Greetings,

Wondering how new worlds get started and what Season 1 is like. Is it a giant draft? Players randomly assigned to start the season? Is the first season chaos with tons of maneuvering as owners get the types of players they value?

I'd really like to be a part of a world from the beginning with all the owners on even footing but don't know how/when a new world starts.

They do not any longer. We did one a long time ago. It was just like any other world teams already set. It was 32 of us all but 2 or 3 first season guys all coming over from hd.

There are two types of new Worlds.

1. A new World that WIS Admin starts. These are typically created when there is demand for them. For instance, when they had the promotion earlier this year, they added a handful of new Worlds that started from Season 1. Somebody else can communicate how those Worlds work as I have never participated.

2. Two Worlds merge. Sometimes when a World sits and doesn't fill, one or some of the owners will find enough participants from another World to merge the two Worlds. Once the two Worlds merge, they start from season 1. However, the teams from each World keep their current rosters. I have participated in one of these and it is much different than most Worlds. The competitive balance is shot for the first several seasons because typically, the teams that decide to keep their team and merge it to the new World are the teams that have a dominant roster. The new owners that enter the fray typically get stuck with a team that is rebuilding or is not very good. Typically, a normal World will have anywhere from 2 to 5 dominant teams in each league. So the World will have between 4 and 10 dominant teams in the World. However, a merged World mixes two Worlds. So, instead of having 4 to 10 dominant teams in each World, the new merged World will have between 8 and 20 dominant teams. This makes the competition unbalanced -- a team that would win 75-85 games in a typical World ends up winning only about 60-70 games.

I'm in Tom Seaver, which is currently on season 3 after starting as a brand new world. It starts with the players assigned more or less randomly, with each team getting a roughly even mix of veterans, prospects, etc. of varying quality (mostly bad). There are lots of bad contracts (I had a 32-year-old with low-A caliber ratings making $1.7m) and the talent level seems to stay low for a few seasons after launch—this guy is my ace, and he'd be a fringy #5 in an established world. Most of the prospects created at launch are pretty bad, and coaches are also terrible at the start, so it'll probably take several more seasons for Seaver to approach the quality of longstanding worlds. Those factors make it an interesting and unique challenge that I'm glad I took on. It can be frustrating at times—I'm used to having a steady flow of quality prospects ready to reinforce my ML team, and in Seaver I had to immediately chuck all my prospects onto the ML roster to fill the gaping holes left by the initial allotment, and then I badly botched my first draft on top of that, so I currently have no useful prospects above high-A. However, the general dearth of talent makes you have to reevaluate every player—sure, that pitcher with 58 vR would never make it past AA in my other world, but here his 94 control might make him playable, etc.

Seaver and Curt Flood were the first new-from-scratch worlds in quite a while, I think, and I'm not sure if there are any other ones planned. It's a shame, because it's the only chance you'll get to tackle that sort of challenge.

thanks for the insights...I'd like to do it when the next new world arrives.