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That TL survived for more than half a decade without a whisper about SC2 from Blizzard is amazing. During that time, SCBW's Official Ladder became polluted with Hackers and Bots, series like WoW, CoD, and Halo controlled the attention of nearly every living gamer, and the number of serious SC players outside of Korea dwindled to the thousands.
Still, TL thrived. The Korean scene contributed to this, but Korea was thousands of miles from most TL users, and traversing that distance was nearly impossible. Streaming content was inaccessible to all but the most persistent, replays were jealously hoarded, and capricious prima dona translators teased and tortured as much as they helped bridge the gap between Foreigners and Koreans.
TL survived because everyone on this site knew--Knew BW was the best game in the world. If another game became more popular, what of it? BW players had the unconditional self-confidence high school counselors fantasize about. Proof? Iconic videos and pictures from mysterious Korea. The unromantic realities of being anyone but a Bonjwa were easily ignored.
So TL survived and and grew explosively with SC2. Unfortunately, that unwavering belief which sustained TL during the lean BW years has proven to be a knife which cuts both ways. Even though TL was poised to be the ESPN of ESPORTS, as LoL and other MOBAs experience booms exceeding even SC2's, TL will not share that growth. The ubiquitous belief that SC is the pinnacle of gaming has salted the soil MOBAs had to grow in on this site.
BW Elitists are the Puritans of TL. Moderation has proved ineffectual in changing the mores of this site. The disparaged MOBA community has moved elsewhere.
Now you probably expect me to entreat SC players to be more accepting of games. I won't. I said it in the title: TL missed the boat. Cordiality is preferable, but at this point, it won't have any significant effect on this site. I also won't regret the past. The only way things could've been different would be if we didn't love BW as much as we did. I'm sad that TL won't be the premier MOBA site, but wouldn't have it any other way. If a widower decides never to remarry because he loved his wife so extravagantly, who are you to judge?
  
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I think missing implies that one was trying to catch it.
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...What? Team Liquid is a Starcraft site. I highly, highly doubt the TL staff was all "Well crap, we'd like to change gears to MOBA's, but that won't work because of how much we've crapped on them." Wrong. It won't work because this is a Starcraft site, not a general e-sports site. We have a subforum for LoL and a subforum for DotA 2, but the focus is on BW and SC2, as it should be. Not because SC is the best game in the world, or no other game counts as an e-sport, but because that's what Team Liquid IS. Maybe we should get shoryuken.net to change over to MOBA's too, that's way more of an e-sport than fighting games...fighting games are nothing compared even to SC2, audience wise.
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why should TL be focused around bad games? You said it yourself. "If another game became more popular, what of it?"
MOBA's are poor competitive games and LoL is a fucking dumb downed noobified version of an already casual friendly genre. (Obviously im bashing on dota a little harshly i know, but it cant even scale in comparison to bw.)
TLDR; Fuck LoL.
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Why did we want to catch the MOBA boat?
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if u thought the sc2 community was bad, good lord u havent seen mobas forum whine lol
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yo starcraft site follows starcraft ..
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I prefer DOTA-genre boat 
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Logged in just so I could rate this blog 1 star because of how terrible it is.
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On April 17 2012 11:42 johnnywup wrote:
yo starcraft site follows starcraft ..
Couldnt have been better said
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Russian Federation3631 Posts
Even though TL was poised to be the ESPN of ESPORTS
I'm so confused as to how you believe this to be true, unless you're referring to the blogs section, which is certainly the ESPN of excellent posting.
The disparaged MOBA community has moved elsewhere.
Yeah, its not like there are entire subforums devoted to League and DOTA on this website.
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the number of serious SC players outside of Korea dwindled to the thousands.
There is no way that is accurate. If you are going to use a number like that which dumb users will take at face value, get it right. Sorry that I am not giving the rest of your post the attention it deserves, but you started it off with something like that.... I mean Blizzard gives you the number of users currently active every time you log in. UMS in BW was extremely popular for a very long time, communities that had no idea about the proscene were huge just because they loved mapping and what Brood War offered for them.
Regarding the rest of your post... many questionable things. If anything BW players are embracing LoL and such more than SC2. TL was amazingly prepared to receive SC2 up the butt and accommodate it in every way possible, but that doesn't really mean they're shunning those other games, just that it had confidence in SC2. Other stuff you say about the korean scene being proof for BW fans that BW was the greatest game... I don't think that is true at all. The proof was the game itself. It wasn't till 2006-7 or so that people could even follow the scene properly and easily. Before that people actually cared about the foreign scene and replays and the ladder and the UMS games. It turned into progaming predominantly when it became so easy to get VODs, but there was a long time when you could spend an hour downloading one random VOD in super low quality from 2 years ago and that was all you got.
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On April 17 2012 11:52 Chef wrote:Show nested quote +the number of serious SC players outside of Korea dwindled to the thousands. There is no way that is accurate. If you are going to use a number like that which dumb users will take at face value, get it right.
Now this is something I would like to be corrected on if you have input. My estimation was based # of posters on Teamliquid.net along with the number of concurrent players on PGT and ICCUP. If my memory serves me correctly, that amount of players on those servers was in the hundred during the mornings and broke a thousand at night. From that picked the vague number of "thousands," and not for example "tens of thousands" of serious players.
