Tournament Conundrum

Multiplayer Discussion
1

I absolutely love the new tournament system online qualifiers. Since I didn’t have to ladder to qualify anymore I thought I would have a go at a tournament. So I read through the website, found the site I needed to sign up to compete and signed up. Figured I had better read the tournament rules before I signed up and in them I found my conundrum.

While going though the rules I discovered that as an australian I had to play the asian region. Now blizzard always recommends North America for Australians so naturally most of my cards are on NA which #feelsbadman. This really annoys me given I just spent money on wild cards as I figured I would always be on NA.

The only reason I have any cards on asia at all is cuase I realized I could check out which cards to craft by playing free packs on other servers. I worked out I would need 100 packs and 35200 dust or 400 packs asumming a legendary every 20 packs or a combo of both to have a comparable collection. So I would need to spend a ton of money to compete competitively. Obviously after figuring I didn’t really have even one competitive deck I don’t bother completeing the application to the tourny.

Now my question to you all: Given the rotation should I switch servers and buy expansions on Asia from now on? It seems a good time to switch with the rotation but my collection even from the last 3 expansions still sucks on asia as I have found getting friends and doing friends quests very hard on asia.

2

Master Qualifications are not limited. You can take part in tourneys in any region if you have collection there. You can even play in all three regions if you have enough time for that. Rewarded packs can be collected in desired region, so it is a good occasion to increase you collection using underpopulated asian tourneys.

3

In the tournament Player HandBook I read:
You may participate in the Americas portion of the Tour if, as of January 1, 2018 you are a legal resident of one of the following counties: United States, Argentina, Belize, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Jamaica, Mexico, Nicaragua, Paraguay, Peru, Puerto Rico, Uruguay and Venezuela.
©You may participate in the Asia-Pacific portion of the Tour if, as of January 1, 2018, you are a legal resident of one of the following counties: Australia, Indonesia, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Macau, Malaysia, New Zealand, The Philippines, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam.

And in the 2019 HEARTHSTONE® MASTERS TOUR QUALIFIERS OFFICIAL COMPETITION RULES V1.1 it states:
Eligibility Requirements under the Handbook. (a)You may only participate in a Qualifier if you meet the eligibility requirements set forth in the Handbook.

The eligibily requirements from the handbook are what I quoted above. It seems open and shut given rulebook references the handbook as the qualification standard and that does restrict regional qualifiers to residential locations.

4

You are looking to outdated rules.

https://battlefy.com/hsesports#faq

Q
Are Hearthstone Masters Qualifiers region-locked?

A
No – players from any supported region may compete. Please note – while players can register for any region’s Hearthstone Masters Qualifier, they will need to have an account and card collection in the corresponding region to compete.

5

Your quote literally says they need to have an account in their corresponding region to compete, and it looks like Australia’s corresponding region is Asia.

Perhaps I’m misinterpreting it here, but that second sentance seems to be clarifying that I, as a NA player can register for ANY qualifier, but I’d need an EU/Asia account and card collection to compete in those regions.

6

Not “account”, only “collection”. Account is the same, but after you login with it, you can switch region any time in battle.net client.

7

And the OP is bummed that Australians were encouraged to play on NA, but will need collections on Asia to play in qualifiers.

From your quote:

they will need to have an account and card collection in the corresponding region to compete.

8

That means to compete in Asia you need to have cards in Asia, not expecting them to somehow move your NA collection to the Asia server.

“Region-locked” means whether you must be a reisdent of the region to compete in it, and for the 2019 Masters the answer is a clear no.

OP can enter into a 2019 Masters qualifier in any region. It’s in the quote.

9

Nvm, I’ve been viewing only 50% of the issue. OP can compete in NA, where his collection is.

10

Ok, I will try to clear up the confusion, but I need more coffee and will probably only further confuse it.

As others have said, you’re looking at old rules. The documents you want to read for Masters is here:

Handbook: https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/content_entry_media/75/7528VLJ3TBYO1553301341641.pdf

Rulebook: https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/content_entry_media/hl/HL3KMTVT3WPN1551836365172.pdf

Changes: https://bnetcmsus-a.akamaihd.net/cms/content_entry_media/24/24NGKS2INEF51550256727853.pdf

3.2 Residency Requirements. For the HCT ecosystem in 2018, your residency dictated much more with how you engaged with different tournaments. Most players had a home region for which they were trying to gain points in order to go to that region’s playoffs. For 2019, we are hoping to create a more open system. Eligible players from any region may participate in any Masters Qualifier and Masters Tour. As a result, section 3.2 lost a few rules that no longer made sense to us: rules that forced you to play matches from the country listed on your Battle.net account and notify when you travel outside of that country of residence

The section quoted in the OP was in reference to events like HCT Winter etc. which did require Aussies to qualify on the AP server. However, even for those, we could reach the regional qualifiers based on our NA points/accounts and were given a “loaner” account for tournaments if we didnt have collections on AP as Aus, NZ and a few other AP countries are actually recommended to join the NA server when starting their account.

tl;dr - unless they have events similar to HCT Winter qualifiers you have no problem, and if they do and you qualify you should be offered a loaner account for the event.

11

Any questions about these tournaments can be asked in an official Masters Qualification Discord channel. Admins are very responsible there 5 days in a week.