As I was telling canufeelit, I kind of like the fact that there is no ranking in the Awesomia battles. If what you are looking for is to boost attendance and attrack players that are not committed fort fighters, no ranking helps a teeny tiny bit to level an already uneven field. Because, let's not lie to ourselves about it, a ranker will have preferences over the players they know, and if it is overfilled (which is the goal but as of now is only a dream) they will discriminate the less fitted seeing that they want to win and those are going to be perceived as a burden. What I think is definitely a no-no is the fact that there is no designated leader. At all. Expecting someone to step up and become the leader at the very last moment is a terrible idea. It's not only bad for the player that isn't mentally prepared to lead and has to come up with a plan without the time to do so. What if nobody accepts the task? What if more than one player decide that they want to lead? What if several players randomly shout out orders, who are you going to follow? What if the players don't accept the leader? The lack of a topic is also more of a deal than you'd think. It's not something as simple as to having adventurers fill adventurers tower; workers going to workers tower; duelers going to duelers tower and soldiers going to their own tower too. Again with the what ifs. What if the new attendees take a random tower because they have no clue about what they are doing there, how are they going to know? What if damagers decide to fill or ignore all towers? Who is going to fill walls and which walls? Who is going to protect the flag, or is nobody supposed to do that? More critical yet, where are the offliners going to set their targets? That kind of things that make a topic absolutely necessary.
The time of the battle could be a little more player friendly than the horrible 5pm server time, but I think if you succeeded in making this interesting for many players, that is something that wouldn't be much of a deal breaker. I mean, there was a time when European, Asian or Australian players would set their alarms to wake up for a 3am battle, or Americans would go hide in the bathroom or find some excuse during work time to fight online, etc. It's a long shot although workable.
I know that you mean well and the initiative & idea in general are good, just need some important tweaking. For one, you and everybody providing feedback on this topic are on the wrong assumption that all players attending Awesomia battles are going to have some sort of an equal background: knowledge of the mechanics, gear, level, skill builds, etc. Which will be true in most cases. But you also want to attrack non fort fighters and casual fort fighters. A non forter won't likely know or understand how to move in a battle, to start with. Probably isn't skilled for the task either, since skills like HP are completely a waste of a good SP for someone who isn't involved in resistance dueling or forting on a regular basis. A full trader will indeed have a lot of leadership (that doesn't know how to use to their advantage) but may lack, say, hiding. There will be a mix of different levels too, from a whole bunch of Lvl 150 to a couple of Lvl 30, for instance. A non forter or a casual one probably hasn't invested heavily on getting the best updated fort gear, and that only if they actually have the right gear. How are they going to compete at the same level with dedicated fort fighters who show up on their upgraded full Cortina/Wilson sets or the last nugget set and a tank/damager build AND, to make things worse, spend a lot of nuggets to be in that league? Attack or defense, it will be pointless for most of those players with a fort fighting disadvantage, because they are going to die in one, two, maybe five rounds if they are lucky after performing poorly; then decide it wasn't worth their time and will ignore Awesomia for good. THAT is the something that you need to find a way to solve. Maybe Sycopath's idea of making players use only not upgraded shop gear & weapons for these battles is not the crazy idea that sounds in the forter's ears. Or simply forget about luring both berry pickers and non forters, to just focus on the die hard FF players.