I'll update this thread with more info when I can but I thought I'd give some basic info as a starter, considering the most well known North American teams have just been confirmed.
The event's qualifiers started on January 18th and the team have now been confirmed, to compete for the World Champions in LA, on 28th-30th March. There are 32 teams in total, a quarter of which are NA teams.
This weekend, the final NA qualifiers took place. 16 teams qualified for a double elimination tournament with the top 8 qualifying for the World Champs. This meant that to qualify, a team had to win two games out of three. A double elemination works as so:
Each team start in the winner's bracket. If you win your game, you move on in the winner's bracket, the losing team drops to the loser's bracket. If you lose your game in the loser's bracket then you're out. The winner of the loser's bracket takes on the on whoever is undefeated from the winner's bracket. Simples.
This is who qualified:
Strictly Business (who won the event)
Complexity (runners up)
Team Kaliber
EnvyUs
Xfinity Gaming
OpTic Gaming
FaZe Competitive
Rise
Teams that missed out:
Curse LV
Curse NY
The Denial Teams
The main games from the weekend (because qualifying was the primary goal for all teams):
In Round 1, OpTic beat Denial West, putting them one game away from COD Champs. They took on EnvyUs in Round 2, losing 3-1, dropping them to loser's bracket. This allowed EnvyUs to qualify.
Curse LV had a shock and lost to Rise in round 1. This put them in to loser's bracket (3 of this team are the current World Champs). Curse NY also lost (although I'm not sure who to). This meant that at least one of the Curse teams wouldn't make it as they made in round 1 loser's bracket. The winner of that would play OpTic, with the winner of that game qualifying for COD Champs. So, one qualifying spot, would go to Curse LV, Curse NY or OpTic. These are all top 8 teams, and two were going.
Curse NY beat Curse LV 3-2. LV went up 2-1 in the series after Blitz but NY took Dom and a comfortable SnD to go through and play OpTic. The OpTic game was huge for them. Lose, and go home.
OpTic took the game 3-2, with a really clutch game of Dom and SnD in games 4/5. I'm not Nadeshots biggest fan but his SnD start, 7-0, was huge. This meant that there will be no Curse teams at COD Champs. What happens to both Curse teams now will be interesting. Killa LV expected to retire.
I'll update it with more info about the event in the next bit. All the matches are available on YouTube at MLG Official COD.
What I will point out about the UK teams is that 4 qualified, and one of those teams was ALMOST a bunch of pubstompers. TYT, made up of FearCrads, BennyCentral, QuickerThanU and Insomulus were one game away from qualifying, losing to Team Orbit (who they beat previously). The top team from the UK, Epsilon, will be in OpTic's pool at Champs, that will be an interesting game.