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I am not a fan of the early cut-off rule, though it doesn't affect R0NIN team all that much. We have couple of team members stranded, basically the same case as Tyrrax or DHB Wildcat (they've been to a different alliance since ATX/NEO). Unsuccessfull petition, tough luck :/

What I really dislike about the rule, is that it only more or less screws some of the experienced teams over other experienced ones, and the inexperienced teams will still have a tournament survival chance of snowflakes in hell.

I'm talking about teams, because (as has been pointed out by other posters here) in every alliance that has ever competed in the AT (and that ever will), it is always a team of individuals who do the most/all work, and the teams are always (or should be, in theory) very shielded from the rest of alliance due to EvE's nature of spying and meta games. There is no alliance in the alliance tournament, the alliances merely root for their champions.

Being good at the alliance tournament isn't only about good piloting and TQ pvp skills (even though that helps a lot). One needs to win or fail plenty of matches to learn all the tricks of trade, to know all the ins and outs of every setup, and to understand all the principles of making a good team composition. The good teams have evolved and specialized over the years, and they worked very hard to find the most efficient ship combinations, adopt the best tactics and practices, and to master the meta. Practice _makes_ perfect.

If you wanted to decrease the overall skill bar, and make the tournament more accessible for the newcoming alliances - you've probably succeeded to a certain extent. But even if you made 'more space' for these newcomers, I'm afraid the net result will only be that crap teams will survive a round or two longer, there will be more cripple-fights and cleansweeps, and the real deal will begin somewhere around the semi's.

I think you would be much better off, if you directly invited top 32 alliances by size, auctioned remaining 32 slots, and challenged the big names to bring a good team. You could even encourage them to enroll some tournament vets to help with organization, theory crafting and meta. I'm pretty sure that these days, there is plenty of guys out there, who have tons of tournament experience and no team to fly with, and who would be more than willing to coach someone (for a price or even without it).

This would make for one hell of an exciting tournament from the get go, because you would have a mix of the BIG names trying to prove their rightfull status or settle rivalry, with other big or mystery names - all the teams who tremendously enjoy these awesome events, and are willing to auction their slot to compete.

One last thought - I also liked the previous version of rule (call to the arms period), because part of the tournament fun was always - figuring out who's who, where are the infamous best theory-crafters, FC's and tournament captains, who's dangerous and worth watching (or spying on), and in what fights you really need to bring your best.

How can you be talking about the future of NEO if the past one has not been closed properly yet?
I don't really see how it is going to develop with such an attitude.

Oh come now, let's get off bashing the NEO, quit being butthurt because an unforeseen circumstance caused a few issues when the tournament was over. Circumstances which are currently being fixed and will be fixed. The NEO was a great tournament, it was fun, and it brought a lot of great new ideas into the tournament community.

Too expensive? Hardly, you made money off the tournament just by signing up, after the blink donation. Sounds like your team just loves wasting tons of isk, no one to blame but yourselves. Get over it, wait for your prize payout (which CCP said they will pay out), and be happy you had the chance to participate.

So you want to attack any attempt to get things going. CCP will get behind these, when the eve player base does, but the eve player base won't support these tournaments till CCP fully commits.

The players are going to have to be a deciding factor on this issue, and attempts like the NEO need to be supported as well. Am I saying forget the mistakes? Of course not, and CCP needs to fix this sooner than later, but we need to show CCP that even when things go horribly wrong we believe in the idea and we want more commitment.

As I have said before there a small number of truly devoted devs that want to see tournaments succeed. However, CCP as a whole does not fully support tournaments, the dedicated devs need our help to make the magic come alive.