The
EQL team have recently announced some information about upcoming tournaments they are running. Information has been provided on:
EQLadder, a ladder tournament running throughout the summer.
EQR12, the 12th season of EQL which will start on 20th September.
EQL: Pro, an elite tournament to be played upon conclusion of EQL12.
I would advise you to keep checking the EQL site regularly for updates, but at the time writing the structure of these tournaments appears to be as follows:
EQLadder:
A nice throwback to the early days of Ad Mortem and NQR2, this should hopefully motivate some clans to keep playing throughout the summer. Currently the map pool is dm3, dm2, e1m2, cmt1b, cmt3, cmt4, schloss, grim, e1m5, e1m6, e2m2, e2m7, e3m1, e3m2, e3m3, e3m6, e3m7. This is a pretty large selection of maps and it will be interesting to see whether any clans choose to specialise on a 'strange' map as we have seen in the past from the likes of jams (e2m7), redux (e3m6), SSC (e3m7) and koff (e1m6). With the decider always being played on a tb3 map, one would expect that the top clans should still brush aside weaker opposition even in such cases.
The top 8 clans from the regular season will enter best-of-5 playoffs.
Running dates have yet to be confirmed other than that the final should be played during the first week of EQL12.
EQL12:
Not much information is available at present, other than that signups open on September 1st with the season getting underway on the 20th.
EQLro:
This will be a tournament involving the top4 from EQL12 and an additional 2-4 clans, playing to a strict Sunday schedule. This is quite an ambitious move from the admins as previous attempts to dictate schedules to clans in European competitions (such as Smackdown) have rarely succeeded, although it worked well for now defunct national tournaments like the UKCL some 10 years ago.
Other points of note include the fact that ringing appears to be actively encouraged, the idea being that clans can signup any additional players they like from other clans not participating in order to ensure that activity is high. It will be interesting to see whether many clans take up such an opportunity and what the impact is on the 'real' clan of those players.