There are a number of quizzes that exist that specifically say NO PUNCTUATION or NO APOSTROPHES right now. Would those also be removed since they ask for "wrong" answers as the right ones?

The existing badges receive upgrades based solely on repeating the respective base achievement

We've talked about using placing or a combination of placing and repeat count as the basis for upgrading the badges, but ultimately, the deciding factor was that Terry stated there was no need to keep playing once you're immortal. Combined with the decision to go retroactive on the badges, this meant we're solely looking at "Immortal or not" (and the equivalent for Hardcore and Hardcore Immortal) for these.

The upgrades for the three existing awards are retroactive and the scaling has been set accordingly

With some players having played through the entire Global Challenge over 20 times over the course of a decade or more, it would have been disrespectful to the most loyal players to put them on equal footing with someone who just recently started and asked them to put six more rounds on top of the ones they had already played. Tiers have been determined according to the current distribution.

If you play Hardcore and reach Immortal, you receive credit for all upgrades you qualify for

Any Hardcore Immortal finish will give you a credit towards both the basic Immortal and the Hardcore Immortal one. If you also happen to finish high enough in the rankings, you get a credit towards HC Champ as well. So if you want to advance tiers on the three main badges and think you can make Hardcore Immortal, you should strongly consider going Hardcore often!

The criteria for Hardcore Champ will remain unchanged (10 players who do not have it yet). To upgrade it, you need to finish a Hardcore run with the same or a better score than the 10th new awardee.

The criteria for Immortal and Hardcore Immortal also don't change. Anyone ending up Immortal at the end of the game receives an upgrade credit.

A new, upgradeable, "Victorious" badge will be released beginning with this Global Challenge. To earn this badge at tier 1, you need to finish in the top 60 players of either Hardcore or Normal mode. It is not retroactive.

The new "Victorious" award will be first given at the end of this Global Challenge. Regardless of mode and who has it so far, the only criterion for getting this is to finish in the top 60 places of either mode - and you can mix and match modes towards upgrades. This means it will be more difficult to obtain at base level than Immortal, but easier than Hardcore Champ.

The upgrades for "Victorious" will require increasingly higher finishes - the top tier requires a placing in the top 3. You can gain only one tier per Global Challenge, so maxing this badge will take at least seven GCs from now.

You can guess from this that, unlike the base award, the top tiers of "Victorious" will be extremely exclusive. There are a maximum of six possible tier 7 awards from any one GC (three in Normal and three in Hardcore) - and realistically, there will be far fewer because you need to be in the top 3 while at tier 6 to actually trigger the top award. It will be very possible that we get no new tier 7s at all in many GCs. This is intentional - having this badge at 4 or above (and even more so for the higher levels) will be a crown jewel in every collection.

We expect that the triple advancement possibility from playing Hardcore will draw a substantial number of regular GC players into Hardcore.

This should take some pressure off the "100 Immortals" rule - with more Hardcore players, there will be fewer shoo-ins near the top of the Normal mode table, leaving more breathing room for new and more casual players to earn Immortal credits. Also, we expect that, over time, this move along with "Victorious" strategy by high level players will make reaching a top placing in Hardcore and Normal comparably difficult. Right now, Hardcore is probably the easier way towards Victorious due to the lower player count!

We will monitor game speed and, if needed, make further adjustments to the Immortal rules.

So far, the number of games in each Global Challenge has stayed within a relatively small window, thus keeping the objective difficulty of scoring the needed points in one round at the same level. If this number should ever leave our sweet-spot range, we'll correct. However I don't believe this will be necessary any time soon.

Further badges in the GC will receive the upgrade treatment. None of those will be retroactive.

I am seeing at least the Impossible! badge as a very viable candidate for upgrading. Once that happens, you'll be able to accumulate Impossible wins towards it. As this badge is based on each single 12-hour set and there are no division dependencies, we can introduce it in the middle of a GC without breaking anything, so we'll just release that one when it's ready.

Badging is done manually in case of Immortals / HC Winners and HC Immortals. We can handle a small spillover across the 100 mark with a bit of extra effort - recent graduations plus a copy of the top 100 page taken just before the game ends help.

I got a "maxing a fix" message.

As I pointed out earlier, it would be nice to see the other 8 or 9 in line to be new Immortals. They don't show up on the top 100. Are they not curious to see if they are close to arriving? I have a feeling that next GC will show even fewer of those in the race if many veterans are chasing the upgrade awards and clog up the top spots. Can the leaderboard not be expanded to top 150 or 200?

You are right. New Immortals deserve congratulations. The reason they are being "crowded out" in the Normal Mode Top 125 list is a result of the Immortal badges being made upgradable, as well as the creation of the new Victorious badge, which has drawn in more previous winners than probably would've played had that not happened.