Community Spiral Cup 2023

The 2023 Community Spiral Cup was the second annual Community Spiral Cup (CSC) competition for KingsIsle Entertainment's MMORPGs Wizard101 and Pirate101, in which communities competed head-to-head for the "Ultimate Prize," a permanent mount variant based on their community's custom design added to one or both games. As with the previous year's CSC, the competition was associated with the IslePlay livestream series hosted by Community Managers Kyle "Kyle IceWielder" Donahue and Christopher "Hawkules" Willis and contained four challenges, which for 2023 were Duo Dungeon Speedrunning, House Decoration, Item Collection, and Trailer Challenge. The competition ran from July 17 to August 14, 2023. The 2023 winners of the competition were the Shadow Demons for Wizard101 and Wiki101 for Pirate101.
==Information==
===Event history===
The 2023 Community Spiral Cup was first announced by KingsIsle via the Wizard101 and Pirate101 accounts on June 20, 2023, with the event confirmed to take place between July 17 and August 14, 2023. The tweets claimed that sign-ups for the event would begin "next week," though they would later be delayed for undisclosed reasons.Wizard101 CSC 2023 Announcement - TwitterPirate101 CSC 2023 Announcement - Twitter On June 26, 2023, both accounts revealed that KingsIsle would only allow 10 teams of 10 players per game to compete in the CSC, also revealing that the four challenges would be Duo Dungeon Speedrunning, House Decoration, Item Collection, and Trailer Challenge.Wizard101 CSC 2023 Info Thread - Twitter The Pirate101 account clarified that the 10-member teams would also include 2 backups, in case anyone needed to drop out, and also said that the change in how the competition worked was to "normalize competition between communities of vastly different sizes and simplifies things a bit."Pirate101 Team Amount Clarification - Twitter In addition to the challenges and team sizes, it was also announced that the art and meme bonus points from the previous year would return, with community members not in the 10-person rosters able to contribute bonus points to their respective communities on a weekly basis.Wizard101 CSC 2023 Bonus Points - TwitterPirate101 CSC 2023 Bonus Points - Twitter The same day, Christopher "Hawkules" Willis publicly revealed on the official Pirate101 Discord server that the "Ultimate Prize" for winning the 2023 event would be a custom mount, same as the previous year.Wiki101 CSC 2023 Prize Tweet - Twitter
An official trailer for the 2023 Community Spiral Cup premiered on the KingsIsle Entertainment YouTube channel on July 5, 2023, coinciding with the public launch of the official, KingsIsle-run "Community Spiral Cup 2023" Discord server and team sign-ups for community leaders. The Community Spiral Cup 2023 page on the Pirate101 website also went live around this time and was linked in the Discord.CSC 2023 Pirate101 page link in Community Spiral Cup 2023 server - Discord The CSC 2023 Discord, mostly intended to be a place for CSC participants to find information and see announcements regarding the event easily, revealed the schedule and details for all of the challenges, the rules and disclaimers for the competition, and information on how the points system works.CSC 2023 Discord rules and disclaimers - DiscordCSC 2023 Discord server info - DiscordCSC 2023 event info - DiscordCSC 2023 Discord points and bonus points info - DiscordCSC 2023 Discord Challenge 1 information - DiscordCSC 2023 Discord Challenge 2 information - DiscordCSC 2023 Discord Challenge 3 information - DiscordCSC 2023 Discord Challenge 4 information - Discord Though the information on the Discord implied this, the accompanying posts on Twitter revealed that the previous 10-person team restrictions had been removed, though this restriction would still apply to the Item Collection challenges.Wizard101 CSC 2023 team sign-ups announcement - TwitterPirate101 CSC 2023 team sign-ups announcement - Twitter On July 11, 2023, KingsIsle formally announced which teams had been chosen to compete for the event. The Wizard101 teams were announced to be Battling Puppies, Final Bastion, Goomers, Ravynwood, Sauce Squad, Shadow Demons, Skarmy Army, T4TMates, Wiki101, and Zekes Backpack.Wizard101 CSC 2023 teams announcement - Twitter The Pirate101 teams were announced to be Battling Puppies, Crimson Sharks III, Final Bastion, Goomers, Ravynwood, Sauce Squad, Shadow Demons, T4TMates, The Royal Pirates, and Wiki101.Pirate101 CSC 2023 teams announcement - Twitter
===Challenge and bonus points===
Like in 2022, the winning community of the 2023 Community Spiral Cup was decided by which team got the most Challenge Points from each weekly challenge during the the tournament. The better a team did, the more points they would get. 1st place for a challenge gets a team 5 points, 2nd place gets 3 points, 3rd place gets 2 points, and 4th place gets 1 point.
