RARALAND 2024 - The Open Bracket
The world of competitive Warcraft III is about to witness a grand spectacle at the highly anticipated LAN event, RARALAND. The third iteration of Warcraft3's biggest community gathering is set to host a thrilling 128-player tournament, drawing in some of the finest talent from across the globe.
On Saturday and Sunday, we are thrilled to host the $10,000 Being Esports World Series.
After an entire month of qualifiers we found the six best players in the East and West and are proud to welcome the first Chinese competitors at RARA with Fortitude & Colorful.
They are joined by the two Koreans FoCuS and Sok, as well as Starbuck & Dise from the West. They will be joined by six more players from Friday's Open Bracket to determine the best player at RARALAND.
Confirmed for the Open Bracket:
LawLiet - Soin - Jens - LabyRinth - RazerMoon - PaTo - Leon - Kevin
SyDe - Scars - Franzyzz - Lemes - Narbu - Teddster - Edo, Changer & many more
Open Bracket - Stage 1 - 128 into 8
The first step to make it into BWS is Friday's open bracket. All 128 players will be destributed into 16-Player Swiss Groups to play four rounds best-of-three against their opponents. If you don't want to participate in the Open Bracket, please let us know on the Discord! Seedings are determined by Ladder MMR and recent tournament performances. This should ensure evenly strong groups for everyone, as well as prevent early round clashes of the strongest players. As is the norm in Swiss System, players with the same results will face eachother in the proceeding rounds to level the playing field.
This system will result in a player to either have a 4:0, 3:1, 2:2, 1:3 or 0:4 result at the end of the groupstage.
- All players with 4:0 --> Advance into Stage 2 of the Open Bracket
It is our priority to find the best players among all ticket holders, but we also want to ensure a competitive and fun environment for lower MMR players.
For everyone else, the Open Bracket finish determines their seeding for Saturday's Amateur competition. This way, every match matters and the ranking of each group is meaningful to the player:
- All players with 3:1 qualify for the Masters Amateur Tournament
- All players with 2:2 qualify for the Adept Amateur Tournament
- All players with 1:3 and 0:4 qualify for the Initiate Amateur Tournament
Open Bracket - Stage 2 - 8 into 6
After winning their respective group, players will be evenly distributed into an 8-Player Double Elimination format that stops after Round 2. To take the final step into the $10,000 World Series, a player has to win one out of the two matches to get into the Top 6. Similar to the Open Bracket, every match matters. The better you perform on Friday, the better your seed & chances are for the World Series. All games are best-of-three.
- Rank 1-2: Advance into BWS Upper Bracket
- Rank 3-6: Advance into BWS Lower Bracket
- Rank 7-8: Qualify for the Masters Amateur Tournament
All games are best of three
Mappool is Autumn Leaves • Hammerfall • Northern Isles • Shallow Grave • Springtime • Tidehunters • Twisted Meadows
Why did we change the system?
A noticable change is the reduction from 16 to 12 players in the World Series.
Paying a player, especially when it's residency is outside Germany, can be a tricky procedure that involves accountants and in the worst case lawyers. Throughout the past few years, we had to deal with situations that resulted in high workload for our team and high cost for the event itself. To keep the cost low while still providing a noticable payout for our global playerbase, we had to make the decision to reduce the winners to 12 with 6 players qualifying via Online and 'Offline tournaments respectively.
When it comes to tournament formats, it's always easy to find the best 4, 8 or 16. Solutions become more complicated, the further you move away from such numbers.
So with our Open Bracket having six winners, we couldn't recycle the GSL groups of last year without adding another decider round at the end.
Last year's open bracket decider matches already ran until midnight with players having to compete for 12 hours, while having many matches run at the same time with low visibility for viewers in attendance and on stream. To add another match on top of last years schedule seemed very unreasonable and demanded changes.
\
Stage 1 - 128 into 8
The first stage of a tournament is designed to quickly find the best players among all ticket holders.
We used a single elimination system in 2022, which is arguably the simplest solution. Unfortunately this results in lower level competitors being eliminated within minutes with no chance to show their craft. This is why we decided to implement the Swiss System in 2023, using groupstage results as seedings for Saturday and resulting in more even and more meaningful matches for everyone. This change was well received and we wanted to keep it at all cost.
Now we increase the Swiss Rounds from 3-4 to have a more drastic cut after Open Bracket Stage 1. With this change, we still find the best players of each group with a valid chance at competing against the alread qualified players in the World Series and save some time so nobody has to compete for 12 hours.
Stage 2 - 8 into 6:
The more players are part of a tournament, the longer it needs to finish. With our strict schedule and limited available time, we need to find a system that ensures that the best players advance, while finishing in reasonable hours. The 4 GSL groups we used last year take around 6-7 hours or have up to 8 matches at the same time. This makes the tournament hard to follow for the fans and gives little exposure to the players.
With our newly introduces Double Elimination system, we only have 2-3 matches at the same time, with a duration of 4 hours maximum. We'll have two players winning the Upper Bracket, winning all their 6 matches. Their reward is a seeding into the BWS Upper Bracket, an extra life so to speak.
If you lose a match in Stage 2, you still have the chance to make it into the World Series, but losing on Friday takes a way a life for Saturday.
In short, our goals
- Find the 6 best players
- Finish in a more reasonable time
- Make every match meaningful
- Avoid Single Elimination and Bo1s
- Give more exposure to Stage 2 players
- Make it easier for viewers to follow the games
- Avoid unnecessary cost & workload
We hope we came up with a satisfying system for everyone!