On Tuesday, July 16, organisers for the Berlin G-Fleet event posted a blog update about the next major stage of the Invasion World Tour. For those of you who may be unaware, G-Fleet is one of the largest European meets that occur each year, and in 2019 it’s taking place on September 13 and 14.
The Berlin G-Fleet event has been going strong for many years now, and each year has had a tournament event of some form. In 2015, they ran a DUST 514 tournament, before moving into the EVE tournament stage in 2016 and growing that pedigree every year since. Last year, G-Fleet had 32 PCs available, and they ran both 2v2 and 7v7 tournament brackets for attendees.
This most recent post, though, was not about details for the tournament at the September event. Instead, it was an update about a preliminary aspect of the weekend – the HAYS German Open Tournament.
The What Now?
This was my response when I first heard about this too.
The HAYS German Open is a qualifying round for the Berlin stage of the Invasion World Series tournaments. As I’m sure you know, the Invasion World Series is the 2 versus 2 bracketed tournament taking place at all the public Invasion Tour events. The grand prize for each of the main events is, of course, a paid trip to Fanfest in April 2020, which includes entrance, hotel, flights and more.
The HAYS German Open is much the same deal, albeit on a smaller scale. Sponsored by the HAYS worldwide recruitment agency, the teams that successfully win in this qualifier will be provided with free entrance to the G-Fleet event in Berlin, as well as free accommodation in a local AirBnB and 50 Euros to aid with participant’s travel expenses. This prize will be offered to every member of the top four participating teams, along with guaranteed access to the Berlin leg of the Invasion World Series tournament for those four successful teams.
For anyone not able to participate and wondering if they can get a piece of the action, you can relax! This tournament will see video highlights of the first day released on Youtube, while the second day will have a livestreamed show broadcast on Twitch in collaboration with the amazing guys at StreamFleet, as well as the Video-On-Demand footage after the fact.
Even more encouraging is the knowledge that this is not G-Fleet’s first collaboration with HAYS, which makes this project even more likely to succeed. In 2018, HAYS helped make it possible for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Charles White, better known to many as Max Singularity VI, the present Space Pope of New Eden, to attend G-Fleet Berlin.
The Format
Of course, anyone interested in this should know what they’re getting into before they commit. The qualifiers will take place over two consecutive Sundays, July 28 and August 4, with different formats for each day. July 28 will see a maximum of 16 teams play in a double-elimination contest where losing two matches at any point will see you knocked out of the competition. Then, on August 4, eight teams will play a total of 12 matches to ascertain the top four teams in the tournament, and those final four will all win the prize of a trip to Berlin in September.
Participants will be playing on the Thunderdome server using a set of preset ships and fittings, along with an arena setup that appears to be identical to the setup used by CCP for the official Invasion Tournament matches. Setup for this will take place after the signups close and the participating teams are announced. All the preset ship fittings will be disclosed 24 hours before the first day begins to provide participants some preparation time for their matches.
Any interested teams can find a full ruleset document here, and then sign up for these qualifiers here. Signups close on July 26, so make sure you get in sooner rather than later! If more than sixteen teams sign up for this qualifier, a random draw will take place to decide the starting final list of participating teams.
Any teams signing up need to be aware before they press the buttons that they are expected to be able to travel to Berlin in September should they win, and so players absolutely should make sure that passports and availability are in order for that.
This type of event is not exactly new to EVE Online, but it is an unusual and interesting situation. This qualifier sees a company that is not CCP or a CCP partner sponsoring competitive play in New Eden, and providing some serious prize support for the event as well. I can’t help but wonder if CCP will take note of this and finally recognise the significant appetite within parts of the community for some online tournament play in the same way as HAYS Recruitment obviously has.
Finally, everyone at INN wishes the best of luck to all the participants – if you win, enjoy the trip to Germany!
