Guide to what EWR is Part 3

Promotions:
Each EWR game can consist of up to 35 promotions battling it out for supremacy. Any federation can go bankrupt, and new promotions can start up as well. If your promotion goes bankrupt while you are running it, you are automatically fired first and the game ends. You can get job offers throughout the game, so it is more than likely that you will work for several promotions per game.

The two most important values for any promotion are it’s Size and Public Image. The Size refers to its position in the North American market; it can be backyard (smallest), small, regional, cult, national and global (biggest). The public image refers to how much fan interest the promotion has in relation to its Size. Once a federation reaches 100% in one category, it moves up one size and public image goes to 10%. If a federation falls to 0%, it drops down one size and public image goes to 90%. The only exceptions are when a federation reaches 100% at global level or 0% at backyard; these are the highest and lowest possible levels, and so the promotion can go no higher or lower. Public image is primarily raised by good shows, and can be lowered by bad shows.

Another important factor is the risk value of a promotion. This is an indication of how extreme the product is, how much the federation pushes the envelope. Having a high risk value means that you get access to certain extreme matches and angles and makes you more attractive to a teenage audience, but also means that it is harder to land a good TV deal or sponsor. Having a low risk value (i.e. being family-orientated viewing) means you are far more likely to land a good TV deal, it will be easier to get sponsors, and merchandise will sell more. However, you will not be able to access some extreme match types and angles. For example, if you only have a risk value of 10%, you will not be able to hold a Hell In A Cell bout as it is too violent.

As you increase in size, you will be forced to modify your promotion. More fans will come to your events, and so you will gain more money. However, on the flipside, they will expect to see better wrestlers and better production values, so you will have to pay more in wages and costs. By talking to your staff you will be able to find out what the fans want, such as how big your roster should be, and how much you can afford to pay people. It is not financially viable to keep buying in wrestlers, so to be successful you will have to be able to build you own stars as well.

As promotions become bigger, you can add extras such as a development territory and \ or a training camp. These are great ways to build a promotion up. The training camp builds up new stars, and graduates them to your full roster when they are ready. With a good trainer, you can get superb raw talent appearing on your roster each year. The development territories are used for wrestlers to work in front of live audiences, and therefore improve their charisma and learn how to draw heat more effectively. By keeping a steady stream of wrestlers using these two facilities you can help guarantee that the next generation of superstars are yours to keep. Talent who come from your own training camp \ development territories also require less wages, and so are more cost-effective than buying in talent from other promotions!

Occasionally promotions will fall into such financial problems that they become open to offers for take-overs. In EWR, your promotion cannot be taken over while you are in charge. However, you can take-over other promotions. You can do this from the Other Promotions screen. You get two options; Complete Takeover or Corporate Destruction. The former means you pay off all the company’s debts, and as a result get all their wrestlers under verbal contract (but not the staff). Corporate Destruction means you basically pay off all debts and kill the company yourself. This means everyone gets freed from their contracts.

In EWR, promotions will often steal wrestlers from lesser promotions. Often larger promotions will steal wrestlers from smaller promotions, who will in turn steal from even smaller promotions. Some promotions will even deliberately steal big name wrestlers from competitors in an effort to sabotage them. This cycle continues and can often make growth of smaller promotions very hard, as it does in real life.

Promotions can impact each other's ratings. This can only happen at Global and National level. This happens when a promotion is within 40% public image of another (the exception to this is when a promotion is below 10% - this counts as a safety zone, as they are not big enough at that level to effect anyone else). Once two promotions are within 40% of each other, once a week they are compared on several factors. For each of these factors, the weaker promotion will lose some public image. This means that a promotion with a better talent roster and more stars, who is putting on a better product, can decrease a weaker promotion above them, and eventually overtake them.

Fueds:
Feuds are extended rivalries between wrestlers. In EWR there are two types of feud; singles or tag team.

Why do feuds? A feud has its own separate heat value, which is an indication of how the crowd are responding to it. If a feud is hot, it can add extra points to the crowd rating of a match, and therefore make a match more special. This means that wrestlers are capable of putting on better matches. If a feud is well booked, it can also help everyone involved become more over.

So what are the drawbacks? Just as a good feud can help the heat of a match, a bad feud can take heat away. Also, if you book a feud badly, you can actually do more damage than good to a worker’s heat. Finally, there are only 8 feud slots available, so they must be managed correctly. These are divided into two sections - 3 Main Feuds and 5 Minor Feuds. The difference is that your main feuds are promoted all the time, as so if the feud is not continued in some fashion on your large, end-of-the-month show, it will lose heat. Minor feuds will not lose heat if they are not continued on the large shows, but conversely, when the feud ends, the gains for the wrestlers involved are much smaller than with major feuds.

What makes a good feud? If you break a real-life feud down its most basic level, there are only a finite amount of different types: monster heel vs plucky underdog face, evenly matched enemies, cheating heel who always managed to avoid the righteous face until getting what he deserves in a big revenge match...these are just some of them. EWR is programmed to know what makes a good feud. So, if you were to book the babyface Edge to cheat his way to several victories over heel Kurt Angle before winning the final feud-ending match by DQ, neither man is likely to benefit. Having heel Angle cheat his way to a few wins, interfere in Edge’s matches, and generally make his life miserable before falling to a clean victory in a cage match on pay-per-view however is a good feud. Also, EWR knows that a feud is a long term series of matches; if you book a feud that ends after a handful of interviews and a single match, the fans are going to be disappointed and are going to turn on you and the workers involved. You can see the tally of advantages in a feud by clicking the feud statistics button in the Feuds section. Please note that some events do not count toward these totals, in particular draws (as neither person took an advantage), and also some situations in multi-person matches (such as a four way match where one worker defeats a feuding worker in the first fall).

