Hi Cyphen (as well as everyone here):
Welcome to MTC! This is a 3-stage tournament, and each group will have a certain number of players (roughly 20%-25%) progressing to the next stage. silent is currently working on the exact details of Season 3, and I am a moderator for the time being. We don't hold any type of ranking systems within the tournament, but each season, the winner of the final stage --- or the second place, if silent himself wins --- will gain access to the bonus games with silent, as described up there.
This is an open tournament. We sent out invitations to those who did well in previous seasons of MTC or in Pajada's International, since, as you see, we still need more players to get everything started. We might keep sending those invitations but the tournament itself is completely open.
Within a stage, your games are usually launched in 3 batches each consisting of 3 or 4 games. Ideally the games are prepared as randomly as possible, but TTA has some trouble randomizing games for large groups of players, so you might encounter the same opponent(s) in more than one game (we apologize if this sounds uncomfortable).
Thanks for joining MTC, and have fun!