With less than two months remaining before Alliance Tournament X takes to your screens, we wanted to bring you details of how your alliance can qualify for this year’s event. The tournament will be streamed live over the course of four weekends, starting on June 30th and culminating in the finals weekend on July 21st. We expect the same level of drama, passion and lulz that we have seen in previous tournaments and we will have new rules, some familiar faces on the commentator panel and your regular hosts of CCP Soundwave and CCP Sunset.

Commentators

This year we had a wonderful group of players apply to be commentators and we were awed at their knowledge of EVE and enthusiasm. It was a very difficult choice for us as we want to maintain familiar faces that have done a great job in the past along with some fresh blood. As a result, the following will be your live on-air commentators:

Kil2

Raivi

Zastrow

Michael Bolton III

Lazarus Telraven

Format

Up to 64 alliances will be granted entry to Alliance Tournament X. The tournament takes places in three stages: Pre-Qualifying, Groups and Finals. See here for match rules.

Please note that both the format and match rules are subject to change. It is strongly advised that participants watch the EVE Alliance Tournament forum regularly for announcements.

This year we will split the entries into 32 teams entering through a random draw and 32 teams through an auction process. We understand that participating in the tournament is a highlight of the year for many alliances so increasing the number of auction slots allows every team a better chance of participating. The random draw will take place first and those 32 teams will be announced on the main tournament page. CCP Soundwave will then hold auctions on the following dates and times in the ‘Alliance Tournament ’ channel:

Thursday, May 24th @ 19:00 UTC - 8 slots

Friday, May 25th @ 17:00 UTC - 8 slots

Saturday, May 26th @ 16:00 UTC - 16 slots

The only eligible bidders at this time will be the CEO of the alliance executor corporation and the Team Captain as nominated in the sign up page.

Payment

This year we have decided to change how you pay for entry into the tournament. The entry fee for the random draw will be 10 PLEX per alliance. Each alliance that wishes to enter the draw must submit 10 PLEX – available in the redeeming system of the CEO of the executor corporation’s account – which will be withdrawn before the draw. All PLEX will be retained by CCP and teams who are not successful in the random draw can use these PLEX to bid for a spot through the auction. If you are not successful in either the random draw or auction, your 10 PLEX will be refunded to the CEO character of the alliance executor corporation.

So why PLEX instead of ISK? Quite simply, PLEX is just much easier to manage and allows us to create some revenue to fund this and future tournaments. As we intend to stream all four weekends, we obviously incur additional costs. Using PLEX allows us to provide a top quality stream and production throughout the entire event.

Competition Dates

• Random Draw Signup Period – Starts Thursday, May 10 and ends at 23:59 UTC on Sunday, May 20. The draw will then take place on Tuesday, May 22
• Auctions – 24^th, 25^th & 26^th May
• Participating Teams & Schedule Confirmed - May 30th
• Pre-Qualifying Round 1 - June 30th & July 1st
• Pre-Qualifying Round 2 - July 7th & 8th
• Group Stage - July 14th, 15th and 21st
• Finals - July 22nd

Tournament Entry

All entrants will be required to sign up via the Alliance Tournament section of the Eve Online community website. The link you need is here. Please note that all executor corporation CEOs will be required to have 10 PLEX in their redeeming system before the page will authorize your submission. Details on how to reverse redeem PLEX can be found here.

The 64 competing teams will be decided as follows:

• 32 teams will be drawn randomly. We will record the draw and host it on the CCP You Tube page.
• 32 teams will bid for a position in 3 separate auctions.
• Entry into the random draw will cost 10 PLEX.
• Auctioned slots will begin at 10 PLEX and have no maximum price.

Pre-Qualifying rounds

Of the 64 initial teams, 32 may progress from the pre-qualifying rounds to the group stage.

Round 1

The 64 competing alliances will be drawn against each other at random and will fight as scheduled.

Teams will be ranked by their match result (Win or Loss), and then by total points (see match rules). A draw counts as a loss for both teams.

Round 2

Teams fight in order of rank - 1v2, 3v4 and so on.

Results

Teams will be ranked by combined match results. All teams are ranked first by total wins, and then by points scored.

The top 32teams according to these rankings will progress to the group stage.

Group Stage

These 32 teams will be divided, at random, into 8 groups of 4 teams.

Within each group, teams will fight "round robin" to determine the top two teams in each bracket. (Round robin means that each team in the group will fight each other team in the group once).

Team rankings will be determined by Win/Loss/Draw and then by total points scored.

Finals

The top 2 teams from each group will advance to the final day, which will be a 16 team single elimination format. This will be seeded so that teams advancing from the same group will not be able to meet again until the final match.

During the finals, in case of a draw, the team which advanced from the qualifiers with a higher score will advance.

Additional Notes

Winning Team Points

The winner of each match gains a 25% bonus to the total ranking points scored. The points values for each ship are available in the match rules page.

Intentional Handicaps

If a team begins the match with less points value worth of ships than their opponent, and wins the match, they score extra ranking points equal to the difference in the two teams' values.

Pre-Qualifying Rankings

If at any point, teams are level in Win/Loss and also level in points scored; the following will be used in order to determine ranking position.

1. If the teams disputing rank have fought each other at any point, the winner is higher.
2. The current ranking (W/L, then points) of the last team that you defeated. Higher is better.
3. The current ranking of the last team that defeated you. Again, higher is better

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