Top on HW

So, the question is: will the tournament be closed (within the World community) or open?

One of the goals of this tournament is to determine the World team for the Interportal competition, selecting players from the top 10. If players from other platforms participate, here's a possible scenario: the team is formed from the top 10 players and the second-best players from each platform.

What is the purpose of such a tournament?

1) Skill improvement. Getting into the top 10 players on World and playing for World in team competitions – if that isn't prestigious, I don't know what is. There's a goal; all that's left is to improve.
And, by the way, why play in tournaments at all? If it's just for fun, if there's no desire to play against stronger opponents, then skill will never improve.
2) Identifying the strongest player on World using the most objective method.

First, we need to clearly define what we want to achieve with this tournament. A round-robin system, for example, with 10 players, is fair for determining the best, but unlike a Swiss system, where everyone plays, its closed nature will provide little benefit to our platform in terms of skill improvement, and here's why.
How does this prospect sound: in the main World tournament, in the top ten, 6 players are from Bay and 4 are from Portal... Impossible? Not at all, after the scandal, after the public animosity, there was a clear separation of players from these two platforms. And our World is, by definition, neutral, isn't it the perfect battleground for the two platforms, especially since the tournament is intended to be the main online event, like the RPG on Bay?
I recall that in the last major individual World tournament, the top three were not local players. IMO, the entire top ten might not be local, so what's the point of determining the best World player with this tournament? If Pete or Mizrael break through, will we root for them?
We were going to prepare an entire team.

World can become a battleground not only in games but also in conflicts; reading about how a Portal player offended a Bay player, or vice versa, and how they all become... weirdos afterward – I don't want that on World.

Therefore, I suggest deciding on, for example, 2 possible scenarios for the future tournament.
1. We invite everyone. A strong group might gather, we'll read a lot of interesting things along the way, and we'll continue the series about which platform is better.

2. We implement a filter.
2a. A strict filter: only those who consider World their heroic home play. 2b. A selective filter: those who confirm their desire to play for the World team in matches and are not allowed to play against us in inter-platform matches play.

Is that harsh and unfair? Of course. When we will be playing on equal footing with Bay and Portal, then we will remove this restriction; for now, it is important for our platform to nurture its own players (like Pete and Loy) or invite established players (like Uran and Mizrael), and give them a heroic home. Otherwise, we won't escape the label "...oh, they're so funny, they're even trying to move horses..." Since the project is planned to be large, and the best players from our forum (Invisible, Alex R, Eugene, etc.) will participate, we need to approach the issue seriously. And it will be much easier for players to decide whether or not to play.

I believe that since Eugene volunteered to organize such a large tournament, he should decide and think through the issue of the tournament's content. The idea is generally excellent, well done.