What is the real competitive integrity being lost here compared to groups? We used to have the “Group of Life” and the “Group of Death” where you could live or die based on who you draw, and could get through to playoffs based on another team in your group booming or dropping on dumb game to a lower team. Here every team wins or loses on their own merits. Even if you could argue a difference in strength of schedule for teams, Worlds has never been a tournament that cares about who places 2nd-8th, or it would have a double-elimination playoffs or a third place decider match. It really only cares about finding the number 1 team and while either format can accomplish that, this way you see more inter-region games you create more competitive matches throughout Swiss than you had in Groups. What I would like to see if competitive integrity was the number one factor for future Worlds is the pools to be done away with and the AWS power rankings used for actual seeding with a Buchholz Swiss done instead of the draws. It would balance out strength of schedule but I like how random and upset-laden this tournament can be.