BLAST expands qualifiers after community backlash
One of the few criticisms given to BLAST since their first announcement of the Major qualifying was the lacking quantity of open qualifiers for the North American, South American, and European regions. For years, Majors have operated by providing several open qualifiers to the region. For IEM Rio 2022, ESL operated four open qualifiers for Europe, two for North America, and two for South America.
With the upcoming BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023, there have been changes to the qualifying structure and ranking thanks to Valve. On December 22, Valve introduced new regional rankings which were intended to provide better clarity and reward better teams with invitations to closed qualifiers — thus skipping the sometimes random and punishing open qualifier system.
BLAST decided to only use one open qualifier for each region, but after listening to an outpouring of community criticism in response, they have listened and adjusted the schedule. The new dates for the open qualifiers overlap, however, this is not of concern as the second day of each open qualifier will be played purely for seeding. Therefore, teams playing in the second day of the first open qualifier will have no need to play in the second open qualifier.
North America:
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Open Qualifier #1: February 14th - February 15th
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Open Qualifier #2: February 15th - February 16th
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Closed Qualifier: February 17th - February 19th
South America:
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Open Qualifier #1: February 14th - February 15th
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Open Qualifier #2: February 15th - February 16th
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Closed Qualifier: February 17th - February 19th
Europe:
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Open Qualifier #1: February 13th - February 14th
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Open Qualifier #2: February 14th - February 15th
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Closed Qualifier: February 16th - February 19th
FURIA and Liquid will not participate in the North American Open or Closed Qualifiers after their appearance in the Legends stage of IEM Rio. Teams like Evil Geniuses and Complexity, the latter of whom failed to qualify for the RMR, will either receive invites to the Closed Qualifier, or Evil Geniuses might have to go through the Open Qualifier gauntlet due to their changing lineup.
Editor's Note: Previously, an edition of this article noted confusion over the overlapping open qualifier days. Dust2.us has since updated the article with the correct information.
