EPT
Starting season 2, MLG was replaced by NASL and everyone was so happy.
So today, there was the first qualifier for WCS America Challenger Season 3. There are only 2 streams with casters : Eggi and... MLG. NASL? nope, nothing. No news from them and they didn't even say a word about casting the best matches later (at least, I didn't see anything on their website and on their twitter, they just spam a link to buy tickets for the WCS finals in Toronto)
Not only they don't cast anything, the official bracket ( http://binarybeast.com/xSC21308234 ) is private and so, not available for public. (message is : Results are currently private and not yet available for public viewing).
At the time I am writing, it is still on, I think they are at the RO16, and since the top 4 qualify, that means there are only 2 rounds left. And yet, there is no way to know who played this qualifier, if there was any upset or who is close to qualify to the Challenger League of WCS.
So, is this how NASL now deals with the WCS America?
edit :
On September 21 2013 12:10 Dark.Carnival wrote:
So far it has been a major disappointment in how the tournament was advertised and how they ran it today.
It almost went by unnoticed except for a few posts on reddit when NASL released the information for sign-ups about a week ago. But NASL didn't announce it on reddit or teamliquid as far as I know. The WCS website had a couple news posts about it but again nothing was posted to community sites.
First qualifier was today and it was a bit of a mess. Only 135 people signed up since there was very little advertisement but they still kept their "schedule" that said ro512 would start 12pm PDT. Since there were so few sign-ups there was no ro512 so the vast majority of us were online at 12pm thinking the schedule would be moved up only to find out they didn't want us to play until the scheduled time. ro256 was at 1:30pm PDT and ro128 was at 3:00pm PDT.
Other issues are there was only ONE admin, and he was often not replying to questions probably due to being messaged by everyone. There was a check-in required 30mins before your match that you had to do by messaging this one admin and waiting for a reply. If your opponent wasn't there or afk you were supposed to tell the admin, who eventually went through every no-show by asking in chat for them to reply to him. For the ro128 this was done before 3pm PDT and lead to several people getting walked over despite returning in time for the match at 3pm PDT. As far as I could tell the one admin wasn't able to get to everyone having issues so a lot of walkovers went unresolved.
Next issue; map pool. The maps are the same as the ladder but there was zero information on starting maps or if there was a veto system. After messaging the admin to check in for the ro128 he gave out the maps which were randomly selected by him (or someone). They were set maps for each game so no vetoing or loser picks. The funny part is in the very next round for the maps the starting map was chosen again by the admin but it became loser picks for no reason. The lack of information regarding the map rules also lead to some people ignoring the admin and doing vetoes for map picks anyway.
Overall it was probably one of the worst qualifiers for an important tournament I've been in or seen, and probably the worst WCS qualifier for all three seasons. To sum up the problems; lack of advertising it, lack of information, poor scheduling and only one admin. Hopefully the qualifier on the 24th is ran better but I'm not getting my hopes up D:
For information on the next qualifer; http://nasl.tv/News/Article/20130914wcs-america-season-3-qualifier-information
Qualifier 2
12pm PDT on September 24 - Registration opens
12pm PDT on September 27 - Registration closes
12pm PDT on September 28 - Tournament begins (I assume ro512 same as todays)
So far it has been a major disappointment in how the tournament was advertised and how they ran it today.
It almost went by unnoticed except for a few posts on reddit when NASL released the information for sign-ups about a week ago. But NASL didn't announce it on reddit or teamliquid as far as I know. The WCS website had a couple news posts about it but again nothing was posted to community sites.
First qualifier was today and it was a bit of a mess. Only 135 people signed up since there was very little advertisement but they still kept their "schedule" that said ro512 would start 12pm PDT. Since there were so few sign-ups there was no ro512 so the vast majority of us were online at 12pm thinking the schedule would be moved up only to find out they didn't want us to play until the scheduled time. ro256 was at 1:30pm PDT and ro128 was at 3:00pm PDT.
Other issues are there was only ONE admin, and he was often not replying to questions probably due to being messaged by everyone. There was a check-in required 30mins before your match that you had to do by messaging this one admin and waiting for a reply. If your opponent wasn't there or afk you were supposed to tell the admin, who eventually went through every no-show by asking in chat for them to reply to him. For the ro128 this was done before 3pm PDT and lead to several people getting walked over despite returning in time for the match at 3pm PDT. As far as I could tell the one admin wasn't able to get to everyone having issues so a lot of walkovers went unresolved.
Next issue; map pool. The maps are the same as the ladder but there was zero information on starting maps or if there was a veto system. After messaging the admin to check in for the ro128 he gave out the maps which were randomly selected by him (or someone). They were set maps for each game so no vetoing or loser picks. The funny part is in the very next round for the maps the starting map was chosen again by the admin but it became loser picks for no reason. The lack of information regarding the map rules also lead to some people ignoring the admin and doing vetoes for map picks anyway.
Overall it was probably one of the worst qualifiers for an important tournament I've been in or seen, and probably the worst WCS qualifier for all three seasons. To sum up the problems; lack of advertising it, lack of information, poor scheduling and only one admin. Hopefully the qualifier on the 24th is ran better but I'm not getting my hopes up D:
For information on the next qualifer; http://nasl.tv/News/Article/20130914wcs-america-season-3-qualifier-information
Qualifier 2
12pm PDT on September 24 - Registration opens
12pm PDT on September 27 - Registration closes
12pm PDT on September 28 - Tournament begins (I assume ro512 same as todays)
