Due to players dropping out the ESWC officials have decided to change the structure of the event from eight groups to four groups of six players. The new groups have made the tournament extremely exciting.

The two top players from each group will go through to the next round where there will be two groups of four players. The tournament will end with a four-man single elimination bracket.

The new draw has produced spineshivering new groups. The group of death is hands down Group C with two of the best players in history with a great history in ESWC tournaments, Anton 'Cooller' Singov and John 'ZeRo4' Hill. The Russian is a two times ESWC champion and the US player is a double ESWC runner up.

The third player in the group is no less of a superstar, Sander 'Vo0' Kaasjager also an ESWC champion (for PainKiller). To make things even worse, Kevin 'Strenx' Baeza is in Group C as well and he is France's strongest player right now.

SK Gaming's Shane 'rapha' Hendrixson cannot be happy either - he has the number one favourite of the ESWC in his group, the Belorussian monster Alexei 'Cypher' Yanushevsky. He also has the Austrian and French aimbots Richard 'noctis' Gansterer and Pierre-Emeric 'link1n' Portier.

Group A is also interesting as it will have a rematch for the CPL Winter 2006 final between Paul 'czm' Nelson and Zhibo 'Fan Zhibo' Fan.

Group A:
Zhibo 'Fan Zhibo' Fan
Paul 'czm' Nelson
Mateusz 'matr0x1' Ozga
Igor 'Hunter' Sambolskyi
Daniel 'ddk' Kapadia
Ryan 'Bono' HARDIE
Lemmy 'if-22' de Groot

Group B:
Alexei 'Cypher' Yanushevsky
Richard 'noctis' Gansterer
Shane 'rapha' Hendrixson
Yannick 'Impulse' BOVY
Pierre-Emeric 'link1n' Portier
Tassilo 'toxter' Teppert

Group C:
Anton 'Cooller' Singov
John 'ZeRo4' Hill
Sander 'Vo0' Kaasjager
'ALI I N.A.B'
Kevin 'Strenx' Baeza
Chance 'Chance' Lacina

Group D:
Magnus 'fox' Olsson
Marcel 'k1llsen' Paul
Thomas 'griffin' Wall
Kryštof 'krysa' Černý
'XGO'
Brian 'destrukt' Flander