Greetings Survivors,

Thank you to all the regions and factions who participated in Round 1 of the Tournament of Champions. As we move into Round 2 of the tournament we have some important information to share.

After reviewing the matchups from this weekend and hearing feedback from the players, we noticed a number of issues that we believe need to be addressed in the remainder of the tournament:

  1. Exploits – Some Factions and regions were manipulating the system to score more points during the war.
  2. Queue Times – We saw that queue times were very high in some matchups.
  3. Matchup Imbalances – Some of the overall highest scoring regions in the tournament ended up losing this first round, while other very low-scoring regions advanced.

Given the above challenges players faced in Round 1, we’re making the following changes to the overall tournament structure:

  1. Losing Regions from Round 1 will still get rewards – All 16 losing regions from Round 1 will get the same Milestone Reward Buff as the winners from round 1 (25% increase in Milestone Rewards (7/15 – 7/28)).
  2. We’ve added a “Wildcard” Bracket – All 16 regions that lost in Round 1 will now be placed into a Wildcard Bracket that still gives them another opportunity to advance in the tournament (see graphic below).
  3. Matchups will no longer be 1v1 – Because of the exploits and high queue times, we’re shifting the matchup system to no longer be 1v1. Now each round will have multiple regions battling in groups to advance.

Round 2 Details

Round 2 of Tournament of Champions will be held on Saturday, July 27. The four winning regions of Round 1 from each Group will now compete against each other, with the top two regions in each Group moving on to Round 3.

For example, Group A Round 1 winning regions were Barrow, Decatur, Polk and Chambers. In Round 2, all four of those regions will compete in a War against each other, with the top two of the four regions moving on to Round 3.

In the Wildcard Bracket, the eight Round 1 losing regions from Groups A and B will all compete in a War against each other with only the top two regions moving on to Round 3. Similarly, the eight Round 1 losing regions from Groups C and D will all compete in a War against each other with only the top two regions moving on to Round 3.

We appreciate all of the community feedback and look forward to an exciting Round 2 of the Tournament of Champions!