I doubt if there will be many people more directly effected by alts and over leveled avatars than me. I'm only in Cat 1, but I think I will place well in the prizes, for both Team and Solo.
It sucks that I am competing against players that have easy access to the best of the best for gear, that they can slap on their "friend's" avatar and compete in Cat one with... but MA doesn't care since that's more PED being cycled. Alt treatment isn't going to change.
It also sucks that the rules allow for eating skill chips after qualifying. That's how the rules were set up though, so it isn't really cheating - just very cheap. I personally like how in Team you had to stay under a certain level, however I did need to puke a couple 100 TT of chips through that stage to stay in the event. I went up over 7 levels in my main profession just from the Solo part as a reference.
The best compromise I can think of would be to disallow chipping in from qualifications until the event ends for the solo section. The levels would actually have some meaning. If someone wants to grind outside the instances, or they have missions with reward lined up I'd have no problem with that. MM is all about being prepared, it's not a coin toss like so many other events.
Anyways, I'm looking forward to the hearing the results!
Ps. Make the rules clear further ahead next time please!! Those 20 extra hours nearly screwed me over!