EPTWCS was a great way for blizzard to introduce their way of running tournaments and focusing on the local players rather than the standard pro-player base.
Giving names to the no names.
But I challenge Blizzard for their next tournament series to step up their game, luckily I can do all the thinking for you Blizzard.
I have been playing in tournaments since I was 10 year old. I played the Pokemon Trading card game for about 10 years attending over 200 tournaments(at least) and here I will give blizzard the idea how to run their next tournaments.
So when a new season started in the TCG it had many layers and each layer mattered.
During an entire season their were levels of tournaments each worth more than the other meaning they mattered more.
We had
0. Battle Roads(+1 pts)
1. City Championship(+2)
2. State Chamionships(+5)
3. Regional Championships(+10)
4. National Championships(+20)
5. World Championships
Everything there seems self explanatory except for battle roads. Battle roads were generally quite small tournaments in which players could earn points to increase their overall points(something like a Playhem daily).
Everyone at the start of the season would start at 1500 ELO. The more matches you won the higher your ELO was. As the season progress players have more and more ELO points and some players have under 1500 ELO points. Winning a tournament would give you the most ELO points obviously because you lost the least amount.
If a higher 1800 ELO player lost vs a lower 1400 ELO player he would lose more points than he would VS a 1700 ELO player. The amount points lost is also determined by the tournament you are playing in. If you 1800 ELO loses in a battle-road vs a 1400 you might lose 20 points, but if it was a National Tournament you would lose maybe 40-50 points(numbers are not exact but you know what I mean)
So thats how really it worked. And at the end of the season the top40 ELO ranked player would be invited to the world championships(there were other ways of winning trips IE placing high at a National Championships)
Why does this benefit blizzard?
1. Unlike pokemon people actually had to go in person to play in tournaments. With SC2 being a online game and how easy it is to set up and online tournament they can run tournaments with ease.
They can make live tournaments like they did for Nationals if they want to
2. It benefits by actually growing a player base. It lets the guys that might never make it to an MLG feel like they actually achieved something if they won a battle road or a city championship(up to blizzard what they want to call it) Which means it sparks a growth in the community.
3. Everything is open bracket(except world championships and sometimes Nationals) that means anyone can play and everyone can make themselves feel like they are apart of something. Blizzard needs to grow an actual community and WCS was a good start but they need to do more
Though the only difference is that tournaments in PTCG would be held in a swiss format. Swiss format if you are not acquainted with it it there are for example 8 rounds before the TopX cut. Whoever has the best Win/Loss after the 8(or w/e) rounds proceeds into the top cut.
Up to blizzard how they want to run their system.
What do you guys think?
EDIT- Just realized how off topic I got.