In addition to the points from challenges, members from each community were allowed to submit Wizard101 or Pirate101-related art or memes for bonus points, with 2 bonus points being given out at the end of each weekly challenge for Best Meme and Best Art, chosen by an internal KingsIsle committee. Community members could submit art or memes on Twitter by using the hashtags #SpiralCupMeme or #SpiralCupArt and identifying which community they're a part of.
==Participants==
The bolded text designates the winners for each game.
;Wizard101
*Battling Puppies
*Final Bastion
*Goomers
*Ravynwood
*Sauce Squad
*Shadow Demons
*Skarmy Army
*T4TMates
*Wiki101
*Zekes Backpack
;Pirate101
*Battling Puppies
*Crimson Sharks III
*Final Bastion
*Goomers
*Ravynwood
*Sauce Squad
*Shadow Demons
*T4TMates
*The Royal Pirates
*Wiki101
==Challenges==
The challenges for the 2023 Community Spiral Cup were as follows:
#Duo Dungeon Speedrunning (July 17—July 24): For Wizard101, two wizards were tasked with routing and completing the Castle Darkmoor, Upper Halls, and Graveyard dungeons in Darkmoor.Wizard101 CSC 2023 Challenge 1 Details - Twitter For Pirate101, two pirates were tasked with routing and completing Miranda in Cool Ranch.Wizard101 CSC 2023 Challenge 1 Details - Twitter
#House Decoration (July 24—July 31): For both games, decorators were given a design theme to decorate a house, with no limits. However, they were only able to send in three screenshots, so they were encouraged to decorate in a way which made for good screenshots.Wizard101 CSC 2023 Challenge 2 Details - TwitterPirate101 CSC 2023 Challenge 2 Details - Twitter
#Item Collection: For Wizard101, players farmed the Aeon Helm, Aeon Cape, and Aeon Sword from fights in Novus. For Pirate101, players farmed the recently released Tamagoyaki Tower dungeon in MooShu.Pirate101 CSC 2023 Challenge 3 Details - Twitter Neither games allowed reroll chests or Henchmen. Previously, Wizard101 players would have been farming Merciless items from Lemuria like the previous CSC, but this was changed.Wizard101 CSC 2023 Challenge 3 Details - Twitter
#Trailer Challenge: For both games, teams created a short trailer about 15 seconds in length which would highlight pretty much anything subject in either game.Wizard101 CSC 2023 Challenge 4 Details - TwitterPirate101 CSC 2023 Challenge 4 Details - Twitter
===Challenge 1 - Duo Dungeon Speedrunning===
Challenge 1 - Duo Dungeon Speedrunning lasted from July 17 to July 24, 2023. There was originally intended to be an IslePlay stream to start the challenge, but due to car troubles involving hosts Christopher "Hawkules" Willis and Kyle "Kyle IceWielder" Donahue, the stream was delayed to the next day.CSC 2023 Discord stream delay and Challenge 1 announcement - Discord For the challenge, teams of two Wizard101 players were tasked with routing and completing the Castle Darkmoor, Upper Halls, and Graveyard instances in Darkmoor. For Pirate101, players were tasked with doing the same for the Miranda dungeon in Cool Ranch. There were restrictions for the speedruns for both games including the ban of Elixirs, Henchmen, Treasure Cards and Doubloons, multi-boxing, starting the dungeon(s) with only two players, as well as no splicing, cheat engine, and autoclickers. The POVs of both speedrunners were required to be recorded, with one of the runners also being required to say "CSC" using the in-game chat to prevent runs from before the challenge window from being submitted.
Speedrun submissions were due by 4pm CST on July 24, 2023. Due to verification of the speedruns taking longer, the IslePlay livestream the same day did not look at the final results but instead the then-current top runs, with Hawkules saying the final results would be announced "later this week." Despite the challenge results not being a focus of the stream as expected, they did award the week's art and meme bonus points.CSC 2023 Discord speedrun due and stream info - Discord
===Challenge 2 - House Decoration===
Challenge 2 - House Decoration lasted from July 24 to July 31, 2023.
===Challenge 3 - Item Collection===
Challenge 3 - Item Collection lasted from July 31 to August 7, 2023.
===Challenge 4 - Trailer Challenge===
Challenge 4 - Trailer Challenge lasted from August 7 to August 14, 2023.
==Trivia==
*While the 2022 Community Spiral Cup lasted nearly two months, in stark contrast the 2023 even lasted less than a month.
==Sources==
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==Notes and references==
Category:Community Spiral Cup
Category:Pirate101
Category:Wizard101