A crazy group of death at the ESWC Masters of Paris event is certainly a contingency after the announcement of the seeding for the tournament. The 23 participants of the competition were tiered into top seeds (four players), high seeds (four players) and challengers (unseeded).

This year's seeding is not necessarily bad but will definitely arouse discussion. John 'ZeRo4' Hill, one of the best players in the history of Quake 3 is unseeded. So are the ESWC 2005 champion for PainKiller, Sander 'Vo0' Kaasjager and last year's Quake 4 champion Maciej 'av3k' Krzykowski.

The seeded players are those whose achievements in Quake 3 are dated 2006 and younger. The most controversial name is Richard 'noctis' Gansterer who was initially not even invited but is now seeded higher than most players.

Each group will be comprised of one top seed, one high seed and the others will be unseeded - all chosen by random. Two players from each group will go to the playoffs. The only thing that will save the tournament from terrible groups of death is the fact that players from the same country will be moved away from each other during the draw.

Below are the seeds for the event:

Top seeds:
Alexei 'Cypher' Yanushevsky
Paul 'czm' Nelson
Magnus 'fox' Olsson
Zhibo 'Fan Zhibo' Fan

High seeds:
Karl 'fooKi' Johansson
Marcel 'k1llsen' Paul
Richard 'noctis' Gansterer

Shane 'rapha' Hendrixson

Challengers
Andreas 'ArrW' Ihrfors
Maciej 'av3k' Krzykowski
Chance 'Chance' Lacina
Daniel 'ddk' Kapadia
Dongkin 'Dongjin' Suh
Jeffrey 'Draven' Debipersad
Grégory 'falcuma' Ollivier
Thomas 'griffin' Wall
Pierre-Emeric 'link1n' Portier
Mateusz 'matr0x1' Ozga
Cyrus 'proZaC' Malekani
Arnaud 'slx' Lanoe
Benjamin 'Unity' Rovira
Sander 'Vo0' Kaasjager
John 'ZeRo4' Hill

Potential groups of death could look like this:
* czm, fooKi, av3k, Vo0, Linkin, griffin
* Cypher, fooKi, ZeRo4, av3k, Vo0, Linkin

Potential weak groups could be:
* RazerJ, k1llsen, Donjing, SLX, ddk, matr0x

The tournament will take place on July 5-6, 2007. Three of the best players that had not won a berth to the ESWC Grand Final in San Jose will be awarded the right to compete in the main tournament.