Australia & New Zealand’s Road to the 2015 Pokémon World Championships
Australia and New Zealand have always had a somewhat unique position within the Pokémon Championship Series since their entry in 2013. With heavy involvement from Nintendo of Australia & New Zealand, the events have not been under the Play! Pokémon umbrella like other regions. This year, Nintendo will continue to carry out the bulk of the organization of these events but the structure of the tournament series will more closely mirror North America, Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia.
Qualifying
As announced earlier in the year, players in Australia and New Zealand are a part of the Asia Pacific rating zone. This region does not include Japan or Korea but does include many countries in that area including Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia. The top 18 players in each age division (10 in the Junior Division) from this zone will receive invitations to the 2015 Pokémon World Championships. Players will earn points by competing in tournaments at the same levels as found in the rest of the world: Premier Challenges, Regional Championships, National Championships, and the online International Challenges. The two two players from each age division at the end of the season will receive a full travel award in addition to their invite.
Regional Championships
Only one set of Regional Championships will take place. They will happen over the course of April and May with five locations in Australia and one in New Zealand. The top two players from each event will receive a full travel award to the National Championships for which news is not yet available.
Brisbane
Saturday 11th April
Brisbane Convention & Exhibition Centre
South Bank
Sydney
Saturday 18th April
Paddington Town Hall
Paddington
Perth
Sunday 26th April
Perth Arena
Perth
Melbourne
Sunday 3rd May
Collingwood Town Hall
Collingwood
Auckland
Saturday 9th May
Aotea Centre
Auckland
Adelaide
Saturday 16th May
The Ellington
Hackney
About the Author
Firestorm is one of the co-founders of Nugget Bridge and the Community Manager for eSports Tournament Platform Battlefy. He has been playing Pokémon since 1999, competitively since 2007, and attending tournaments since 2010. He lives in Vancouver, Canada with a degree in Interactive Art & Technology + Communications. You can follow him on Twitter at @rushanshekar.
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23 Responses to Australia & New Zealand’s Road to the 2015 Pokémon World Championships
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ahh, soo cool! I’d love to go to one of those, too bad that Nintendo region locks the events too since my 3DS is a gift from america.
Haha my local regional is the same place that my Senior Formal/Prom is held.
Good Luck to all competitors in hopefully a great, competitive season.
Hope to see you all at events!
That is a bugger :/ I feel for you.
I really hope one happens in Hobart for the near future.
But this should be good
Wait, Australia gets six regionals while Europe gets one?
In my opinion, Asia and Australia/NZ should have different rating zones. As Asia have only 1 Regional and no news yet on the Nationals Championship. This is quite unfair for the numbers of CP that could be achieved by these players
To top it off, the region locks is basically saying, “you guys from Asia couldn’t compete here in Australia”. Also the ticket prices from Indonesia (my country in the same rating zone as Australia NZ) is quite expensive. Around $600-700 back and forth, not including hotel and accommodation.
Comparing with other countries such as US, there are around 800 Masters in the nationals (CMIIW). Let’s say they were the one who were competing for the tickets. And 40 of them are granted the invitation which is around 5%. In Asia Pacific region, Indonesia (approx 100), Singapore (approx 80), Malaysia (approx 60), Taiwan (Approx 100), Hong Kong (Approx 35) and Australia which I believe approx 600. Which has a grand total of around 975 participant competing (let’s just say 900), and only 18 trainers will get the invite = 2%. Comment me if I am wrong.
I know this is the first year where APAC join the circuit, and I am really grateful for it, but I still do hope Play! Pokemon will fix and think about this in the future.
not even going to bother with these tournaments, go +300km just to play against the notorious Australian standard.jpg copycat teams with as much creative strategy as a lobotomized chimp, no thank you…
While the australian vgc community has an interesting outlook of the competition. I would not say they lack creative strategy. There are always going to be deviant players, no matter what the mainstream society appears to be.
Why not be a part of the change that you evidently feel the Australian metagame needs, rather than simply demeaning the achievements of many creative and talented Australian players?
May I ask what is wrong with players using what they think (and as shown by statistics) are the most likely Pokemon to get you through a Swiss tournament? Sure a lot of the time its uncreative, but standard is standard for a reason. Why should players not use what they personally think is the best way to win at a live events.
Awww… Firestorm didn’t link to the actual Adelaide Regional Thread…
Europe has four Regionals lol, one was already in Arnheim. The next ones are in Italy and UK whereas there is one after Nats in Bochum too.
I wish I could attend all of them, but alas real life gets in the way
Still, I’m pleased that the Asia Pacific region is finally getting cp in our circuit. I do understand where all the non-Aussie people in the AP region are coming from, since most of these are predominantly in Australia and it’s expensive to fly here at such short notice. Hopefully in the future TPCI will see fit to add regionals to other countries in the Asia Pacific. Or at least award more cp in online tournaments to make it more fair.