How do you end a feud? There are only two ways to end a feud; on-screen or off-screen. You can end a feud off-screen from the Feud section. This means you end it without any explanation to the fans. You would do this if you desperately need a free feud slot, or if you feel a feud is going so badly that you may as well just quit while you’re ahead. You can only end a feud on-screen by having a final feud blow off match; this must be either a singles match (for a singles feud) or a tag match (for a tag feud) and MUST end with a decisive winner. When booking, assuming you have not ended it by a draw, you will find that one of the Purpose options is End Feud. You must select this to end the feud. Once the feud is ended, EWR will work out how well the feud went, etc, and will alter the wrestler’s statistics accordingly. It will also free up the feud slot for you.

When would you use feuds? Feuds are best for either making everyone involved more popular, or if you wish to use one wrestler as a sacrifice to make another look better. It is usually not a good idea to use feuds unless you have at least one weekly TV show, as otherwise you will not be able to build them up adequately. It should also be noted that, due to the nature of feuds, it is unwise to use managers in them. This is because the feud can only end on-screen with a match, and generally managers aren’t trained to produce excellent matches.

As a side note, a feud automatically gets ended off-screen if one of the feuding wrestlers leaves the promotion. However, if someone becomes injured, the feud is not ended: it becomes your decision whether to end the feud or wait for the wrestlers return.

TV Shows:
There are many advantages to running TV shows. It allows you time to build up feuds, get workers more over, try out matches that you’re not sure about, generate ticket and sponsorship revenue, and generally get your promotion better known. The disadvantages are that the more shows you have the more production costs you incur, and the more matches you run the bigger the roster you need and the greater the frequency of injuries.

Each promotion can have up to three TV shows running (you can start with more if you decide to use the editor, though it is not recommended) at any one time. You can try to get more by sending out promo tapes (tapes designed to show off your product) from the TV section of the game. In this case, you must select which network you want to try. You can send out one promo tape per month. To choose which network to try, you should view that network’s stats (again from the TV section); this will show you the ratings they expect, the risk value they are willing to put up with, and what production values they require. Obviously, there is little point in sending a promo tape to the Disney Channel if you’re risk value is 100%!

The network will look at your product, and if they feel that your ratings will be high enough for them, and that your product isn’t too risky, they may make you an offer. Please note that even if you meet all their criteria, there is no guarantee they'll take you on. There is a certain random element to getting an offer, in order to simulate negotiations in real life. The show’s name is up to you, and you can choose the day of the show from a list given to you by the network, but the time slot they offer is not negotiable (to begin with, although you can at a later date). You can decline or wait on offers, but if you wait too long the network might offer the slot to someone else instead.

You can lose your TV show if ratings fall too low (you will get warnings before they finally pull the plug), or if your product becomes too risky.

By going into the TV section, and clicking the name of one of your shows, you bring up some buttons at the bottom of the screen. One of these allows you to ask Sophie for her opinions. Another allows you to negotiate with the network. This could be to drop the show altogether (if it is failing badly), extend your contract, or to try to get a better time slot. The four time slots, in order of importance, are Prime Time, Early Evening, Late Evening, and Graveyard. The more important the slot, the more booking slots you will have and (usually) the higher the rating for the show.

If your show is on the same day and in the same time slot as a rival show, you are considered to be going head-to-head (please note this only applies to TV shows - 'big event vs big event' or 'TV show vs big event' does not count as being head-to-head). This can affect ratings, as if the shows are reasonably close, the better show may take viewers from the worse one. Sophie will send an e-mail to you after the show telling you the result of the head-to-head battle.

Teams & Stables:
There are two types of group in EWR, Tag Teams and Stables.

Tag teams consist of two workers. A worker can be in many teams at once. On any of the roster screens, you can see a drop-down list for each person showing what teams they are part of. Each team has three statistics - the team name, the finisher, and their experience. Experience indicates how much these two workers have teamed together, and raises by 1 point every time they wrestle together as a duo. The higher the experience, the better, as this means the team work better together, and therefore produce better matches. For ease of viewing, teams can be set as active or inactive. This simply allows you to keep your tag team list neat, as you can hide the teams that currently are not used (perhaps because you have turned one member, or it is a team that haven't been together for years). Setting a team as inactive does not delete the team from the game - if you team two people together, even if the team is inactive, EWR will still recognise that they have a collective name, and will use it.

Stables are a collection of wrestlers. They must consist of more than 2 wrestlers for them to be used in angles, and there is a maximum of 20 workers per stable. The main purpose of stables is to be able to use the collection of Stable angles that the game has. Each stable has a leader - you can either choose this person yourself via the Editor or Stable screens, or leave it blank, in which case the game will choose the most over member to become the leader. Every active stable must have a leader. The role of leader means that that person will gain the most benefit from interview and angles ratings, and will be highlighed in commentary as the boss. Wrestlers can be in more than one stable.