I didn't do any statistical analysis, but the jump seemed safe to me. I'd be happy to hear evidence to the contrary (and edit my post). I don't want to diminish BW. And my recollection may very well have been flawed.
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Well I guess it depends on the definition of a serious SC player. If you are only counting people who laddered in 2007, you might be right  But I consider people who UMS'd and mapped for years and years for a single game to be fairly serious about the game.
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TL survived because not because it's elitist but because BW is a good fucking game. this post is so silly I can't really pick out one reason it's bad, but no one watched BW because we were trying to be elitist, it was just the best game to watch. TL has existed and will continue to exist because the community demands starcraft.
TL didnt miss the boat on anything because moba's are boring as shit, and this is coming from me who watches and plays a shitton of lol. I constantly watch stream and play lol because it's easy to play and streams are entertaining. however, there will never be a centralized lol community because there is no depth to the game. now I don't know about dota 2, because it's being done so fucking well by valve it's silly, but TL didn't miss the boat on anything because there's no esports reporting to be done on mobas. can you imagine a post about a game of lol that tried to be as analytical as some of the SC posts we get? it would be ridiculous, along the lines of "they were farming, then someone fucked up, and then the game was over from there on out" which is essentially what every game of lol boils down to.
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I really don't think we missed the boat considering sites like SoloMid.net are on top of it already, and we have a section devoted to it on TL anyways...
Relevant pic~~~~
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/lBhe3.png)
Pretty sure the LoL and DotA stuff is right above Blogs, where this masterpeice was posted.
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Actually most people hating on mobas are SC2 players who are angry that SC2 is being eclipsed by LoL in korea.
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On April 17 2012 11:58 Zergneedsfood wrote:
I'm a Puritan?
Does this mean we can burn people at the stake now?
i've always wanted to burn someone at the stake
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On April 17 2012 12:12 writer22816 wrote:
Actually most people hating on mobas are SC2 players who are angry that SC2 is being eclipsed by LoL in korea.
Yeah, they're the angry ones lol.
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On April 17 2012 12:12 writer22816 wrote:
Actually most people hating on mobas are SC2 players who are angry that SC2 is being eclipsed by LoL in korea.
ARTS have been around for longer than LoL.
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On April 17 2012 12:25 Jinsho wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2012 12:12 writer22816 wrote:
Actually most people hating on mobas are SC2 players who are angry that SC2 is being eclipsed by LoL in korea.
I could careless. Starcraft is better than LoL, hands down. I played LoL. I uninstalled after a few games. It's not a good game
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United States2822 Posts
On April 17 2012 12:26 Th1rdEye wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2012 12:25 Jinsho wrote:On April 17 2012 12:12 writer22816 wrote:
Actually most people hating on mobas are SC2 players who are angry that SC2 is being eclipsed by LoL in korea. I could careless. Starcraft is better than LoL, hands down. I played LoL. I uninstalled after a few games. It's not a good game
That's just like... your opinion, man...
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Australia7069 Posts
i'd hardly say tl has entirely missed the boat. they aren't being featured on the site considering it's an sc forum first, but the dota2 subreddit at least is very active, and is great for live report during games/discussion etc. the LR thread for the defence final had a shitload of pages on it, reminiscent of sc2 or BW LR's. also the quality of the lr was good, with little balance whining/arguing etc, just good fun
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On April 17 2012 12:35 Kiante wrote:
i'd hardly say tl has entirely missed the boat. they aren't being featured on the site considering it's an sc forum first, but the dota2 subreddit at least is very active, and is great for live report during games/discussion etc. the LR thread for the defence final had a shitload of pages on it, reminiscent of sc2 or BW LR's. also the quality of the lr was good, with little balance whining/arguing etc, just good fun
did you just call the subforum a subreddit? o.O
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Something I've noticed in the LoL subforum is that a lot of the older BW posters there have just skipped SC2. I only played SC2 for a couple months before ditching it as well. And if you think TL was poised to become the ESPN of "esports" then I'm just gonna have to say that you're delusional because each of these games already have their own communities. And your "BW elitists = puritans" in this context is hilarious to me considering just how many old posters I see regularly in the LoL subforum.
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The primary focus of this site is starcraft, the other games that have sections are a special privilege.
If your pick on why x game was not supported completely by TL, you could even go back to quake or cs, which had decent number of players from the time of bw(possibly more). So it's quite evident that this was not a general e-sports site, it's a site about professional starcraft and then everything else
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On April 17 2012 12:38 Backpack wrote:Show nested quote +On April 17 2012 12:35 Kiante wrote:
i'd hardly say tl has entirely missed the boat. they aren't being featured on the site considering it's an sc forum first, but the dota2 subreddit at least is very active, and is great for live report during games/discussion etc. the LR thread for the defence final had a shitload of pages on it, reminiscent of sc2 or BW LR's. also the quality of the lr was good, with little balance whining/arguing etc, just good fun did you just call the subforum a subreddit? o.O
Well yah i mean when i pots thar i typically do it or teh upvotes. Or it was just a slip of the mind.
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Baltimore, USA22254 Posts
Locking this because so far it's caused nothing but hate from either side.
koreasilver put it best - we are not and have never been gunning to become the premier eSports website. We have been gunning for and ARE the premier Starcraft website.
We're exactly where we want to be.
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EPT