That being said, for those who think that us Aussies are being heavily favoured, I can tell you that a lot of Australians living out of state probably won’t be able attend nationals unless they live in Melbourne (presumably that’s where Nats will be held this year). Nintendo Australia always has a habit of telling us at the last minute (aka 1 month before), which makes planning in advance kind of difficult…and also expensive when you need to book a last minute flight just to play Nationals. I hope next year we’ll be told months in advance of the dates, but hey, it’s great progress considering 3 years ago there were no events out here.
Hold up, neither Japan nor Korea is in our rating zone? Top 18? At least now I have a relatively low chance to make it to worlds compared to almost impossible last year!
I think everyone’s school formal in all of Adelaide has been at The Ellington (when I went there it was called The Observatory)…
Best of luck and safe trips to all those making the long drives/short flights around the country in pursuit of CP.
Whilst I feel bad about Australia stealing invites from APAC, there isn’t a lot to be done about it. I don’t plan on going to worlds unless I fluke a nats win or something, I’d never be able to afford the trip, so I’m not denying much CP to anybody who wants it to actually get to worlds. I can barely pay for nationals, let alone a worlds trip (am saving for flights to nats already). I’d suggest that for the good of those players that are serious about worlds, those of us who aren’t going to put our best effort in (as in we just want to go to events, meet people, have fun and maybe win. Those of us that aren’t the hyper competitive type) should keep to our own local tournaments for the fun and social aspect of it, rather than denying CP from people who might actually want to go to worlds. This may sound a little odd at first and please don’t judge me too heavily on these words. There are some people who clearly have a dream to get to the world stage, and since I’m honestly not really one of them I’d rather steer clear – sort of. By saying this I don’t mean “don’t go to anything and if you cut drop so that someone else gets the CP”, I more mean that I don’t think its fair on all those gunning for invites; for us to travel across the country to go to PCs and Regionals that are right out of your way, just to get CP you aren’t going to use. This isn’t anything other than my personal view, and perhaps a thought more than a suggestion above all else I guess. I mean I wouldn’t expect to even be winning PCs and cutting regionals myself so it’s an odd call, but I thought it was a thought worth sharing, I probably just didn’t convey myself as well.
From observation of small events I’ve attended IRL and participation in online Australian comps, at a high level the competition is still pretty tough, from my point of view anyway. There is certainly a lot of less-competitive players at our events that we’ll need to wade through, but a consistent team should always be able to bring a good fight to players of all skill levels! There’s certainly no bagging the high level competition in Australia, even if we get a lot of people using utter garbage cropping up in cuts around the place, luck’s part of the nature of this game.
I’m really amped up for Adelaide regionals and am keen to meet some of the faces travelling in from Melbourne and the like for the CP run. Not even feeling bad about “interstaters” coming to “steal” our nats trips, if anything it means better competition and developing the community further
layne is going to steal all my cp
This is so unfair for the Asian Countries
Well nothing you could really do about it
It’s actually pro and contrast whether you should give CP to the ones who wanted to go to Worlds, hey, they need to fight for it. Use skills, not money… That’s my honest opinion.
Also I just hope that either they add more Regional in SE Asia/Taiwan/HK (The one in Indonesia is actually a sudden one you know) or separate Asia and Australia in the near future…
While I am happy that there are more regionals in Asia Pacific, I am sad that there will only be one near my country (Philippines). The only thing that I believe we can do is to strengthen the community in SEA and make the community bigger so that we can make Play! Pokemon to organize more events in our area.
I guess we can imply that the nationals for AP will also be in Australia and if I want to go there, my wallet needs to be emptied so bad 🙁
Are there other PC or regional in Victoria that are more towards the eastern region? Collingwood is a bit too far from where I live. Thanks 😀
The latest update we’ve had is that there are no region locks anywhere in Asia Pacific (http://nuggetbridge.com/forums/topic/11093-2015-worlds-format-notes/#entry153645). Even last year, there were people from other countries participating.
Anyway, congratulations to Australia for getting a healthy number of regionals this year with the proper format and aligned to the international system! The growth of the VGC scene in our region has been truly outstanding this year and I’m really thankful to TPCi, Alphazealot, Nintento of Australia and all the other TOs and community leaders in Asia and Australia for making it happen.
Am not sure on this one “For Latin America and Asia-Pacific, assume that if it was purchasable at local retail in your market then it is legal for use.” As the SEA Players are mainly using US Versions, not for Australia… But still saying, the price to pay to make a trip to Australia is still a huge amount.
yeah, separating Asia and Australia is better
It would be nice if ALL countries in everyone’s bracket got equal chances to earn the same CP.
Like some dude mentioned earlier; It is very expensive to fly to another country (Even from NZD it can still be between $500 – $700 to Australia unless you can catch deals or book early) plus accommodation on top of that.
It is nice to see our region getting some love though. It kind of sucks though, because I was hoping to go to the New Zealand event, but I have to work on that weekend now, and so I miss out on my only shot for the year.