Brutal takedown of Red Bull but hard to argue with factually.Guys, you need to relax. Stop asking questions about fairness or competitiveness, when Red Bull is the organizer. This company invests in all sports and esports possible to brainwash every person in the world, that their unhealthy sugar water enhances sport performance and is somehow a good product, instead of giving heart problems and a higher diabetis risk.
When you have such an organizer, who puts willingly peoples health at risk for profit (there are enough cases about energydrinks and their side effects, no discussion needed), you can't expect a tournament for the love of (e)sport, in our case AoE2. This whole event is one big advertisement, nothing more. And how do you ensure the biggest audience and viewernumbers possible?
You hype it with enough money on the one hand, and invite players with a big community name on the other hand to ensure good games. And you can get a community name in 2 different ways. Either you're a legend of this game and everyone knows you or you simply made a name in prior red bull tournaments, so the viewers know you and red bull have the certainty, this player can compete and people like to watch him. And here you have your answer, why Capoch is being invited instead of a player, who beat him in the qualifier. Because he already played in a red bull tournament and most of the viewers will know him, while Kasva is outside the deep aoe community unknown to the majority, especially to red bull viewers and that bears a risk for the organizer, who only wants advertisement.
Also a shoutout to hearttt, who speaks the truth. You wont find many other big community names here, because many of them are a part of the tournament and will keep silent for the paycheck, no matter what.
It's like Memb said, he was sad he wasnt invited in the first tournaments and spoke not too well about them, but when he became a part of it, only good words started to come out that we have to be grateful, such a big sponsor helps AoE and so on. The same now with Capoch. You get invited, you shut up and take the money. It doesnt matter if its a rushed invite only tournament. So just accept it and move on.
The good thing is, that this will probably be the last Aoe2 tournament with rb as organizer, since they will immigrate to Aoe4.