The main reason 'it worked' was because 99% of the people who were 'rioting' got timed out for 10 minutes, lol.
If gaining popularity isn't your primary goal for the OWC, what is your goal exactly? I mean.. I can only applaud you for not thinking purely business, but what is it that you strife for then?
- Entertainment value? A part of this is the Twitch chat experience. However immature you may find it, it's still valuable to a lot of people (if that wasn't apparent enough by the discussion going on at the moment).
- Esports viability? With how unstable the client is (e.g. disconnects from Bancho), this is incredibly hard to achieve at the moment. Unless you're gonna make a local tournament, so that people can play offline (and this is pretty much impossible to achieve).
- Bringing the community together? It sure is working, just not the way you probably intended it to.
Now listen, take what you want from whatever I'm saying, I mean.. I've been playing this game for only 4-5 months, so what do I know? But I do think there could and should be a change in the way this tournament (and even the game as a whole, not really relevant to this particular discussion though) is being handled.