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On a lazy Sunday morning/afternoon, I do what any other Starcraft 2 nerd does and open up http://www.twitch.tv/slayers_dragon to enjoy him trolling some gold-level players on some bronze smurf he has with mass raven auto turret spam or no units besides ghosts and just nuking the crap out of them. The actual watching of his stream is rather enjoyable, but for some reason every week many players insist on measuring their e-peen with a relative server strength discussion. This might be due in part to Dragon generally trolling on NA up through diamond players and then players from EU laughing at how bad those said players are, but this is only speculation since I try to ignore the ignorance.
Based on cursory glances, the impression is FEA > EU > CN (Europe and China alternate depending on who's writing it) > NA > SEA (And again, Americas and Southeast Asia alternate depending on who authors the statement). Here is generally where the bashing of players, especially on NA, occur.
“Plat on NA is silver on EU”
“Gold in KR is as strong as diamond on NA” (compliments of Wolf)
These statements are generally followed by “Oh, I'm better than you because you're X league on NA while I'm X (or X-1) league on EU.”
I can see how the server strength balance is an understandable assessment when you're talking about professional Starcraft 2, but when we're talking about the general populace as a whole, I can't really imagine how these ideas can be relevant.
An analogous discussion would be discussing professional sports strength in NA versus the other countries. For example, there was a long period of time where basketball in NA was far and away better than the rest of the world. For this reason, players of foreign nationalities came to the US to play in the NBA.
![[image loading]](http://www.jetpunk.com/quizzes/img/thumbs/614.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/slides/photos/000/676/712/1951958_crop_650x440.jpg?1296326760)
![[image loading]](http://cdn.bleacherreport.net/images_root/slides/photos/000/676/751/2927950_display_image.jpg?1296332030)
Because of this influx of foreigners in the American scene, NA continued to stay far and away the best country at the professional level, but this does not apply to anything else. Saying that gold in one server is better than gold in another server is like saying that high school basketball players in America are better than the ones in Europe.
![[image loading]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_u1ysKRt1C9M/TTa5uqgsdjI/AAAAAAAAAJE/8ET8_2dICOc/s1600/basketball+nerd.jpg)
So unless you believe that European Starcraft 2 beginners are somehow blessed with ten extra effective actions per minute or that American basketball beginners naturally jump an extra foot higher, I'm going to have to say that below a professional level, all (bad) players are basically the same.
  
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there are more good players in europe and kr. leagues are based on percentile. if there are more good players, then they will be lower percentile relative to the rest of their server. gold is not a skill level, it's a percentile. all people are saying is that a player who is 98 percentile on NA (masters) is only 90 percentile on KR (diamond) because there are so many more good KR players.
edit: also american high school basketball players should be stronger on average than european high school basketball players, it's a far more popular sport over here. same goes for south american soccer players versus north america, or whatever other activity is a lot more common in one country than another.
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the thing about korea is that a lot of people played BW before.. at least that's what everyone assumes. and it makes sense.
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Blazinghand
United States25561 Posts
This blog is absolutely correct. The fact of the matter is, whatever difference there is at a high level, the vast majority of players on both servers are not very good-- the only way the there could be any differences in plat and below on any server would be if like, 30-40% of the noobs suddenly quit at the start of the season. The distribution of skill in lower leagues is a function of number of noobs.
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i don't really buy into the 'strength' of one server over another. as a GM on NA, i got into masters on KR/TW server after 30 games and i think i only dropped about 3 games in total (i love those people that say GM on NA is plat on kr rofl.) i've also played on high master EU accounts and every server feels stylistically unique but still about equal in difficulty. on KR there is a ton of cheese, EU is more conservative on the whole, and US feels like a mix of both depending on the player.
people will believe what they want though. it all comes down to national and regional pride, something which will never go away =.=
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meh, look at it like this... there can only be 200 GMs per server, right? unarguably the korean server is strongest on GM level. but since there's only 200 GMs possible, master league must be stronger too. and since it is also limited to a certain percentage of players, diamond must be stronger too. etc etc etc.
i dont know if the korean server is actually stronger, but i think it makes hell a lot of sense.
of course a NA GM will still crush his way into KR masters... but it's pretty likely that he'd have a lower ELO rating on the KR server. IMHO.
people will believe what they want though. it all comes down to national and regional pride, something which will never go away =.=
i think it's a legit discussion and has nothing to do with pride. my theory is that koreans have been more exposed to BW and thus even the average noob has somewhat of an edge in terms of mechanics.
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Currently I am hoovering around Diamond on NA/EU and Platinum KR.
I know this may not be a reasonable comparison but from my experience, the level of skill between EU and KR is almost equal, except for the fact that Koreans are just 30% faster. However when I play for a prolonged time on the NA servers, I personally feel that the server lacks good macro players in the segment I am in.
More precisely said, I feel my skill drops once I start playing NA actively due to the effect of a much more aggressive pre-12 minute play, which eats at the macro games. Most of the games, if I reach the 15 minute mark standing properly, I win.
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Blazinghand
United States25561 Posts
On September 05 2011 08:52 Aelonius wrote:
Currently I am hoovering around Diamond on NA/EU and Platinum KR.
I know this may not be a reasonable comparison but from my experience, the level of skill between EU and KR is almost equal, except for the fact that Koreans are just 30% faster. However when I play for a prolonged time on the NA servers, I personally feel that the server lacks good macro players in the segment I am in.
