Introducing Gameriot WOW Tournaments

"WSVG is dead, WOW as an e-sport is dead, maybe it is time for me to call it quits and dedicate myself to you, goddess of light."



"No Ming, heroes rise at darkest hours, you are a champion of the WOW community, you must protect the game that allowed us to be together in the first place. Your children need you and you must fight for them."



There have been 1234567 posts about WSVG's death but let's face it, the scale of the event was just way too big to run profitably. When you are talking about real life $$$, you are talking about renting the venue, shipping all the hardwares back and forth, wage/travel/hotel/food expenses for your entire staff, and prize money itself. Ticket sales is a joke when it comes to covering the overall expenses, heck I doubt it even pays for Jared "Noktyn" Fogle's room services, so you are completely reliant on sponsors to cover the bulk of your costs.



Let's see here, a sponsor can spend half the money on Gameriot and get 10x the exposure, why would they advertise offline? The majority of the American tournaments run once or twice a year, for WSVG to do four events in a single summer is just unrealistic.



All is not lost, WSVG being cancelled will finally allow us to dedicate to online tournaments. We are still in talks with Blizzard to get our hands on a permanent private server, but until then we can still run tournaments the same way I did dueling videos. In fact, online tournaments will likely be played at a much higher level than offline tournaments, everyone will be playing with their normal UIs as well as native characters. This will also allow far more teams to get in the action, without the travel costs and time commitments, without the disqualifications.



Rules are open to suggestions!



Format:



3v3 or 5v5? I am open to public opinions on this one.



To reduce the music chair factor we will probably only allow 1 bench player per team, and our referee will accept line-ups (PMs) from both teams then announce it right before the match begins.



In NBA playoffs spirit, every series will be best of 7 to minimize the luck factor, single elimination.



Qualifiers:



Each BG will go through its own mini-tournament to select the top two teams. A screenshot of a top 20 finish is required to make the tournament. We will create a bracket for every BG and teams will be asked to play their scheduled matches either in skirmish or rated games. If a team fails to show up for 3 straight days, they are eliminated. Seeds will be assigned based on arena ratings (higher rating = higher seed).



Top two teams from each BG will advance to PTR finals.



Finals:



It will be played on the second weekend of each PTR, to avoid heavy traffic we will probably play on PVE server. These matches will be played similar to WSVG, except everything will be done online.



Players from each team are encouraged to blog about their thoughts / experience on Gameriot. We will also conduct interviews. 



Yes, patch changes can drastically affect team balances.  You have one week to submit a final roster from the day PTR opens.



Prize Money:



Undecided at the moment, but without the heavy travel costs, I think something like $1500 for first place is reasonable for a very first attempt, still have to work out the details. We can also consider making the pot MUCH bigger if every player in the tournament send say $5 entry fee to a paypal account from Gameriot, in addition to the prize money we offer.



Rules:



I don't want to discriminate PVEers, I am tempted to make it "if you can use it in regular season play, you can use it in playoffs". Shadow resist gear, legendary weapons etc are all fair game IMO.



Racials:



My only concern is racials. It is possible that certain players may play characters that do not belong to them to get a racial advantage. We don't have the resource to verify each and every player so we are tempted to have each team just submit character rosters, not player rosters.



Once again, I am very serious about getting the show started. I would like this tournament to be run by players, for players. I am open to any and all suggestions, I have until this weekend to submit everything to my superiors at Gameriot. Give me your input!