With the months-long qualification process now in the rear view mirror, Hearthstone pros and fans are looking ahead to the regional qualifier tournaments—but one player isn’t happy about narrowly missing out.
DreamHack Bucharest winner Stanislav Cifka took to Reddit yesterday to share his story of missing out on the qualifier by just one point.
Each month the Hearthstone ladder resets at 23:59 server time on the final day, with the top 100 legend rankings recorded at that point. Those players earn Hearthstone World Championship points. On the final day of August on the Asian server, however, the ladder reset was delayed by several hours—but the legend ranking snapshot was still taken at 23:59.
Cifka, who was climbing on Asia instead of his native Europe, thought that he had until the ladder reset to climb up the legend rankings, but in actual fact his last few hours of climb were pointless.
While Blizzard was right within the letter of the rules, Cifka believes that the information was not transparent and that the confusion and lack of communication from Blizzard affected his preparation for the last-call qualifier.
A number of European pros such as Dima “Rdu” Radu, Sebastian “Xixo” Bentert, and James “Greensheep” Luo have been laddering on the Asian server for the past few months because its supposedly easier. Those players can transfer the points from the Asian server to their European rankings.
Cifka also took aim at a number of other issues with the standings, including backlogged tournament points being added late in the day and drastically changing the standings and the lack of time between the season ending and the last call qualifier.
With Blizzard’s first Road to Blizzcon qualification—which included a combination of ladder and tournament performance now over—many are hoping that concerns like Cifka’s will be addressed in the 2016 system. For many frustrated others, however, their dreams of making it to the Hearthstone World Championship this year is now over.
