Accomplishing the needs of every member is pretty difficult considering how diverse the membership is in terms of quality.
The bottom needs meaningful games to sell tickets and generate revenue.
The middle need access to the top group to play their way into third place
The top needs to not waste all their time blasting the bottom.
There’s no real ideal solution to WCQ that accomplishes all those goals at once. This idea is horrendously flawed because it screws over the middle.
Maybe this would be better: Six groups of six, playing 10 games.
You put teams:
1, 4, 5, 8, 9, 12 in Group A
2, 3, 6, 7, 10, 11 in Group B
And teams 13-35 in Groups C-F
13, 20, 21, 28, 29, 36
14, 19, 22, 27, 30, 35
15, 18, 23, 26, 31, 34
16, 17, 24, 25, 32, 33
A and B winners get WC spots.
A and B second and third places (4), and the top three of groups C-F (12) advance to a 16-team knockout tournament. The champ of that gets third place (WC spot), the runner up goes to the playoff.