Summoners,

We’d like to take a moment to address recent events surrounding the WCG qualifiers. We understand why you’re upset about how the event has been handled and communicated thus far.

Frustration over this event can be attributed entirely to poor communication of the tournament rules:

As many of you have observed, the rules posted on the official WCG website were inconsistent with the way the WCG was running the qualifiers. The consistent ruleset for online WCG tournaments is a double elimination, best of three format (update for clarity: one set in initial round; multiple sets for the final round - see explanation below in response #1), and the entire event was run in this fashion. The officially posted rules on the WCG’s website incorrectly stated the rules for this event as best of three games. This was the primary reason for the confusion.

Riot works with a variety of eSports organizations, but we do not administer or have oversight of third party tournaments. When players raised this situation to our attention, we consulted with the WCG in an attempt to understand and clarify the situation.

We are still investigating the situation – as you know, this is fairly complex and there are a lot of moving parts, and we want to make sure we have the full story before commenting further. We have requested the WCG clarify the situation and their rules further, and we’ll continue to keep you posted.

We know this hasn’t been a great experience for fans of competitive League of Legends. We’re not happy about it either, and we’re sorry it’s taken us a while to communicate to you on this subject.

Q&A in progress:
Will be reviewing the comments below and answering questions.

Links to the WCG US brackets:
Final Round - http://us.wcg.com/?page=stem_schedule&stageid=4383 - Dignitas advances to Korea

Qualifier #1 - http://us.wcg.com/?page=stem_schedule&stageid=4069 - TSM/CDE advances to Final Round
Qualifier #2 - http://us.wcg.com/?page=stem_schedule&stageid=4144 - unrestricted advances to Final Round; reforms as Crs
Qualifier #3 - http://us.wcg.com/?page=stem_schedule&stageid=4281 - RS/dignitas advances to Final Round
Last Chance Qualifier - http://us.wcg.com/?page=stem_schedule&stageid=4325 - coL advances to Final Round

Notes: In all of the initial qualifiers; the team advancing to the final round came from the upper bracket and defeated the lower bracket team without the need for an additional set. In the final round an additional set was needed b/c CDE defeated Dignitas putting both teams at one loss.

Update #1 to Aduro:

(A) WCG National Qualifiers do not need to follow consistent formats across the world. The WCG allows for each national organizer to construct a format how they see fit (i.e. best of three, double elimination). This is to accommodate differences at the national level (e.g. # of participants, live vs. online finals)

It just so happens that the US and Canadian tournament were run by the same organizer and that organizer wanted both of those format to be the same since both tournament were concluded online. There are no national finals that need to be redone.

(B) The WCG will be providing additional clarity on their rule regarding players with dual citizenship. According to the WCG as of this moment, no player in the League of Legends has violated a rule or been disqualified.

(C) Dignitas earned a one set advantage by advancing the the championship match without suffering a match loss. CDE had lost once before in the final bracket. Since the format was double elimination - Dignitas only had to win one set (to give CDE two match losses); CDE had to defeat Dignitas in two sets in order to eliminate them from the tournament.

The format was a double elimination tournament. A team suffers a loss (one elimination) when they lose a 3 game set. A team need to lose twice to be eliminated. The most "confusing" part of a double elimination tournament comes at the end. One team remains undefeated (upper bracket winner), while their final opponent has already suffer a loss and was dropped down to the lower bracket. At this point the lower bracket team needs to win two matches in order to earn the championship.

Dignitas was the upper bracket champion with no losses and CDE emerged from the lower bracket with one loss. CDE evened the series by defeating dignitas 2 games to 0, but then lost the concluding set by a score of 2-1. Dignitas suffered one defeated in the tournament, while CDE was eliminated twice and thus finished 2nd.

For further explanation of the nuances of the double elimination format I've linked to some references:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NS...-draw-2004.png
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-...ion_tournament

Update #2 to DunkinDNuts

The format for WCG Canada is the same format (double elimination, best of three). It was also communicated improperly by the WCG CA admins (the same organization that ran the US tournament).

After the WCG CA admins were told that the Canadian final hadn't been completed, they called a meeting with those players to have the finish the finals. Final results from that tournament are still pending and will be posted by WCG Canada when they are complete.

negative votes incoming

Move this to general so ppl can see it

what about Jatt?

EDIT:

So by the precedent that has been set here at the American WCG Qualifiers, means that national qualifiers that have completed, must be redone with the new format being a best of 3 set ?
Cause thats what consistency would dictate.
Also how is it fair that Dignitas came into the set with a 1 win advantage per best of 3 and a 1 set advantage overall, meaning that they had to win 1 game to advance, while CDE had to win 4 games ?

EDIT 2: Also isn't one of your jobs as eSports manager, even though you dont administer or oversee said tournaments, to try to keep the integrity of League of Legends as an eSport, when a rule that is so blatantly broken as Jatt playing in 2 qualifiers and the rules so clearly state that he should have been disqualified and banned yet is not enforced. It does nothing but reflect baddly on LoL and yourself for not taking any action.

Then why wasn't Canada's Qualifiers run that way?

What about players playing in 2 different qualifiers?
What about Canadian qualifiers being played differently?

Stop using "consistency" as a platform when there is no consistency to be found anywhere.


Furthermore:
If it was in fact best of 3 sets, what is the need for 1 game advantage in the first set of the finals?
Would Dignitas not already have a 1 set advantage from defeating CDE in the semis?

Isn't the whole reason for that 1 game advantage is because the games were meant to be played as a BO3 Games? This 1 game is meant to represent Dignitas' victory in the semis. Otherwise it makes no sense.

