Really the whole idea is pretty fucking sick, and I'd love to see it happen. I just don't think blizzard has the balls to try something this creative.
I have not read all the pages in this thread. So maybe this was asked already, but could TL.net set something like this up? I rather TL rake my money anyway. Could TL set up a website on a server in some nation with weak gambling laws? All the website would have to do is hold the money basically, and set the brackets. You just need mods on bnet2 to settle any disputes. Basically like Iccup is now.
I guess the only problem is you somehow need a way for the website to quickly check everyone bnet profiles and put similar ranked players into brackets. You also surely will get a blizzard lawyer up your ass, but I don't know could blizzard stop you from doing something like that?
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Its seems like the large majority of people haven't read most of the thread and keep reiterating the same fears or points over and over. Perhaps updating the OP to reflect some of the points that have been brought up so far?
That being said,
For fear of higher ranked players farming lower skill players, have a single tournament win push you up to the next ranking level, and lock you into it. While over time this might make the higher levels slightly artificially larger, it also prevents the possibility of people winning a tournament in bronze, getting pushed into silver, and then throwing 10 games to go back into bronze. If you advance into a level by winning a tournament, you're locked into that level.
Don't hold tournaments on demand, at all times, make them available for say 1 week each month, and then winners of tournaments are favored to play against other players who have won tournaments. If winners of tournaments are paired primarily against other winners, it makes competing for money more difficult.
Not all tournament games need to be completely hack-free. Have specialized games for perhaps the finals and semi-finals, or even just the final game of the automated tournament. Have the games for these boot into a special sub-server designed to be primarily server-side, and have final games played out there.
Legally, they're already safe due to the arena tournament work for World of Warcraft, areas where the tournament isn't available will simply not be able to have the option of these automated tournaments, and like with World of Warcraft, the inclusion of the tournaments does not invalidate the entire game, only the optional event.
For people saying Blizzard could get into legal trouble for people bypassing bans in their areas: You agree to a ToS when you play the game, adding in a clause that they do not support or condone that behaviour, and are not responsible for the repercussions of these actions etc etc would shield them from backlash. Additionally, you could have regional IP data encoded into the data sent by the client itself, so simply using a proxy server or buying a US client wouldn't be enough to bypass the bans.
For caught cheaters or abusers, don't just ban an account or IP, ban the payment information. It would be much more difficult to cheat the system when if you're caught your credit card or bank routing number is blacklisted.
Give participation rewards for non-winners. Special avatars or decals, depending on performance. Playing gets you a certain avatar for the next month. Winning one game gets you a special decal, and the avatar. 2 games, different avatar, 3 games, different decal, win a tournament, you get a much more exclusive avatar, or perhaps symbol by your name. Rewards last the rest of the month until the next tournament week.
I think this would be a really fun idea, and I'd definitely participate just to see how I compare and stack up, even if I would likely not win, assuming the cost is low enough.
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EPT
