[quote author=Aeronwen]
Announce 1 month ahead and keep to the rule that only teams that have tried to gather 8 committed players from the same nationality can form an alliance.
Allow the teams to play group stage matches in any order and give them 2 weeks to complete all matches.
Have QF's and semis in one week and the final the next week.
What about a parallel scramble tourney for anyone not playing in teh NC?
[/quote]
How would one check whether a team that wants to form alliance has tried to gather enough players of one nationality? If there is a possibility of exploiting the system, someone will.
Having to play 4 matches in two weeks in no particular order would make a lot of mess in teams' organisation, training matches would be a disaster, considering there would be 8 maps to master and everyone wanting to train a different map.
What I like though, is keeping tournaments as short as possible, two matches one weekend seems nice. Also, any kind of some backup tourney for those who can't participate in the main event is not the way to go imho, everyone wants to be where real stuff happens.