Kevor24 · @KevinAnctil
4th Sep 2021 from TwitLonger
What happened in the AM Worlds Qualification bracket.
Hey, this might reach people that don't know me so let me write a quick intro
I'm Kev, a long time cardgame player and I mainly play Legends of Runeterra right now. I'm a pretty competitive person and I always needed some kind of outlet. So I've played in a loooooot of tournaments in my life. In the past I've played MTG, Hearthstone and other competition-focused games. I always strive to make the best possible play and try to improve whenever I can dedicate enough time to a game. I never did this fulltime but you could call it my primary hobby.
With that out of the way :
I've been trying to qualify for LoR Worlds for the past 6 months. Sadly I came a little bit short and finished #4 on the Waitlist for Ladder.
I've been having a tough time recently and I was pretty ok with not making it, I understood where I failed and I was striving to improve those areas for next year championship. A little more than a week ago my teammate reached out to tell me it's very possible and even likely I'm making it into the tournament through the Waitlist, even if I'm all the way down to #4
Now, let me explain how the tournament was *supposed* to work with the best of my ability :
The goal is to have a 64 player tournament per region. How to achieve that?
18 who previously Top4 a Seasonal Tournament (there's this cracked guy who's called Henneky that Top4'd three of them)
24 who got enough points through Seasonal Tournament
22 who got enough points through Ladder
Now I'll try not to get too into the nitty-gritty of it but we got sent an Email by Riot with official rules to follow, a deadline of September 2nd to register to Battlefy and instructions on how to install a special client to play the tournament on and an invite to the official Discord to ask any questions we might have. Everything was pretty clear. I thought this process was pretty smooth.
The way I was supposed to be in was through the Ladder list that you can see here :
https://i.imgur.com/Y9quNtw.png
Those 4 players highlighted here did not compete in the America tournament. They all qualified from Ladder. I am Waitlist #4 on ladder. We've known they would not play for more than a week now. This has been available publicly on the PlayRuneterra website since 8/27/21
Now here is the rule about how the Waitlisting process *should* work
https://i.imgur.com/djhvlH5.png
https://i.imgur.com/b5ZipId.png
I was pretty happy that I get to play Worlds Qual. Everywhere I could look, I'm in. I've read the rules 3 times. I asked everybody if they interpret it the same way as me (not that there is even room for interpretation).
So I got hard into practice mode. I took a 2 day break at work to play in the tournament, letting my coworkers short-staffed somewhat last-minute but they were very happy to cheer for me. I jammed games everyday. I tried to do my best and I was honestly pretty excited to play.
Now is the part where I say this is the most mismanaged tournament I have ever played in my entire life and it became clear at some point that most of the Admins are just winging it.
I can be anxious at times, so I've been trying since August 30th to get a 100% confirmation from Riot officials that I'll be playing in the tournament. I was mainly told that we would receive confirmation after September 2nd, which is completely fair. Confirmation never came. To anyone. So I waited.
On September 3rd we were just told by a Battlefy admin that he would be the official Tournament Organizer and he started saying some wild misinformation on the Discord about how the tournament process and waitlisting process was gonna work.
I actually called the guy and it's mostly because he got thrown into the mix by Riot and given partial info. After a good chat where I tried explaining the rules that we were given and confirmed with him that what he has in front of him match with what we were told he thanked me for helping. He was a super chill guy and really just wanted to help and make sure everyone is on the same page.
Now what happened to @TheBlackBoss8 : He is a Brazilian player that is qualified through the Seasonal Point system. Apparently in the Portuguese email there was no September 2nd deadline shown and on Sep 3rd, the day before the tournament, when Blackboss tried to get into the tournament, he was told he missed his chance and it's too late. I believe he 100% should get to play, he earned his spot fair and squared. The rules are pretty clear. If Blackboss is in it should mean there is one less Waitlist spot from the "Seasonal Waitlist".
So when they announced 1h before start that they would fit in Blackboss into the tournament I was happy for him and I wasn't too worried because I'm making it through the Ladder Waitlist. That meant the Blackboss should take the spot of the last waitlisted player from the Seasonal pool which would be Imag. I thought that situation was pretty ridiculous cause it means somebody will be kicked right before the tournament start
3pm when check-in started, we were told that the Bracket we have will probably change due to them adding Blackboss in. I asked again if I was good since Blackboss would come from a totally different qualification system and I was told that I just needed to check-in, which I was.
3:55pm again we were told not to start out match quite yet cause they're finishing up the bracket. I am still in the tournament.
4pm same thing
4:03pm new bracket, Kevor is kicked from the tournament, Imag is still playing.
What I was told a few minutes later by another admin is that they just have a different "master Waitlist" and they have a different ways of applying it. That it was just "Semantics" and that he was sorry that's how it panned out.
I don't have any ill-will towards any specific individual. I just feel misled, lied to by admins, and that they completely disregarded their own rules that were sent to every competitors. Ask basically anyone that played in the tournament and I think they will all agree, this was not the rule.
So what ends up happening is that only 20 players play from the Ladder side, and 26 players play from the Seasonal tournament side.
I'm sorry for the suuuuuper long post, I really tried to get as many facts as possible and as few personal feelings so you can have an informed opinion.
But this is not fair. I am not looking for compensation, I want clarification on how such a massive fuck up can happen. How can I be in the tournament while it starts and a few minutes later just out of luck with only "semantics" as a reason why I'm not making it. This is not okay, I don't feel okay, and I want answers.
If anybody from the esport side of things want to see the Discord logs, I suggest reading the entire #english section on the official channel to get the full context, but I have >20 SS mostly corroborating my thing.
Sorry
Kev