I had a suspicion that people didn't want to enter the nethack competition because they were intimidated by pros like Esperath or myself ascending tourists and getting huge scores. I still have that suspicion, though to be honest if we'd had enough people we would have done seperate brackets so it shouldn't have mattered.
The game was a judged event, and someone who managed to get crushed by a rock placed third. I had this conversation with doom - any one of you could have made it to floor ten, died in some hilarious way, made a good story about it and potentially stole the gold. The event wasn't about bruteforcing a high score with pudding farming, or making it through gehennom as a tourist, it was about playing Nethack in as impressive a manner possible. If this means dual wielding warhammers to metal music and killing vlad by throwing vampire corpses at him, then so be it. Who cares if you just happen to be the easiest class and playing in the scummiest way.
I put the better part of 80 hours into my nethack ascension. This is because I was insistent on playing the hardest classes in the game - half of my attempts were at wishless/genoless conducts. But that's because I was trying to do things the hard way. The final game I played, the one where I did ascend, was something like 6 hours. What clinched my ascension wasn't a lucky wish, it was a single altar artifact - Mjollnir - and a decent AC. You practically start with both of these as a valkyrie. There was a 30 day stretch to do the event in, and there's no reason at least one person from each nation could have given it a real shot. What makes it especially dissapointing is that we had a dozen wow players and everyone on the boards enjoys diablo, so it's not like we're going incredibly out of genre here. I'd have expected this if Nethack was a rougelike football game.
Brett Favre throws the pass! Brett Favre hits! Brett Favre throws the pass! Brett Favre hits! You die...