Possible(good) Formats:
Dig 1 set advantage(from semi victory), CDE won 1 set, Dig won 1 set, 2-1 Dig advances
Dig 1 game advantage, CDE won 2 games, CDE Advances.

Convulted Format:
Dig 1 game advatage in 1st set, CDE wins 1st set, Dig wins 2nd set = Dig advances? There technically is 1 set left to play here

TLR: Why give Dignitas a 1 game advantage in 1st set of finals for their semi victory, when according to you they have a 1 set advatage already?

How can you say it has been run like this in a BEST OF THREE SETS FASHION WHEN NO TEAM HAS PLAYED LIKE THAT. In fact they (you) only mentioned this AFTER both the U.S and Canadian qualifiers had been played.


Add in that all the games with Dignitas should be NULL and VOID because of Jatt's participation and you sir have failed as an E-Sports relations/manager whatever it is you think you do.

You guys F***ed up. Now take the blame, stop denying it and it will be all over.

Edit:

Marcou its now you against the most of the community, and when you're a tourny manager where the community is very involved that does not abide well for you or riot as a company.

WCG online rules was wrong yet you waited until after both wcg national qualifiers were completed to decide to reopen the tournament to finish the games. Is this effort you made to benifet one team in any way fair? No Dignatis did not win at the time when this decision was unfair, they lost and admitted it on their twitter. Not only that, you waited until now to say that the online rules were incorrect.

They have never once before ran a best of 3 sets therefore it is counter intuitive to make such a statement because WCG posted false information which was what everyone had accepted during the tournament including the completion of the tournament. What I'm trying to say is, you can't say that: we posted false information, this is how it is supposed to be run, when the tournament is already completed using the rules, even if they are incorrect how can you go back and change rules for something that has already happened.

It is not like putting somebody in jail then changing the law and removing them from jail because there is multiple parties involved. It is more like awarding a trophy to somebody then taking it away from them and giving it to somebody else because you somehow think they illegitimately won.

Unfortunately what has happened is WCG threw Riot under the bus in their e-mail and now Riot is returning the favour.

Why Canada did not play a best of 3 set why WCG and Riot are at fault

This is to make clearer what Reginald is trying to say.

http://www.solomid.net/blog.php?v=14026

Lets highlight the most important part from this e-mail sent by WCG to CDE:

The finals of the WCG USA League of Legends tournament is going to be played in a consistent format to that of the WCG Canada Final which was Best 2 of 3 sets with a 1 set advantage to the upper bracket winner.

According to WCG, as said in the above email, the only reason USA must play a best of 3 sets is completely related to what has occured in the Canadian WCG qualifiers.

So, looking at what happened in Canda, let's assume that they did play a best of 3 sets, in order to prove why this is false.

- Clg won one game

- assuming they won the first set

They won 1 game out of 3 games and one set. Which means they needed to play another game had this been 2 sets in order to win the second set.

WCG and Riot has based their conclusions on the above events where they declared that 3 sets had been played but we know that the above event was not a best of 3 sets. It was a best of 3 games.

So, as we know, WCG and Riot went back and created their own rule under incorrect conclusions in the email.

They also attempted to fix the mistake in the Canada qualifiers by making them play another set. This would not have rectified the problem because the second set was not decided because the rules are not 1 set and 1 game for the winners bracket it is only 1 set (in reality it was 1 game of the best of 3 games). The team that was supposed to face the clg/tsm canadian team decided not to play.

This is what dignatis chose not to do. So, despite you thinking that there would be no team willing to go for a second chance, we have a case where a team chose not to comply with WCG and admit defeat. Now the reason might be because the team thought they had no chance of winning but that is besides the point. This is to prove that the intentions of Dignatis has no sympathy towards CDE. They have also joined hands with WCG and Riot in order to throw CDE under the rug/bus if it let's them have a second chance no matter the method. You might think this is a normal reaction, except it was Dignatis emailing the WCG admin that caused this to come up. When you put the two together, it is obvious that Dignatis' original intent was to instigate a problem in order to create a situation which allowed them to have another chance. So you cannot say that Dignatis is not directly involved with the creation of this situation. Looking at another Dignatis related problem, Jatt, we see another case of the willingness of Dignatis to break rules in order to go further in the WCG competition. This is also another situation where WCG has made a ruling that goes against the rules in place.

http://solomid.net/blog.php?v=14036

Banning Reginald. I really think this is just kicking sand when somebody's already on the ground. The only reason in doing such an action is to prohibit more uproar, I think it has caused the opposite

Why would they do such things? In order to not look like ignorants who change their minds. Yes, the only logical explaination is they want to cover their own butt. Who do they hurt in order to save face? CDE. Look at this post. With such delayed reaction it is pretty obvious a lot of thought was made to the best method of saving face.

In reality, because of the openness of the pro LoL community, the casual LoL community has complete understanding of the situation from the player's perspective which is the only one that matters because nobody else is being effected by this. Unfortunately for Riot, WCG, and Dignatis, this means you have caused even greater anger and disappointment. An embarrassment that will continue because Riot, WCG, and Dignatis will most likely never admit they are at fault. This post pointing the finger at WCG makes clear of this.

What Riot/WCG should do now:

-Apologize to the four teams you confused.
-Apologize for not posting the correct rules. Create multiple systems to accommodate all situations that occur within the competition in order to prevent these problems.
-Compensate CDE, they went from having everything after coming back from sure loss, to ending in loss. It's a tragedy that needs to be addressed.

I don't see why you can't just admit you were wrong, disqualify Jatt, and let the people who actually want to follow their dream go.

Dignitas are horrible people.