Blizzard makes odd rules for Canadians

    So, Blizzard has announced the upcoming Arena tournaments in their moneycow World of Warcraft. Not very interesting for those who don't play it, but what is written on their Legal-page about Tournaments is, take a look:

    Quote

    To enter, simply go to the Account Management page of http://www.worldofwarcraft.com, log in, using your account name and password, click on the link for the Tournament, and pay the applicable entry fee. The Entry Fee for the Tournament is $20.00 USD for the First Qualification Round of the Tournament, and $20.00 USD for the Second Qualification Round of the Tournament. Canadian residents are not required to pay an Entry Fee in order to enter. Instead, Canadian residents may enter by submitting a 250 word typewritten essay comparing the video gaming culture in Canada to the video gaming culture in the United States on 8 � x 11 inch paper and mailing their essay to Essay Entry for The North American Blizzard Entertainment Arena Tournament, P.O Box 18979, Irvine, CA 92623. Essay entries must be received no later than March 31, 2008 in order to be eligible. Essay entrants represent and warrant that the essay is their original work and does not infringe the rights of any third party. By entering, essay entrants hereby grant, without further consideration, all right, title and interest in and to their essay to Sponsor.

    Source : http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/tournament/legal.xml

    As I understand it Canadians have been unable to enter previous Blizzard tournaments due to laws over there, probably something to do with gambling. This must be some kind of loophole.

    This looks similar to the "no purchase necessary" you see on almost all contests stateside, only a different way of phrasing it. For a while it's been law that you can't actually require someone to buy your product to enter a sweepstakes, so you can also enter by mail - though most people still enter by purchase.

    Why a video game tournament is considered under this I'm not quite sure; if anything it's closer (emphasis to prevent too much unnecessary debate) to a sport, where the game is simply the equivalent of a baseball glove, basketball shoes, or football helmet... right?

    However, the phrasing is epic. Mad props to Blizzard Legal for that.

    I think it's a fairly smart move of Blizzard to also allow for their Canadian customers to enter the contest without breaking any laws.

    They could bar people by their in-game ratings, but it’s pretty poor form given it’s not an invitational tournament. The fee is there to stop people applying for the hell of it, and will probably fund the reward/event*.

    It’s a really bad game for competitive play though - okay, I know, 10 million players; but the foundation for the entire arena side of the game is flavour of the month classes, counter compos and random number generators... Yet this’ll probably get more coverage than any fighting game tournament ever has.

    * In before comments about Blizzards employees turning up to work in suits made of money.

    It's funny Blizzard make tournaments around the most broken element in the game. The balance between classes is just messed up, as one can see here : http://www.sk-gaming.com/arena/player. If the game was balanced, we'd see a plus-minus few percent between each class in the game. Ok it's of no interest for you people who don't play it, but people quit the game cause of this, feeling that the class they play with is disliked by the developers.

    Yeah, the whole tournament is going to be cookie cutter teams and I imagine most early games will be decided before the doors open. I’d be surprised if you see a single warlock... But on the other hand, I can’t think of anything more entertaining than a Druid healing himself for 3 hours hugging a pillar.

    Edit: To paraphrase for non-WoW players: LOL GEEKS.

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