Celestial Tournament: Fourth Round Pairings Released

It's the weekend so doubt you'll see it up on the official site anytime soon. But the next round's pairings can be found in the community. Like this thread at TGH where, true to form, it's not a few posts before the curtain's raised on the e-drama du jour. And, really, I sympathize because I don't believe there's been a match yet where scheduling hasn't been an issue for my team and, reportedly, several others. It's going to be no different this time around but let's get to the matches.

Tortuga Bay [Grog] 1-2, 3 points (Region: Europe) challenges Reign of Xen [OoX] 1-2, 3 points (Region: America)

RoX has a win but that's only because last round's bye counts as a win (But not for the tie-breakers which are so horribly convoluted I don't even want to think about them. They're really only going to matter for those top 16 spots, anyways, as for the rest of us it only determines how many special potions we get and how big an e-peen we can boast about.). So, as far as I'm concerned they still haven't done anything. That's not that surprising as RoX is more of a PvE/PvP hybrid division rather than the hardcore PvP of the other two OoX teams in the tournament. They're in this largely for the experience and because they thought it would be something fun to do (Which, again, as far as I'm concerned is perfectly valid. I'm not saying they don't belong just that they're not exactly jockeying for a final 16 slot). Tortuga Bay, on the other hand despite dropping a first round match to a team that's not on my radar, is a fairly good team (Their other loss was last round against the Lords of Quid, a pretty respectable team in their own right). They'd be a good match-up for OoX or XoO, probably, but RoX will have their hands full.

Xen of Onslaught [XoO] 2-1, 6 points (Region: America) challenges I Chosen I [?] 2-1, 6 points (Region: Europe)

Can't find much information on the Chosen beyond their record in the tournament (They appear to have beaten Clan Acciaio which is another mystery guild and Die Gunstbanausen which used to be on the ladder but has since fallen off. But they did lose to the Cats in the second round and badly.) so I'm going to write them off as another low ranked team in the tournament for the experience or the prizes. Probably a bit unfair but the Mothership has been on a bit of a tear recently and they've faced much stronger competition. Looks like they'll have another easy opponent.

My team, on the other hand...

Onslaught of Xen [XoO] 2-1, 6 points (Region: America) challenges Pigs Might Fly [PmF] 2-1, 6 points (Region: Europe)

Eep. That's a top 100 ranked guild. And not one that just climbed there on the back of a gimmick build but one that's been around that level consistently. Which might be good as we should have plenty of opportunity to catch them on the GWTV and see what they're running. But, honestly, OoX is no where near that quality. Added to that, we're something of a paper tiger. We have a respectable 6 points but our schedule is anything but impressive. Our lone win came in the first round against a team that's probably only in the tournament for the potions (Although looks like they've kept playing so, good for them.). The other 3 points came this last round from a forfeit. And our loss was a crushing one against a middle of the ladder team in round 2. So, we haven't played well in the tournament at all even though we're still in the top half. I really don't have a good feeling about this round.

The saving grace is that the fallback time is, of course, 3AM GMT on the 7th, which means our European opponents will be playing in the wee hours of Tuesday morning unless we can schedule something better. That's not likely, though, as OoX is a PST timezone guild and we prefer to play in the wee hours of the morning on the west coast. Where 3AM GMT works out to 7PM and many of our members have to scramble to make it as they're coming from work, family, and other commitments. Just a hassle all around and, I believe, we're seriously considering offering this team a draw if not a forfeit if we can't come to an agreement about the time. They're good enough that they shouldn't suffer at the hands of unfair scheduling. Which, let's face it, is not fair to the European guilds at all. And they do make up the majority of the ladder, the tournament, and, it seems, the playbase. This is the sort of thing that could have been solved with some better matchmaking. If teams had listed their preferred playtimes or home timezones rather than regions (As even just scheduling a match between teams across the continent can be frustrating) and ANet had created initial brackets for those various times. But, well, we knew going into this that this tournament was a slapdash half-measure to placate the masses after the automated tournaments were delayed (Those are, apparently, going to be daily so the scheduling problems here won't be as much of a problem.) and there were going to be all sorts of unforeseen problems. The issue of scheduling, however, I think is a problem that was easy to see and could have easily been lessened.