Regionals to be in November and April!

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This seems a bit unlikely with how the VGC doesn't have too much staff to begin with and how Mike Liesik wouldn't be able to show up there and no announcer. I hope it isn't going to be like this because how can we go to multiple regionals now? It ruins the VGC season of a lot of people if it is only one regional.
 
Wow, that' be great if it was more closely mirroring the TCG. So, it's possible they are having two day events for the normal Battle League events or whatever they are in the Fall; one day for the TCG and the other for the VGC. However, whether that post actually means VGC at these events and not some other video game side-event remains to be seen, and if it is VGC, whether all the other areas of the country will follow suit. It's quite possible it's going to be a similar structure to the TCG.


edit = @Human: Well, most of the "staff" there are just volunteers from the TCG anyways, so any volunteers from day 1 can just stay for day 2. It's possible that these are just warmup events for a later time. Maybe if you win one of these events you are guaranteed top 32 at a "normal" regional or something; similar to our normal routine but on a smaller scale. Really all we can do is speculate right now, which is the hardest part haha.
 
I would like to point out a few things before people start freaking out over this:

1. What's happening in TCG is that they are splitting the Regionals into 2. Before this year, all TCG Regionals happened during the same date during April throughout the country. (Not like VGC, where there was 1 every weekend.) To encourage players to play rather than sitting out because of their rating for a Worlds Invitation, along with wanting to increase attendance, they split TCG Regionals into two - November, and Fall. This has been confirmed by several sources.

2. There's only been one source that has said anything about the video game portion of the TCG regionals, and the wording on PokeBeach even makes it sound a bit ambiguous. They might not mean ACTUAL VGC Regionals, but rather, just video game side events.

If this is true, it'll certainly be interesting to see how it goes, especially if several regionals are held on the same day. I would like being able to start VGC so early in the year, but dislike the fact that so many would be held on the same day. I could see why they would combine them though, it would increase attendance and interest in the other game. I can't wait until they release more information about this.

Although if they run these at the same time, I'm really going to be upset :(
 

Huy

INSTANT BALLS
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This seems a bit unlikely with how the VGC doesn't have too much staff to begin with and how Mike Liesik wouldn't be able to show up there and no announcer. I hope it isn't going to be like this because how can we go to multiple regionals now? It ruins the VGC season of a lot of people if it is only one regional.
It would be local staff running the tournaments. With the advent of IR, staff and equipment isn't needed to run smaller events like they were in 2009 and 2010.
 
1. What's happening in TCG is that they are splitting the Regionals into 2. Before this year, all TCG Regionals happened during the same date during April throughout the country. (Not like VGC, where there was 1 every weekend.) To encourage players to play rather than sitting out because of their rating for a Worlds Invitation, along with wanting to increase attendance, they split TCG Regionals into two - November, and Fall. This has been confirmed by several sources.

How does splitting the regionals for TCG into two affect their rating? Wouldn't playing and winning in more tournaments increase their rating?
 

Huy

INSTANT BALLS
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How does splitting the regionals for TCG into two affect their rating? Wouldn't playing and winning in more tournaments increase their rating?
But not doing well hurts your rating. If people felt that they liked their rating they would just sit out. Since regionals were held at the end of the season, it was more than likely that a good number of people would forego it to preserve their ranking. Since it'll be at the beginning of the season people will have more incentive to play.

if this is true i can finally come to nats!!!!!!!!
congrats on winning a 2012 regional already!

you are beautiful :3
 
Huy described it really well. Many excellent players sit out or dropped out of Regionals and Nationals last year, because they had the ranking invitation at that point. However, had they have played and lost a game to a player who wasn't ranked too high, that could bring them down by a LOT, and they would need to win 2-3 more just to gain back what they had lost.

By starting the season off with a Regional, it encourages everyone to play and increases attendance.

Thanks Huy, I love you too ♥
 
Not sure if I will be able to go this year unless the regionals are during my spring break or some other vacation time. School just gets progressively worse.
 

Firestorm

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Falls in line with some of the rumours about running all the VGC Regionals at once, but I think "video game challenges" means just that. Challenges. Do we have any TCG Volunteers who have a bit more insight? Hm, making half of the locations do it early in November and the other half in April also makes no sense. That's a large amount of time in-between. Why wouldn't they do it over the course of a month? Or like last year where half the events were on one week and the other the next week?
 
It makes some sense in TCG, because in the beginning, everyone starts with that "1600" rating. The November one is where everyone can play, and not worry about their rating that much. By the time the April Regionals come by, ratings will be a lot different due to City/State tournaments. Regionals are generally very large tournaments, and playing in the second one could secure a Worlds invite if your rating is high enough by then. If they held them back to back, it doesn't allow anyone to let their ratings grow from smaller tournaments.
 
I actually like this change, if it is true. I for one am sick and tired of traveling 10 hours just to get to Nationals LCQ, let alone a regional (nearest one was texas, almost 16 hours away). While I will miss seeing Nick and Darrel and the other staff at every event, I think that overall this is a good thing for VGC. We wanted to see better prizes, right? This to me is an indication that the VGC is getting more support from TPCi and we will soon see the quality of these events and prizes increase.
 
:o (secretly cheers that I'm not affected by this, yet) that is a little bit harsh having less months to build a VGC team, which creates many questions; rules?! will it be in Europe?! will this mean more/ a better chance at getting into worlds?! The answers to these questions I hope will be revealed soon.
 
Seriously guys, it's not that hard to grasp. Possibly, VGC and TCG regionals will be held at the SAME LOCATION on the SAME WEEKEND. Multiple Regionals will be running at a time instead of being a tour and taking place every weekend. If this is the case, then expect more Regionals and a less stale metagame on the East Coast during your regionals, which is what you guys have always wanted.

And Pokemafia, expect Europe VGC to get nerfed to be like the TCG very soon because they want VGC to mirror the TCG.
 
This isn't necessarily a bad change, it's too early to say anything so let's just wait until the actual announcement is released.
 
There are so few details that I don't think anyone here can comment without going into semi-wild speculation. However, I'd definitely love to see the video games reach the same level of play as the TCG. More opportunities for competition are never a bad thing.
 
I would too, but I'm not convinced that having more events would cause participation to increase to anything resembling comparable levels any time soon. I've enjoyed VGC's smaller, tighter community especially with how the staff tends to deal with us and how there's always some big names and friends at every event, which would be in some serious danger here.

Regardless, way too little(and too shaky of) information to go very far with this here...
 
From what I understand, the goal is to make the VGC program mirror the TCG program in tournament amount and even the ratings system. So I think we're going to see quite and increase in events this season and probably next depending on how things go. The lack of staff is an issue though yeah.
 
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