World Cup 98
 The World Cup 98 logo, billing the hosts as Tikariot x The Kytler Peninsulae x Qusmo ft. Yuezhou as well as the collective Xandrian Sea | |
| Tournament details | |
|---|---|
| Host countries |  Tikariot The Kytler Peninsulae Qusmo Yuezhou (IC only) |
| Dates | January-February 2025 (OOC) |
| Teams | 48 |
| Tournament statistics | |
| Matches played | 104 |
World Cup 98 is an ongoing international football tournament held in Tikariot, The Kytler Peninsulae, Qusmo, and Yuezhou (collectively billed as Xandrian Sea after the body of water that these nations surround).
The tournament represents several breaks from previous World Cup convention:
- It is the first World Cup to feature four host nations, and also the first to feature more than two predetermined host nations (World Cup 22, the only other World Cup with more than two hosts, replaced one withdrawing co-host with both members of the second-place bid for that cycle).
- Of the four in-character hosts, only three were also out-of-character hosts that automatically qualified; Yuezhou were an in-character host only and had to go through qualification as usual.
- The knockout bracket is to use a process referred to as Qusma seeding whereby paths through the knockout stage are set by group stage record with modifications to keep teams from the same group apart in the bracket for as long as is mathematically possible.
- The roleplay bonus was calculated as a weighted average and multiplied by a fixed constant (10.93) throughout the tournament, rather than being applied on a cumulative basis as had become convention.
Additionally, this was the first World Cup to use the updated rankings formula (the name of which was announced during qualification as KPB+) in lieu of the long-standing KPB ranking system, which had been used (with some minor changes) for the preceding 86 World Cups.
Qualification
144 teams entered the qualification process; as mentioned above, Yuezhou were amongst them despite being an in-character host nation, leaving three automatically qualified hosts and hence 45 qualifying berths available for the 48-team tournament.
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