ESWC trailer and rule-set announced

With the big event just one week ahead, the ESWC released a trailer to hype the community along with the official rule-set which reveals the map version, restrictions and tournament schedule.

After being rather quiet in the last few weeks, the ESWC seems to blossom out by hyping the community all over the world with their new trailer. It features all the games being played in Paris and whets every player's appetite.





The rules

Besides that trailer, the official rule-set for DotA has been announced. According to the article, there will be two groupstages. The first groupstage will be played in a round robin format with each group having four teams. Each team will meet all the other teams in the same group and the two teams with the most points will advance to the second groupstage. The second group stage would once again be in round robin format with each group having four teams. The top two teams from both groups will advance to the playoffs. The playoffs will be double elimination format, played in best of one for all games except the finals, which will be played in best of three. The team coming from the winner bracket will have a "1-0" advantage. The two groupstages and playoff formats will guarantees a lot of action and dozens of replays.

There is no item nor hero restriction and backdoor is also allowed. The heavy discussed Time Rating, which gives point for ending games fast and punishes delaying games lost it's value more or less due to the following:

The team with higher number of points obtained in the group matches played among the remaining tied participants will advance.

Similar to the football rule, if two teams have the same amount of points, there is something like a direct comparison rule which states, that the winner of the match of the two tied teams will advance. Since there are no draws in DotA, there will be no tiebreaker nor time rating.

Do stay tuned to GosuGamers for all the replays and LIVE coverage of ESWC Paris 2010.

Update: As remarked by several users, there is the chance that the time rating rule applies.

Quoted from wxp
It actually can happen 2 ways. If our teams are T1,T2,T3,T4 then
a) T1 beats all, and T2>T3>T4>T2 happens, then they have 3 each and T1 advances with 9.
b) Everyone beats T4, and T1>T2>T3>T1. This case T4 has 0 and goes home, but others have 6 points each.

Thanks for clearing that up.