Guild Wars: Celestial Tournament Announced

Clamatius beat me to it again (Again, only because I let him.). But the rules for the tournament are up. My thoughts:

• Best of three matches with random pairing to start off. Afterwards, it's full Swiss with teams with similar records being paired against each other. Win and play better teams. Lose and you still have a chance.
  
• These transmogrification potions sound worthless to me (Might be able to trade them for some jack but there's going to be thousands of them on the market). And the cape trims are old news. But the prizes at the top of the bracket are worth about $5k in all. That's not bad. Not bad at all. Have to see how this Xunlai Tournament House thing works out but while I'd like to see more meaningful PvE-centric rewards for this sort of thing, it's a good start.
  
• How does ANet solve the logistical problem of scheduling all these matches? By pawning it off on the people involved, of course! It's still going to be a pain for them but it seems all they're going to be doing is gathering the rosters and verifying the information. Everything else is up to the tournament leaders.
  
• What I don't see is any mechanism for solving disputes. There's no referee or judge anywhere in the system beyond the monolithic tournament@arena.net. What happens when the inevitable tempers flare over some slight or foul-up? Can you switch guild halls in between rounds? Between matches? Do you have to let your opponent know in advance which map you'll be playing on or do they only get to find out when the map loads? What happens if the internet goes out and half of a team drops in the middle of a match? Is that a forfeit, a loss, or can the match be rescheduled? How long should the delay between rounds of a match be? Just a lot of questions that are left unanswered in the mealy and confusing rules that have been given and are sure to lead to some confusion and frustration down the road. I'm sure that the company has people to take care of these things but we don't know who they are or even where to direct any questions or concerns we might have at the moment (Again, feedback is a twoway street. The developers listening to the community is all well and good. But not as good as if they're willing to communicate right back.) and, to me, that's not good.
  
• The lack of any kind of alternates or substitutes with that strict roster limit of 8 is going to be a big problem. The tournament goes on way too long for some poor team not to be hamstrung by that.
  
• I hope there's going to be some kind of regional or division system in place. Teams from all over the globe play and while they should be fighting against each other, I'd think preference should be given to teams playing in a similar timezone – the pairings are going to be random but even in other games that play Swiss tournaments like that they do some tweaking to make sure the pairings are fair (Balancing the number of black and white players in a chess tournament, for example.).
  
• The rules on forfeits are harsh. You only get one no show and that's it. That's, I think, a good thing as otherwise teams could potentially collude or buy off their opponents or something. And it seems like the planners have gone to long lengths to prevent that sort of thing with the aftermatch screenies and random pairing and all. But I'm still not certain that every potential for abuse has been curtailed – even with random pairs it's possible for one team to take a dive against a team they'd like to see advance. Hopefully, the matches will be recorded so that things like the score chart can be monitored for any such foul play. I'm not saying that it's going to happen or that any guild's going to be engaging in it just that the possibility exists and it behooves the planners to take every reasonable step to stop such things before they start – it's about preventing the problems from ever happening.

All in all, sounds and looks good. The roster requirements are harsh but, fortuantely, there's no requirement for having been in a guild to take part – so if I can find a good team to play with I just might be able to take part in things.