ESWC hosts online qualifications for Grand Finals

quakerix

Netherlands172 Posts

September 12 2011 14:46 GMT

Electronic Sports World Cup hosts online qualification in 32 countries – Cooperation with the Electronic Sports League

Teams and players all over Europe will be able to qualify for ESWC 2011 via an online qualification in Counter-Strike 1.6, CS:Source, StarCraft II, DotA, FIFA 11 and Trackmania held by ESL.

For each game a cup will be hosted. There are two prices:

* Place 1 and 2 of each cup will get a slot in the Grand Final, a paid entrance fee and accommodation.
* Place 3 and 4 of each cup will get a slot in the Grand Final and paid entrance fee.

For Starcraft II, the top8 in the European qualifier will each get a slot in the Grand Final and paid entrance fee.

More about what you can win here.

This is your chance to take part in ESWC's Grand Final, if your country didn't had a dedicated qualification tournament so far. Our qualification tournaments are open for every European country, which didn't had its own qualification for the respective game. Want to know if you can play? Visit the portal and click on more information at your respective game.

Starcraft II will have an US qualifier as well. This will be open for all US or Canadian citizens.

A small fee is mandatory to participate in our cups. It is $10/10€ dollar per person or 50$/50€ dollar per team. All cups will be held on September 19th. For more information and sign-ups please visit our:

- EU ESWC Online Qualification Portal
- US ESWC Online Qualification Portal

About ESWC
ESWC Grand Final 2011 will take place during Paris Games Week from 21st to 24th October this year and will feature a total of $200,000 in cash prizes distributed accordingly between 7 tournaments.

Applications
The online qualifier does not influence the ongoing application procedure to enter the tournament. If you get accepted by ESWC and you get top4, your entrance fee will be refunded. The application procedure is open to all players without qualification. Players will be picked based on achievements. More information about that here.

Something extra
Since many of the TL community is not aware with ESWC or its history. I will use this news to answer some of the comments I've seen.

History ESWC
The history of ESWC can be split up in two parts. The brand was owned previously by Games-Services. They organized international standalone e-sports tournaments from 2003 until 2008. ESWC was for a long period of time the biggest and most prestigious e-sports tournament in the world. ESWC was one of the few organizers being able to organize standalone e-sports tournaments attracting then thousands of visitors. Only the WCG had better numbers in certain country's(Korea, Germany, China). Most e-sports history has been written on these ESWC events. Unfortunately NVIDIA pulled the plug in 2007. The organizers did the 2008 event but failed to find new sponsorship. Due to this, Games-Services went bankrupt and was not able to pay out its 2008 price money.

In 2009 the brand ESWC got bought by Games-Solution. It organized its 2010 event at Disneyland Paris. Many teams were skeptical, afraid that the event would be fake, they also demanded the new organization to pay out the old price money. ESWC was not forced by law to pay out the price money of the previous company but did published a bank guarantee. All teams attended and all winners got their price money few weeks after the event.

Now its 2011 and Games-Solutions organizes ESWC at the Paris Games Week. The company Oxent will be involved organizing the event. Oxent is owned by one of the previous owners of ESWC.

Something personal; I think many that attended ESWC in the past could state that it was great. Just to give everybody an idea, Many organizers out there has yet not touched the level of ESWC events. And they were organized many years ago.

Now some other stuff I encountered in the comments.

Are Blizzcon and ESWC in the same weekend?

Blizzcon and ESWC 2011 Grand Finals will collide this year. Nothing that we can do about this situation. ESWC is taking place during the fair Paris Games week and that was set long before Blizzcon was announced. This means that players that qualified for battle.net finales at Blizzcon will not be able to attend ESWC.

Did ESWC never pay out their price money

The current owners of ESWC always paid out their price money a few weeks after the event. The previous owners that went bankrupt were unable to pay out its 2008 event. Read the history part to know more.

Why are there no notional qualifiers in my country?

National qualifiers are organized by local partners. Local e-sports companies in most of the cases. These companies have been struggling to survive and are simply unable to organize local qualifications. 5 years ago it was a different economy and so its hard to find partners that are able to do this. Partners pay travel and hotel costs of winners of their qualification.

The model that ESWC is using for qualification is not working as good as it used to be. That's why the application procedure and the online qualifications were put together in order to make sure teams and players are able to attend our event.

Why is WCG able to do it and ESWC is not

The model of WCG is that Samsung pays everything. And that's really expensive model that works as long as Samsung pays the bills.

How will the future look like

Bright, but we'll need to find new ways of making this work. Online qualifiers is one of them, but maybe something else.

What about the boycott that is currently going on

Its up to teams to decide whether they want to attend or not. But regarding the statement, there are some facts that are not true. Teams and players don't "buy" themselves into the tournament, they apply. Specialized community figures will make a selection of these applications. Some will be accepted, some will not.

We hope that these teams that decided to boycott will still take the opportunity to qualify online.

The funny part of this story is, that many semi-professional organizations are willing and able to pay the fee. This matter has more implications on the CS tournament than on others. Some other community's(specially CSS) are also using this boycott to show that they see it as a positive thing and massively applied for a slot.

This application procedure is an extra service to the community. Its for a team to decide what to do with it.

Do you have to pay to play in the online qualifiers?

Yes you do, its 10 dollar per person, 50 dollar per team. Its done via paypal and visit the payment information on the portal for more information.

Now some cool pictures, and if there are any more questions. Please state them in the comments. I will try to reply them. I am a freelancer in e-Sports. Currently working for ESWC as tournament director/community manager.

mdma-_-

Nauru1213 Posts

September 12 2011 14:53 GMT

sc2 having more than double the prize money of cs and dota is a joke.
ESWC isnt what it used to be : (

Otolia

France5805 Posts

September 16 2011 15:07 GMT

On September 12 2011 23:53 mdma-_- wrote:
sc2 having more than double the prize money of cs and dota is a joke.
ESWC isnt what it used to be : (

CS is dead (as is CSS) and only stubborn college students still play the original DotA. Most of my friend will come to the ESWC because of SC2.

cmen15

United States1519 Posts

September 16 2011 15:15 GMT

I know a lot of people have have been talking about ESWC as of late, im just happy with the sick prize pool. I sure the whole event will be great! glgl

BigLighthouse

United Kingdom424 Posts

September 16 2011 15:27 GMT

On September 17 2011 00:07 Otolia wrote:

Show nested quote +

CS is dead (as is CSS) and only stubborn college students still play the original DotA. Most of my friend will come to the ESWC because of SC2.

They arnt totally dead, especially in europe. And thers 5 men per team to split the prize money on so it does seem a little unfair to have so much into sc2. Just hope that enough players get into the qualifiers so the event skill can justify the prize payout. Props to ESL for helping host the qualifiers too.

pac.558

Canada90 Posts

September 16 2011 15:57 GMT

Source and 1.6 are no where near their respective peeks in popularity... so i'ts no surprise a game like sc2 gets the majority of the prize pool. I still like source though, play it regularily and competitively still :D

sekritzzz

1515 Posts

September 16 2011 16:00 GMT

On September 17 2011 00:27 BigLighthouse wrote:

Show nested quote +

5 or 10, it doesnt matter. Prize pool should be in relation to viewers because that is what brings in the money. If LoL was introduced, I wouldnt be surprised if it got a higher prize pool than sc2.

Novalisk

Israel1818 Posts

September 16 2011 16:20 GMT

Nice to see an official ESWC post on TL, hopefully the first ever SC2 event in ESWC is a success.