The MDL division has a new scheduling process for ESEA Season 34 which seeks to improve a number of historic areas. With the MDL attracting widespread attention due to the high-calibre of teams, significant prize money and road to the ESL Pro League we have added a number of additional rules to make the league as easy as possible to follow.
Teams will submit a list of times that they can play at the start of the season for us to provide an initial schedule. If a team does not submit any times then we will assume they can play all times.
In the event, a LAN tournament or online qualifier (with a fixed schedule) is announced and overlaps with an MDL match then a team may force the match away from the scheduled time by alerting a staff member and their opponent over 48 hours from the match. ESEA will always honour these reschedules since we do not want to create a situation where, for example, a team could not attend a large open bracket qualifier because they had scheduled an MDL match a month prior to the announcement of that qualifier. The game can then be scheduled to a mutually acceptable time.
However, in the event of an online match that does not have a fixed schedule then we will not force the match away to a new time. For example, if there is a group stage staggered over several weeks with a dozen teams then we would not force the MDL match away since those other games will have been flexibly scheduled and therefore it would be on the MDL team to coordinate with the other event when they could and could not play.
Teams are also allowed two wildcards per regular season. Teams may play a wildcard on any match up to 6 hours before the match and by doing so will force the match to be rescheduled. These are intended for personal emergencies but are entirely at the team's discretion for when they will be used. Teams may play a wildcard by posting on the match page, alerting their opponent and contacting a staff member about the match. The game can then be freely rescheduled to a new mutually acceptable time.
Teams should use the website or reach out to their opponents to try and reschedule matches. If a game is not played at the scheduled time then it shall be randomly forfeit.