EPTEveryone’s heard about what happened last weekend. I think it’s time to give my two cents.
Note: The opinions expressed in this article solely reflect those of me, Cameron Gilbert, and in no way represent the opinion of Team EG or its sponsors.
Let me take you back six months. It’s BlizzCon 2011, and MMA has just defeated Mvp in spectacular fashion to claim his first GSL Code S championship. The crowd is positively electric. A while back I spent an entire article talking about how freaking inspiring it was. A fan favorite defeated another fan favorite in front of a crowd of nerds so hyped you could feel it in the very air. The man was driven to tears hearing us chant his name. I was standing right there, in the midst of it all. I’ll never forget that moment.
Fast forward to last weekend. MarineKingPrime is at the height of his popularity. A fan favorite since his debut, he finally in 2012 takes two championships in a row – breaking his curse. The undisputed best player on the planet, the King of Terran, the Ascended Kong. Everyone was talking about him. So then, why is it that after smashing his way through PartinG, Bomber, Squirtle, and Curious all in a row, almost single-handedly winning the GSTL for Prime, the cheers he received were positively mild? I was a part of that crowd too. Why, when I tried to chant LEE-JUNG-HOON or M-K-P, did no one join in? Why did the cheers feel so hollow? See for yourself.
The answer is obvious, of course. Because MarineKing shouldn’t have been playing at all. He almost certainly had already lost to StarTale PartinG, but a disconnect from Battle.net forced a regame. I’m not going to argue that the decision was or was not correct. It’s an impossible choice, and you get flak either way. Best case scenario – PartinG wins the regame, and the status quo is restored while still feeling fair. But what MarineKing did this weekend was make a case to Blizzard stronger than any argument, wall of text, or admittedly impressive WE WANT LAN chant. MarineKingPrime showed single-handedly just how much a single mistake cascades into a farce of a tournament.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/RgWTL.jpg)
It’s not about whether StarTale or Prime would have won if PartinG was awarded the win. Yes, the odds were heavily in ST’s favor, but also yes, Byun and Creator are amazing players in their own right. It was still anyone’s game. No, what matters is what an event like this means for the players. PartinG clearly prepared heavily for MarineKing. His style was the perfect antidote to MKP’s aggressive bio play. In that first game, MarineKing played one of the best TvP games I’ve ever seen…but PartinG made the right choices and had the right compositions, had some amazing templar flanks, and fought harder than any Protoss has fought. He took down the greatest player in StarCraft II right now. It was a win that PartinG would likely have treasured for his entire career. But the moment the disconnect screen went up, the boos started flooding, a pit formed in my stomach, and I knew immediately that the entire game I had just watched was irrelevant. Now that first game is just an asterisk.
You can’t just regame a masterpiece like the one those two created in battle.
The team league isn’t the same as the individual league. Team leagues are about momentum and prepared builds. Sniping and split decisions trump consistency. A regame undermines the very essence of what it means to play a team league match. The momentum is snapped clean, and the prepared builds are revealed. MarineKing and PartinG played the exact same builds in the regame as they did in Game 1. PartinG made one more mistake, MarineKing made one less, and he storms up PartinG’s ramp and unceremoniously kicks him out of the game. No joy, no passion, no sense of triumph.
In the games that followed, MarineKing had the momentum and abused it, playing spectacularly aggressive and crushing his opponents. With each successive victory he seemed to grow stronger and stronger. It was almost like he was mocking Curious in the final game, taking a hidden low-ground command center on Dual Sight of all maps. When he emerged victorious, there should have been a sense of release – a climax to the buildup MarineKing created with each win. But that asterisk next to the win against PartinG prevented the build-up from reaching the crowd. Everyone knew what had happened. And no matter how well MarineKing played, it was like watching a ghost. The crowd got louder to chant WE WANT LAN than they did for the victory. That’s not fair to MarineKing, not fair to Prime, and not fair to GOMTV – all of whom put on an amazing show to share with us.
But most of all, it’s not fair to PartinG.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/8DnXS.jpg)
The guy played the game of his life, and all people are going to remember is the disconnect. Martyred for the sake of fixing Battle.net. StarCraft II isn’t just a game to him, or to the rest of StarTale, or to any progamer. It’s their lives. PartinG’s career is not the same because of what happened.
It doesn’t seem right that someone’s livelihood can be ruined because the router messes up. Above all else, this is what should be taken away from this event. There have been tons of Battle.net mistakes before, but none this serious. This was the Grand Finals of the world’s premiere league, with the highest production value seen in StarCraft II, with the best players, and in front of one of the best crowds. The first three games of that series were every bit as hype as BlizzCon. I felt like I was about to have another cathartic experience. And it was all ruined in the space of thirty seconds.
I don’t care how it’s done. It doesn’t even have to be LAN. It just needs to be something.
These guys deserve it.
Credit for the FANTASTIC photo goes to Shindigs of Tt eSports.
