EPTI'm going to put all of that aside because that isn't my concern. Don't get me wrong, those things are important, but there is a much bigger problem that I feel needs to be addressed.
The various WCS qualifiers around the world throughout the year were fairly successful and provided some solid viewing, but the problem is that the huge tournament that they all build up to, which is supposed to be the biggest tournament of the year, has serious flaws. Boring games, dull player line-up, irrelevant matches, a situation where more skill is required to win the Korean Qualifier than to win the final event itself, and so on.
I'm going to address the main issue first, and then I'll talk about how I think they can fix it.
The qualifying system providing a unbalanced player pool-
Simply put, the player pool doesn't back up the size, the magnitude and the hype of this "Super Tournament". The reality is that quite a few of the groups in pool play were entirely irrelevant (with all due respect to the players); spectators in general didn't care how those select groups played out because the winners weren't going to be able to be competitive enough to beat the better players anyway.
Ultimately its the balance between quality players and fair foreign representation that Blizzard has gotten wrong. Blizzard decided that, in the interest of fairness, there was to be the same amount of seeds available through the NA and European qualifiers as there were for the Korean one. The obvious problem being that there are quite a few players who were good enough to win their respective qualifiers but aren't good enough to be competitive against some of the top players.
Now, this is where the balance is crucial, because the other end of the extreme is that the tournament is 99% Korean and any foreign representation is lost.
In the end, all of this is a result of the qualifying system.
How to fix it-
I really like the idea of adopting a system similar to the ATP Tennis World Tour. You have various tournaments throughout a year which all include a point reward system, with bigger tournaments rewarding more points for placings. A players placing at which ever tournament they have attended has them rewarded with points which help their position on a ladder, with the top players each year get to participate in the World Championships.
The World Championship could consist of the top 32 players on the ladder, with 6x 4 man randomised groups. Everyone plays everyone else in their respective group and the 2 with the best results are seeded to the single elimination championship bracket. This provides you with a tournament that contains a player pool that is a solid representation of the best in the world and a better chance of seeing good games from the group stages right up to the final.
If Blizzard were able to make arrangements with some of the current well established tournaments such as GSL, MLG, IPL, Dreamhack, IEM, ESWC etc etc that'd be a great way of introducing this system and getting it rolling nice and fast. As long as there is enough of these tournament available and everyone has equal opportunity to compete in these tournament, then its an entirely fair system.
The end result is added excitement to existing tournaments (X player needs X points to make it to the World Finals) a BWC player pool that is a solid representation of the best players in the world, a tournament that is likely to provide entertaining games from the outset until the close and truly deserves to be called the biggest of the year, and a player who can unequivocally be named "World Champion".
Edit: I thought I'd add that I wrote this without really knowing what Blizzard intentions were with this whole series, but I'm perfectly aware that if their intention wasn't to create the the end all be all of tournaments then what I wrote probably doesn't apply.
If that is indeed the case, I hope people can recognise that the title "World Champion" and such has little to no value. Don't treat the tournament like its supposed to be anything more than a collection of a few of the best performing players (at the time of the qualifiers) in each region playing each other... despite how big of a deal Tasteless foolishly tries to make it out as.
