Rules & format for Blizzcon World Cup

Blizzard recently announced their exhibition tournament at Blizzcon 2016 - an Overwatch World Cup. Teams from a vast array of countries will compete for the title of World Cup champions, with the players selected by public vote. The voting has just begun, and an official rules document was also slipped into the announcement.

This rules document details a huge amount of interesting information, so let's break it down piece by piece. Here's what we know:

Voting

Blizzard announced that players from 58 eligible countries would be emailed, asking if they were interested in representing their country. The resulting players would then be open to a public vote, with competitive players, streamers, personalities, and successful ranked players in the mix.

The rules page shows that up to 25 players from each country were contacted, though some of those such as Kyb from REUNITED didn't remember to reply to the email... nice work Kyb, letting your entire country down. Others were ineligible due to being under 18, such as zaprey, LUI, and Sunset.

The voting will decide four members of each national team - presumably to avoid the public voting in every popular streamer and ruining the competitive viability of some major countries. Blizzard will then select a captain from those four players, who will then nominate the last two.

Qualifying

From that huge spread of countries, Brazil, Canada, China, South Korea, USA, and ANZ (a joint endeavour from Australia and New Zealand) automatically qualify for the Final Stage of the World Cup. The other countries must go through a gruelling qualifying stage.

Interestingly, other countries which have been combined together such as ANZ are: "Baltic & Caspian Sea" (Belarus, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and Kazakhstan) and "Benelux" (Belguim, Netherlands, and Luxembourg). The player pools for these countries are all together, presumably due to a low playerbase.

The teams who do not automatically qualify will have to compete in a regional qualifier. There are three of these, one for the Americas, one for Europe, and one for the Asia-Pacific region. These qualifiers will take place between September 4th and September 19th.

Regional Qualifiers

The Americas Qualifier has two groups, each containing three teams. These groups will be decided by Blizzard, and teams will play best-of-three round robin games against their opponents. The top team from the two groups will play a best-of-five match against each other, with the winner qualifying for Blizzcon. In the event of a tie based on wins in the group, teams will use round difference as a tiebreaker. If this is also the same, a best-of-one round robin will be used.

This means that one team will manually qualify from the Americas.

The European Qualifier has six groups, each containing five teams. These teams play best-of-three matches in a round robin, but afterwards the format is different. The #1 team from each group will be randomly placed against a #2 team from a different group in a best-of-five, with the winners progressing to Blizzcon.

This means that six teams will manually qualify from Europe, one from each group.

The Asia-Pacific Qualifier has three groups with three teams in each. In this region, the teams once again play their round robin games but the top teams from each group go through.

This means that three teams will manually qualify from the Asia-Pacific region.

Blizzcon Groups

This format gives us 16 teams who progress to Blizzcon 2016. There is one final group stage before the knockout tournament:

Between the 29th and 31st October, the sixteen teams will be split into four groups of four teams each. The seeding and grouping will be decided by Blizzard, with no indication of how this will work. Again a best-of-three round robin will sort the wheat from the chaff, and the top two teams from each group progress.

Blizzcon Finals

The final tournament is a single-elimination battle with the 8 remaining teams. Teams who finished top of their Blizzcon group will face a random team who placed second in a different group, and will begin the tournament at the Quarter Finals.

The tournament is again best-of-three until the Grand Final, which is a best-of-seven fixture to crown the World Cup champion and winner of Blizzcon 2016.

Key Points

Some other key points for the tournament are that all of the maps appear to be pre-determined, and the World Cup will be using basic rules for Escort and Hybrid. The rule, which is expected to court a lot of controversy, is below.

4.2

Unless otherwise stated herein, Tournament matches will utilize a “best of 3” match format. The first, second, and third maps played in a Match will be designated by Blizzard. Each successful offensive push is recorded as a Round Win for the offensive team and a Round Loss for the defending team

These maps have not been released yet but one could safely assume that the whole map pool will be exhibited. It will be a rough break from the norm for competitive tournaments which are used to using Timed Completion or Stopwatch for Escort/Hybrid maps.

There is no mention of coin-flip and the rules suggest that there may be no need for it, as maps could be tied in the World Cup format or Blizzard could strategically place Control maps to avoid this. It is likely to be a highly unpopular rule if coin-flip is required, and this may be clarified at a later date by Blizzard.

Cheating

Another interesting point is that Blizzard appear to be taking a hands-on approach to cheating at the event. This is a policy that has been often requested from large developers.

Blizzard state:

5.0 Equipment. Blizzard will provide all Players with standard hardware to use in the tournament. Should there be an issue with the hardware, Players are to notify one of Blizzard's Tournament Officials immediately for a replacement. 5.1 Players may bring their personal keyboard and mouse to use in the tournament. All personal equipment must be approved before use.

They also state (emphasis ours):

7.1 Players must compete to the best of their ability at all times. It is each Player’s responsibility to know and understand the rules as they exist during the Tournament period. Any form of cheating will not be tolerated. If Blizzard determines that a Player is cheating or otherwise interfering with the Tournament, the Player will be immediately disqualified and removed from the Tournament and may be restricted from participating in any events in the future, and have all of their licenses to all Blizzard Entertainment games revoked. Players may be requested to install software on their computers for the duration of the Tournament which is specially designed to detect cheating. Examples of cheating would include, without limitation: 7.1.1 Actions to intentionally alter or attempt to alter the results of any match, including losing a match to advance one Team or another Team’s position in the Tournament. If Blizzard determines that a Player is colluding or match fixing, the Player will be immediately disqualified and removed from the Tournament and may be restricted from participating in future events and have all of his or her licenses to all Blizzard games revoked.

This shows clearly that Blizzard are going to be monitoring peripherals to rule out cheating at LAN as far as possible. They are also taking a hard stance against match throwing, given the format is susceptible to it. While these lengths are probably not necessary for a World Cup with no prize on the line, it sets an excellent precedent given they follow through with it.

Player Costs

Amazingly this document also covers how much the players are paid. It appears that the players will be each paid $3,000 USD upon qualification to Blizzcon, along with having flights, hotel costs, meals, and transport paid for by Blizzard.

Blizzard have estimated in this document that the cost per player will average $5,500 USD. That amounts to a whopping $528,000 USD on player costs alone.

Whether you agree with that amount of money being spent on a one-time cup that has no relevance in the wider Overwatch scene, it definitely shows that Blizzard are committed to pushing Overwatch further and further forward.

As if we needed reminding!