, maybe his problems weren't as easily rectified and that's why he's in CZP Also, last time the iDom-verse was checked in on, Sami Zayn was still El Generico, I'm assuming lore wise something happened when he was in CS where like OTL he was told to lose the mask? Also another lore related question, why is Matt Bloom, who was mainly an ECW guy in this timeline as Baldo the Destroyer, working as a road agent in TWE? You figure he would've stayed in ECW unless TWE got to him in the intervening years like his Tensai run Also too, Misterioso Jr. is in the data twice And thanks to those as well! I'll note those to include in the next update as well. A couple of your assumptions lore-wise were correct there. Street prophets never really became a thing in this timeline, so removing their tag team is a fix which I'll definitely do up. Jeff/Matt being separated was definitely due to lore reasons, Jeff bouncing around a bit post-TWE and Matt finding a stable home in MCW. I think they had a stretch together in there and won some titles but as of this moment are off doing their own things. Sami Zayn is indeed intentionally unmasked, and kept the Sami Zayn name more for keeping him recognizable to players. I've floated some other names for him for the next release, but remain undecided there (suggestions welcome). I think Matt Bloom was put in TWE due to him having moved to TWE in TheWho87's 2015 iDOM mod, which although isn't canon (I've got a few conflicts with that one in my title histories but where there's no conflicts it's safe to assume it's semi-canon for this particular timeline of it), I'm using as inspiration for how some people have moved around over the years. I figured he probably retired there and stuck around. Edited January 5 by diamondium Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chikbot Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 (edited) 16 minutes ago, diamondium said: And thanks to those as well! I'll note those to include in the next update as well. A couple of your assumptions lore-wise were correct there. Street prophets never really became a thing in this timeline, so removing their tag team is a fix which I'll definitely do up. Jeff/Matt being separated was definitely due to lore reasons, Jeff bouncing around a bit post-TWE and Matt finding a stable home in MCW. I think they had a stretch together in there and won some titles but as of this moment are off doing their own things. Sami Zayn is indeed intentionally unmasked, and kept the Sami Zayn name more for keeping him recognizable to players. I've floated some other names for him for the next release, but remain undecided there (suggestions welcome). I think Matt Bloom was put in TWE due to him having moved to TWE in TheWho87's 2015 iDOM mod, which although isn't canon (I've got a few conflicts with that one in my title histories but where there's no conflicts it's safe to assume it's semi-canon for this particular timeline of it), I'm using as inspiration for how some people have moved around over the years. I figured he probably retired there and stuck around. Cool cool, yeah, I figured some of the things I was noticing were intentional but I just wanted to make sure.. I haven't played IDOM 2015 in a fair bit so those bits will go over my head. Also was just about to add this before you replied, but Private Party is also separated with Isiah being in ESW and Marq Quen in Project X. Also Alex Wright(who trained a few wrestlers, notable Adrian Severe/Fabian Aichner/Giovanni Vinci) and Charlie Dempsey/Bailey Regal and are completely missing from the data. The latter could be excusable with the timeline changes but the former I would say less so. Edited January 5 by Chikbot Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eriatarka Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 this is an interesting project, and I've been wanting to play a modern alt history mod for a while. I'm a newer player so I'm not familiar with the original concept/alt universe, but you seem to have put an impressive amount of work into the world economy and balance already. that said I think the promotions could still use a bit of work: product-wise (not enough variation), roster-wise, and in terms of providing interesting hypotheticals. For example, the idea of a Tony Khan promotion in this world that closely resembles the real life AEW seems a little unadventurous. In a world with no PWG, no ROH, no Bullet Club merch in Hot Topic, and a wrestling market that's heavily catered to all regions and interests, why would Tony build an entirely new promotion in 2019 around the Young Bucks and their friends that's geared toward internet fans? Why is it in the southeast - what if Shahid Khan never purchased the Jaguars and Tony ran his promotion out of Illinois? There are all sorts of different angles you can take. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Lloyd Posted January 5 Share Posted January 5 I loved the original iDOM universe, and this one, while fun, probably needs some 'lore' attached in those bios - and explanations of where the wrestlers are now, and why? Maybe you can open it up to the board, and people can apply to 'write' a company and the rosters bios and Title lineage etc? I seem to remember 'Macho Man' Matt Morgan was Savage's protege in the original... Chris Masters was massively over... Jericho too... Owen Hart... etc Montez Ford and Angelo Dawkins in different companies is excellent. The Creed Brothers, who's to say they didn't have a 4-5 year run as a team, then a split and a falling out in real life that meant they ended up elsewhere. Or one of them took their career less seriously than the other. Or something like that? There's so much that can be done with your excellent work so far. