Evo 2020’s replacement is keeping true to the team’s promise of hosting a very different style of tournament. Evo Online will take place over five weekends and will have only four open brackets, the team revealed today.
Starting on July 4, fans will get to see special exhibition events and content for the original Evo 2020 titles, with the addition of Killer Instinct, Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath, Them’s Fightin’ Herds, and Skullgirls 2nd Encore, which will all have open brackets.
And while four games are being added, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate will no longer be featured as part of this year’s Evo main event. This is likely due to tournament organizers not wanting to deal with players constantly disconnecting or the general poor performance of the game’s online netcode, even just for exhibitions.
Though even if the game isn’t featured, there will likely still be some Smash related content shown during at least one of the weekends.
The four games being added all have excellent netcode and will provide fans a quality viewing experience despite the matches all being played online.
In total, there will be 13 games featured on the Evo Online equivalent to the tournament’s main stage, with all competition being spread out over five weekends. The exact details for when and how each game will be run is still up in the air, but this format gives the Evo team space between events to fix any errors that might occur.
Here are all of the games that will be featured in the Evo Online lineup, excluding side events that might still be featured outside of the main roster.
- Street Fighter V: Champion Edition
- Tekken 7
- Dragon Ball FighterZ
- Samurai Shodown
- Granblue Fantasy Versus
- SoulCalibur VI
- Under Night In-Birth
- Marvel vs. Capcom 2 (2ournament of Champions)
- Killer Instinct
- Mortal Kombat 11: Aftermath
- Them’s Fightin’ Herds
- Skullgirls 2nd Encore
Out of every game listed, it will be interesting to see how the switch to online matches impacts plans for the Marvel vs. Capcom 2 Tournament of Champions throwback event. Originally, it was going to be a special eight-man bracket for the 20th anniversary of the game, featuring the four players that won an Evo title playing it and four players invited through other means.
Based on the number of titles, it’s likely that the Evo team will split each weekend up to focus on several games at a time and knock a few out each week while qualifiers are going on at the same time for the four active brackets. This would make sure viewers are tuning in to watch different forms of content for each of the five weekends marked for the event.
Here is the full list of dates provided for Evo Online, with the only date spanning more than two days being the original Evo 2020 dates.
- July 4 to 5
- July 11 to 12
- July 18 to 19
- July 25 to 26
- July 31 to Aug. 2: Championship Weekend
A full list of event details along with signup information will be released soon so the Evo team can start preparing for how large the tournament will be. This should also answer several pressing questions such as if the event will be region locked to the United States and if there will be a player cap for certain games.
Published: May 14, 2020 08:05 am