We aimed high last with the first season of the Continental Challenge League (CCL) and with what turned out to be the biggest league format event in the world of CSS to date we feel we have established something that provides us (and you for that matter) with solid foundations for future seasons.
As ever we are not afraid to try something new and different and as usual we learned a lot in this first season. It's a very different thing to run a tight elite league in the spotlight and entirely another to run an event on this scale. We deliberately gave the teams involved as much autonomy as possible to see just what would happen and aside from an expected high number of defaults we were delighted to see how the players taking part responded, this has given us the heart to take on another season putting the things we have learned into place.
First up, the CCL will have it's own admin team. That is to say that you will have five (already in place) or more dedicated admins for this one event. There will always be someone available for you (irc/vent/email) to answer your queries. After each round of matches there will be checks on unplayed ties and questions asked about them and where needed scheduling of missed matches will be undertaken to avoid the all too easy "just enter a default" syndrome. After seeing the majority of teams get stuck in and attempt to play their matches we feel that the main thing lacking was enough admin involvement, hands on - and on a daily basis.
We started the previous season adding SGLac to any server we were requested, but with many of you changing ip's what seemed like every other day (hahah) we changed this and simply made SGLac available for any CSS player to use on any server at any time. This meant we didn't get swamped with Ac requests at 7.55 every night which I hope you found made things much easier. Judging by the way the requests suddenly ended after we made SGLac freely available I'm sure it was appreciated.
As for the format of this second season, obviously it will depend on the number and location of the teams who apply but we hope to keep the national and regional divisions as close as possible to last time. You will also be pleased to know that since we have completed a whole season of the CCL and the CCC we can now assign coefficients to the league for qualification to the next CCC. The thirty two teams who qualified for the CCC this season will be notified and they will also appear in a follow up post shortly.
In the mean time, please feel free to sign up to the second mammoth season of the SteelSeries CCL and watch out for our dedicated CCL/CCC admin team as they go through IRC and introduce themselves. Don't forget the CCC final is coming up very soon so check back for an update on when this match will be played - the culmination of over 780 matches leading to this one final showdown for the Continental Challenge Cup champions!