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diamondium Posted January 6 Author Share Posted January 6 (edited) 5 hours ago, eriatarka said: this is an interesting project, and I've been wanting to play a modern alt history mod for a while. I'm a newer player so I'm not familiar with the original concept/alt universe, but you seem to have put an impressive amount of work into the world economy and balance already. that said I think the promotions could still use a bit of work: product-wise (not enough variation), roster-wise, and in terms of providing interesting hypotheticals. For example, the idea of a Tony Khan promotion in this world that closely resembles the real life AEW seems a little unadventurous. In a world with no PWG, no ROH, no Bullet Club merch in Hot Topic, and a wrestling market that's heavily catered to all regions and interests, why would Tony build an entirely new promotion in 2019 around the Young Bucks and their friends that's geared toward internet fans? Why is it in the southeast - what if Shahid Khan never purchased the Jaguars and Tony ran his promotion out of Illinois? There are all sorts of different angles you can take. I definitely agree with the overall sentiment on the initial data being unadventurous. I wouldn't call it intentional per-say, but it was definitely recognized by myself early on and part of why I figure this is an alpha release state. Straight up, I'm not the world's most creative mind. I figure if I get a version of the data out there where I play it safe in lots of regards, it creates a foundation to build upon with suggestions from people if anyone plays it and comes up with ideas, I'm more than happy to consider all of them and as things stand right now, I definitely don't consider any aspect of the data to be 'sacred' so with a good enough idea, any part of it is subject to a complete overhaul if it makes things more interesting and fun. Product variation is a good note - one I am definitely down to give a pass over. I will partially attempt to defend the NWA:EW part though. With the iDOM universe, I always found it an interesting type of alt-history in the sense that it really 'mirrors' ours more than alt-history typically does. For example, in the original one MCW being an obvious mirror of TNA, GLAM a mirrored hybrid of GLOW and SHIMMER, some of the more on-the-nose ones like CZP/CZW, I, personally, always enjoyed the 'mirrored' versions of promotions so I thought it would just be a fun addition to have a mirrored version of AEW have popped up as well. Is this one a bit on-the-nose? Yeah, probably. I'll admit, it started with me just thinking the NWAEW name was a neat play on it and working the lore from there. I figured that particular one being a lot less varied from the real-world would be a somewhat interesting design choice, and as such that influenced making lots of its elements a lot closer to reality than others might opt to do. I've got no problem saying though that if people feel that decision was a miss rather than a hit, I'm totally open to fielding suggestions to revamp that promotion and its lore involved, the ideas you threw out there would definitely be a perfectly reasonable starting spot for those discussions. 4 hours ago, The Lloyd said: I loved the original iDOM universe, and this one, while fun, probably needs some 'lore' attached in those bios - and explanations of where the wrestlers are now, and why? Maybe you can open it up to the board, and people can apply to 'write' a company and the rosters bios and Title lineage etc? I seem to remember 'Macho Man' Matt Morgan was Savage's protege in the original... Chris Masters was massively over... Jericho too... Owen Hart... etc Montez Ford and Angelo Dawkins in different companies is excellent. The Creed Brothers, who's to say they didn't have a 4-5 year run as a team, then a split and a falling out in real life that meant they ended up elsewhere. Or one of them took their career less seriously than the other. Or something like that? There's so much that can be done with your excellent work so far. Oh yeah, agreed for sure. Similar to the note above, I figure getting it out in people's hands in a bare-bones state, with 'safe' choices made in lots of areas, opens up for people's feedback to give ideas I never would have come up with that can flesh out the world. Getting some real written out bios is definitely on the agenda to give the world some more life. I think that's a wonderful idea to source the community for coming up with lore for things. Frankly, I'll commit to that idea right now and adjust the OP with the following note: If anybody who has dipped their toes into the data wants to 'make a company theirs' and flesh out it's lore/lineage/rosters/etc, or wants to create some bios/lore for individual workers, by all means feel free to get in touch with me or just post it in the thread. As far as a general update goes on future updates, I've currently been in discussions with @AboardTheArk who currently has the data in their hands in order to give a more personal touch to the Japan region, so the next update will likely include their work there in taking that from a 'background region' to one on-par with the rest in focus and effort. I'm holding off on making changes on the rest of the data in the meantime so that we don't have 2 people trying to work on different versions of the data, so in the immediate future I'll be mostly keeping note of all the changes needing to be made, as well as potentially using this opportunity to let people weigh in on if anyone thinks there's any big overhauls that seem like they need to be done (For example, getting people's opinions on if NWAEW is too on-the-nose, and if so, suggestions as to alternatives for what that company might look like) Edited January 6 by diamondium 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheWho87 Posted January 6 Share Posted January 6 The whole "X promotion is meant to roughly represent Y promotion" was a logic I tended to use when I did my versions, especally when I was expanding into Europe and Japan, since they were not areas featured in the original EWR versions. It does give you a good starting point to work from and evolve into your own ideas. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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