NASL postpones WCS America Ladder Wildcard qualifier due to rule ambiguity

The WCS qualifier, made for the best performing players on the ladder, has been pushed back one week. The reason is ambiguity in the sign-up requirements that in turn caused confusion and made for invalid registrations.

According to WCS's rule, for a player to be eligible to compete in the ladder wild card tournament he or she needs to have 200 wins between the current and previous ladder season. However, as the qualifiers were announced during 2013 Season 6 but only opened during 2014 Season 1, there arose some confusion as to what "current" and "past" really mean.

This ambiguity caused a series of problems, including players who are not eligible for the qualifier signing up nevertheless. Those kind of problems eventually led to the qualifier being stopped and getting postponed to a later date - January 13th. The sign-up requirements have also been cleared up - players will be eligible for participation if they have 200 wins cumulatively between 2013 Season 6 and 2014 Season 1.

When approached for comment, NASL director of communications Barbie Koelker explained that the decision to postpone the tournament and re-do it altogether instead of trying to fix the issues the night it was supposed to be played has been taken collectively by NASL and Blizzard staff. Koelker also told us that NASL are taking community concerns like the admin responsiveness into consideration and are planning to increase the size of the admin team in-game as well as on Binary Beast and Skype in order to allow for smoother communication between players and organizers.

"I still wouldn’t go so far as to say that people were dishonest. There were a few players who thought that “current season” and “previous season” meant 2013 Season 5 and Season 6, so we had a few people who entered based on having 200+ wins in Season 5, but whom were not eligible. It is because of this confusion that we paused yesterday to discuss the best solution possible with Blizzard, and decided collectively to make Season 1 more flexible and give everyone who is now eligible a fair chance to register. We definitely take all concerns raised to us into consideration. We have asked that any player who has questions about their registration status email us at [email protected] After the first WCS US/Canada/Latin America qualifier, we increased the team that is working as admins in game, through email, on binary beast, and on Skype. We will be increasing this team again moving forward to expedite response times."

Koelker also took time to shed light on some of the issues that arose during the first WCS America qualifier, played on January 4th. At the time, various sources stated that players who registered for the tournament never made it into the actual bracket, the list including established progamers like EG's Benjamin "DeMusliM" Baker. When approached to comment whether the issue lies with NASL or the players, Koelker said that those players who registered but never made it into the bracket did not complete the registration process on Binary Beast and were thus left out when the bracket was generated.

"During the first US/Canada/Latin America qualifiers, we heard people state that they registered but never made it into the bracket. Our admins did not manually delete or remove anyone’s registration prior to the brackets being generated. We forwarded the information of everyone who contacted us with this concern to Binary Beast to see if there were any errors on their side, but they found no records that any of these individuals ever completed the registration process on the site. [...] Our admin emailed DeMusliM instructions, but DeMusliM never filled out the registration form on Binary Beast. [...] He was expected to register like any other player during the registration window, which regrettably did not happen."

GosuGamers has reached out to DeMusliM's manager for comment.

Apart from the postponed Ladder Wildcard qualifier on January 13th, NASL are to run two more US/Canada/Latin America qualifiers, one on January 9th and another on January 11th. Top four of each will earn spots in the first season of 2014 WCS America Challenger League.

Frontpage photo: WellPlayed