CGS + Blizzard = ???

The Championship Gaming Series and Blizzard have combined their vast infrastructure and resources to do what they both do best: confusing the hell out of everyone with communication worse than a blind Alliance player trying type out "Y O U S U CK!!" top the Horde. Blizzard has had plenty of problems in the past with communication failures during their arena tournament and disqualifications while CGS has earned a reputation for secrecy by waiting until the last possible moment to let the community know about their plans. The CGS 2v2 World of Warcraft competition looks to be the crowning achievement in a history of confusion spawned by both parties involved.



So, what are some of the problems?



Well, CGS had a second round of online qualifying after they originally announced the top five teams in every battlegroup would advance to compete for eight Blizzcon spots. However, there are plenty of cases (like Ming's obsession, the Zecks+Secretive 2v2 team on BG9) that simply did not receive invites despite placing in the required ranks. The best part is, they never had any communication over why they weren't picked.



It's just a day before Blizzcon, and it was just today that the top eight of the closed qualifying round for the CGS tournament received their flight information to the event. That's not really a surprise considering Blizzard's track record, but it's always worrisome to those involved.



CGS has yet to release rules regarding the competition, as well. Will they be using their online characters? Will they be using premades? Will it be best of five, and can they switch classes in between if its premades? Nobody knows at this point, and the players are supposed to compete this weekend.



Some of the teams, most notably, Schmitty's Death and Taxes team that features him (a warrior) and three different healing classes to counter different group comps, utilized more than two players to make it to where they're at. Will they be able to use all four players in the CGS, or will they be limited to two?



Also, Blizzcon recently released their event schedule. I'm not even sure where to begin here - first off, CGS isn't even mentioned a single time in the schedule. From there, if you look at the "Blizzard Tournaments" column, it gets even more confusing. World of Warcraft has a Semifinals round and a Finals, but no Quarterfinals. Warcraft III has TWO sections designated for the Semifinals. Also, each tournament is Double Elimination, meaning it'll take more than the hour and a half alotted for something like Warcraft III to finish a "Quarterfinal" round. Good luck if there's any computer problems, which, as we've learned with World of Warcraft, is almost a certainty.



From there, there's even more unanswered dilemmas.



According to Blizzard, the top 8 2v2 teams from each of the US and Europe will be playing at Blizzcon, but the eight winning teams are supposed to go on to become parts of CGS franchises for their 2nd CGS season. What if the top eight teams include mostly EU teams? Will they join the EU franchises, or will they be required to have work visas? If they join EU franchises and US teams join US franchises, how will the franchises who don't get one of those 2v2 teams fill their WoW roster?



Honestly, I'm not very surprised by what's happened; as I mentioned before, both CGS and Blizzard have problems communicating what's going on to the communities that really need to know the information.



I know that Blizzard would like to address that problem from talking to them but it's been a learning process for them delving into the eSports world.



For CGS so far, it's always seemed like they're flying by the seat of their pants and making decisions at the last second with the way they've released information to the public. That may not be the case considering they've gathered a ton of the most experience eSports administrators to form the basis of their league, but it sure looks like it the way things like this are handled.



From what I hear, CGS is running a players meeting an hour before the event opens to discuss how things will run. It looks like they're basically hosting their own tournament with little help from Blizzard, so that's probably why CGS wasn't included on the event schedule. That, though, just highlights another problem with CGS as they have yet to release any information about their event. Hopefully, for the players sake, they get some soon.