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@H-Bomb
I'd say hypothethical rather than imagined.
But I've no doubt there are a lot more teams willing to travel these days, then there were 3 years ago. Look at how oversubscribed tournaments in Europe are these days. Most have a waiting list longer than the number of teams allowed.
By limiting it to 36 teams, you guarantee that the 2nd team from Ukraine, the 5th team from Belgium etc, get a good number of games, against a good variety of teams, and a much better chance of taking better skills home with them, raising the skill levels of other players, etc...
Also you give a much better guarantee that the best teams attending will actually qualify, raising the level of competition.
Regarding Berlin, I don't doubt that. That doesn't mean that another format can't be as well. I imagine those 36 teams will have an awesome time.
The Paris wildcard was shit, no doubt about that. But I think the one thing you can't blame that on is the qualifying format. The main reason it was shit was because the court was awful. If they had done it on the main courts they could have had a lot more teams, and the polo would have been better.