Hey, so now that GokoDom II is over and there's time left until DSC 2013 starts, is there still some interest to do this in between?
Here some more thoughts I had about this.
1.) Signups
Everybody can signup. When signing up, the person has to name his country and his goko username. To prevent discussion upfront, I suggest that the birth country counts not where someone lives. I think the goal should be to imitate a real World Cup. I mean there's nothing to prove, so if anyone lies and signups for - let's say - Ivory Coast, he can do so, but I think no-one here would do this and still he wouldn't be able to assemble a team so easily.
2.) Team Building
If 4 or more players have signed up for one country, this country will take part in the World Cup. They just have to elect a team. I think the general consensus is that the best ranked (on the isotropish leaderboard at a certain deadline) player of that country is the team leader and will elect the team. They get seeded based on their rank. Not elected players will be substitutes for players that drop out for some reason.
3.) Format
This is what I'm not sure about. I'm against single-elimination (*cough* DSC *cough*), but I guess some sort of elimination makes this sort of tournament more tense. So maybe double-elimination. We could also adapt the GokoDom-like approach - so Swiss and then elimination. Or - we could adapt world cups from other sports like soccer where we have a group (everyone vs. everyone) and then an elimination phase. Not sure what would be best. I guess it also depends on the number of teams we get.
4.) Matches
Each match-up should have 4 matches where the #1 player from team A plays against #2 player from team B and so on and so forth. I think the GokoDom best-of-5 variation rule for each match is the best we have so far. The team with more wins will proceed. Not sure what to do on a tie-break. Maybe the #1 match counts double!? Another possibility is (I think it's done in table tennis) that everyone plays two matches #1 vs #1, 2x #1 vs #2, #2 vs #2, #3 vs #3, 2x #3 vs #4 and #4 vs #4. That minimizes the probability of having ties and maybe provides more/longer fun.
I'm also not entirely sure about multiple teams per country. Like most people have said, it be kind of silly to have matchups like USA Team F vs. USA Team H and so on. But maybe we could add some more teams to get an "even" number of teams (I mean powers of 2, like 8, 16 or 32).