Competitive Capsuleers,
Take up your flags, the 10 v 10 battle for alliance supremacy returns to EVE Online this November! Alliances will once again be sending their champions to battle it out in the arena for glory and epic prizes, while a desk of experienced casters will break down the action for you as you cheer your team on to victory. There will even be some exciting new prizes for viewers to earn while rooting for their teams!
Signups will open on 19 July at 11:00 UTC, so expect a follow up article with full rules and signup instructions on that day. Until then, rally your alliance mates, get your propaganda artists working on a new video advertisement, and blow the dust off your alliance executor (so they can register your team on time!)
This year we’re flying our EVE_NT partners out to Reykjavik to help us put on the professional tournament broadcast you’ve come to expect from the Alliance Tournament in our new studio. And of course, to contrast the polished streaming experience, we hope to see lots of new video advertisements for your corporations, alliances, or in-game businesses – details on how to submit these will be provided in the Alliance Tournament XVII official discord. Your video advertisements (if approved) will be shown to thousands of other players live on stream during the tournament, so be sure to get started on your ad right away!
As for prizes, this year’s tournament is going to be pancake themed; Mordu’s Legion is sponsoring this event, so you can expect discounted points for the Garmur, Orthrus, and Barghest, plus some rather flat Alliance Tournament prize ships to be fought over.
Evolution - Committing to Tournaments Year Round
This yearly tournament was placed on hiatus in 2019 as a re-evaluation of how-to best support tournament events such as the Alliance Tournament as well as community run tournaments was needed. We are now in a position to support the competitive community year-round. This past year has seen excellent player run tournaments such as the EVE_NT Alliance Open last fall and Anger Games: Rebirth this past Spring, and it’s about time the Alliance Tournament rejoined the fray!
To ensure that high quality tournament support can be provided all year-round, a few changes are being made to how tournament support is handled. Some of these are minor tweaks, such as re-using tournament prize SKINs for supported events through a full year instead of only for a single event. This was done throughout the past year for the Alliance Open, Anger Games, and an upcoming Chinese / Australian time zone tournament which will be taking place this summer (or winter, in the case of those Australians). Expect this to continue with the new prize SKINs given for ATXVII this year, as it allows for better support of community events without adding additional development work for development teams.
Another such change is the policy on Alliance Tournament prize ships. While these will remain as prizes just for the Alliance Tournament, the idea is to begin bringing back prize ships which were introduced over a decade ago. There are new Mordu’s Legion prize ships for this year’s event, so no ships are being brought back just yet – the first ships brought back would be next year, starting with the Freki and Mimir. Only ships from Alliance Tournament VII and onward will be included in this rotating cycle (no Gold Magnates or Raven State Issues). This policy change allows exciting prize ships to always be available for the yearly Alliance Tournament even when development time is at a premium, and creates a set pool of ships which can be kept up to date with balance passes, as well as keeping some of these rare and exciting ships in the ecosystem from completely disappearing. These ships will remain quite rare, as once a ship is reintroduced it will move to the back of the list and won’t be added to the game again for at least another decade. We are also considering ways in which we can preserve the uniqueness of past prize ships, such as having new names, item descriptions and/or colors for the ships which are being re-released in the future. This change doesn’t preclude the development team from producing new tournament ships for future events, it simply allows for a steady baseline to work from, so new tournament ships may still be introduced in the future!
Tournament Updates and Changes from ATXVI
The format of the Alliance Tournament you know and love is much the same; double elimination 10 v 10 team battles with ships having certain point values. However, many balance changes to the game -- as well as changes to the tournament meta - have happened since the last Alliance Tournament in 2018, so the rules for the event are being updated to keep the tournament fresh, diverse, and fun to watch, with an emphasis on pilot skill.
Some of the changes since the last Alliance Tournament you can look forward to are:
- More granular point values for individual ships with the goal of creating more diverse team compositions. A point calculator to help your team with theorycrafting will be provided!
- A new ‘cascading blind ban’ system as was seen in last year’s Alliance Open.
- Removal of Alliance Tournament prize ships from the competition to level the playing field for newer groups who want to test their mettle against the entrenched winners of years past.
- A new ‘Mercenary’ rule to provide a bit more flexibility for group membership and to create a clear path of entry for established groups which fly under a non-alliance banner.
- New hull limitations to provide for more diverse team compositions will be introduced.
- Flagships will be back but with new twists with the goal of keeping the flagship meta fresh (so it’s not all Bhaalghorns or Leshaks).
As this is the first year of the Alliance Tournament’s return, this year’s tournament will be for 32 teams. However, as it is likely that many more applications will be received, a feeder event will be held for those teams that don’t make it into the initial bracket to fight it out and win a spot in the tournament. Don’t hesitate to sign up your alliance before the deadline, as the feeders will have room for everyone! The format of the feeder will be determined based on the number of applications that are received by the time signups are closed. As with past events, there will be a number of slots which will go to the highest bidders via silent auction. Due to the long period of time since the previous Alliance Tournament, seed positions from ATXVI will not be used. Instead, there will be a few slots reserved for those top teams from this past year’s Alliance Open and Anger Games. Instructions on how to sign up for the event will come next week!
If you are interested in enrolling your alliance, finding a team to fly with, or just generally chatting about the Alliance Tournament, please join us in the Official ATXVII Alliance Tournament Discord. This new discord server will be the best place to stay up to date on all things Alliance Tournament!
Key Dates
19 July – Signups open
16 August – Signups close
23 August – Roster lock / Thunderdome access
4/5 September – Feeder event
Saturdays in September / October – CCPTV Broadcast Open Practices to be held on Thunderdome
6/7 November – Alliance Tournament XVII Weekend 1
13/14 November – Alliance Tournament XVII Weekend 2
Gather your friends, Capsuleers, we look forward to seeing you in the arena!