More precisely said, I feel my skill drops once I start playing NA actively due to the effect of a much more aggressive pre-12 minute play, which eats at the macro games. Most of the games, if I reach the 15 minute mark standing properly, I win.
From my experience, the KR server actually is much more aggressive and all-inny than the NA server. A lot of the times i see 6-7gate allins, roach rushes, baneling busts, 3 rax stim allins, on the KR server, where the NA server the play is more passive.
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This is why we need cross realm play so we can actually put these to the test!
I'm a league lower on KR than EU, so I suppose that's a sort of evidence, but I don't really play enough to have too good of an idea.
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On September 05 2011 09:01 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On September 05 2011 08:52 Aelonius wrote:
Currently I am hoovering around Diamond on NA/EU and Platinum KR.
I know this may not be a reasonable comparison but from my experience, the level of skill between EU and KR is almost equal, except for the fact that Koreans are just 30% faster. However when I play for a prolonged time on the NA servers, I personally feel that the server lacks good macro players in the segment I am in.
More precisely said, I feel my skill drops once I start playing NA actively due to the effect of a much more aggressive pre-12 minute play, which eats at the macro games. Most of the games, if I reach the 15 minute mark standing properly, I win. From my experience, the KR server actually is much more aggressive and all-inny than the NA server. A lot of the times i see 6-7gate allins, roach rushes, baneling busts, 3 rax stim allins, on the KR server, where the NA server the play is more passive.
That is true, on the other hand with NA I notice a skill-decline. In Korea I notice I am rapidly increasing my EAPM, and improving my solidness of play.
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i find AM harder than SEA.. on SEA people copy macro play from GSL but on AM people do really weird/stupid shit and learning how to defend all the possible bullshit is harder.. people mid/high masters on NA know what im talking about..
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I meant to tie in something at extremely high masters level with the basketball analogy, but completely forgot to. Because Korea is such a powerhouse, many, many, many professional SC2 players created accounts for the KR/TW server, thus making it even harder to be GM or a "high" masters player. This only affects people at that level though, since the influx of several hundred people at the top have NO INFLUENCE on the 114,000 or so active accounts on the server.
On September 05 2011 07:52 beg wrote:
meh, look at it like this... there can only be 200 GMs per server, right? unarguably the korean server is strongest on GM level. but since there's only 200 GMs possible, master league must be stronger too. and since it is also limited to a certain percentage of players, diamond must be stronger too. etc etc etc..
I'm going to say this pretty bluntly, 200 people on the Korean server is less than 0.002% of all the active players. 200 people does not influence the thousands that are in every division.
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On September 05 2011 06:14 proxima_ wrote:
i don't really buy into the 'strength' of one server over another. as a GM on NA, i got into masters on KR/TW server after 30 games and i think i only dropped about 3 games in total (i love those people that say GM on NA is plat on kr rofl.) i've also played on high master EU accounts and every server feels stylistically unique but still about equal in difficulty. on KR there is a ton of cheese, EU is more conservative on the whole, and US feels like a mix of both depending on the player.
people will believe what they want though. it all comes down to national and regional pride, something which will never go away =.=
Since you believe in equal strength of servers and equality in difficulty, then are you implying that a GM on NA (like yourself) will get GM on KR?
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Blazinghand
United States25561 Posts
On September 06 2011 12:16 Entropic wrote:Show nested quote +On September 05 2011 06:14 proxima_ wrote:
i don't really buy into the 'strength' of one server over another. as a GM on NA, i got into masters on KR/TW server after 30 games and i think i only dropped about 3 games in total (i love those people that say GM on NA is plat on kr rofl.) i've also played on high master EU accounts and every server feels stylistically unique but still about equal in difficulty. on KR there is a ton of cheese, EU is more conservative on the whole, and US feels like a mix of both depending on the player.
people will believe what they want though. it all comes down to national and regional pride, something which will never go away =.= Since you believe in equal strength of servers and equality in difficulty, then are you implying that a GM on NA (like yourself) will get GM on KR?
to be fair the OP is saying that although GM and pro level play might differ from region to region, that the fact that pro players are better in korea won't change your average non-tryhard gold leaguer's skill level (hence the HS basketball NBA analogy).
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On September 06 2011 12:35 Blazinghand wrote:Show nested quote +On September 06 2011 12:16 Entropic wrote:On September 05 2011 06:14 proxima_ wrote:
i don't really buy into the 'strength' of one server over another. as a GM on NA, i got into masters on KR/TW server after 30 games and i think i only dropped about 3 games in total (i love those people that say GM on NA is plat on kr rofl.) i've also played on high master EU accounts and every server feels stylistically unique but still about equal in difficulty. on KR there is a ton of cheese, EU is more conservative on the whole, and US feels like a mix of both depending on the player.
people will believe what they want though. it all comes down to national and regional pride, something which will never go away =.= Since you believe in equal strength of servers and equality in difficulty, then are you implying that a GM on NA (like yourself) will get GM on KR? to be fair the OP is saying that although GM and pro level play might differ from region to region, that the fact that pro players are better in korea won't change your average non-tryhard gold leaguer's skill level (hence the HS basketball NBA analogy).
I wasn't really adressing the OP's post. I was referring directly to proxima's post.
Also, American HS basketball players ARE better than HS players in other countries. Whether this means gold in KR > gold in EU or w/e I can't say. But I think masters in KR is harder than masters in NA playing there myself (I'm high masters NA but high diamond, low masters KR after 40 games or so).
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EPT
