I remember WCG 2011 so well. Two fellow Canadians making it out of group stages, only to fall in the round of 16. TitaN and Kas both taking out two heavy hitting Koreans in the Quarterfinals, ensuring there was going to be no Korean vs Korean finals. BlinG going 1-2 vs MVP. Finally XiGua, looking so dominant vs his opponents only to get 2-0'd in the finals vs Mvp. I hated seeing Korea win, but loved to watch the games.
That brings us to 2012 though.
PartinG, YongHwa, and MKP have qualified, and Mvp gets an invite for being the winner. I can guarentee though, neither Mvp or MKP will attend due to IPL 5.
Nerchio has qualified but will most likely be replaced by his team mate Paranoid. JonnyREcco also qualified, but him making his way to IPL, he is probably replaced by fellow Brit Ziktomini.
The player pool is a joke. Canada has 3 seeds, so we send Hendralisk, FireZerg, and CombatEX. By far the best that Canada has to offer...
I do tip my hat to qxc. Deciding on WCG over IPL5. Its probably the better choice for his career. I mean with all the Koreans going to IPL5, chances are he wouldn't make it past the round of 32, but in WCG he has the opportunity to place top 4 if he's on his A game.
To say the least I am quite disappointed with how much the WCG has gone downhill, I really enjoyed watching the "esports olympics", but now it just looks like a random lan with a korean looking to win some cash prizes.
All and all this tournement will determine only a few things. Is PartinG good enough to win 2 world championships in a row, or was this weekend just his weekend, and he'll go back to playing like he did in the GSL? Will the lesser known Canadians even be able to hold their own in this quite less than stacked player pool? Is qxc going to randomly rise again and take it all? Because why not qxc is bad ass.
Yeah I did not enjoy watching wcg at all last year. If I remember right, stream quality was balls and I think their website was also balls so it was impossible to find out anything I wanted to know
It started with the players. Playing for your country has taken a back seat to getting a potential paycheck. Not that all people will blame them, but in prior years, before there were salaries, expenses, etc... there was just the love of the game. That's slowly dwindled away and has left WCG as a shell of its former self.
On November 18 2012 22:55 divito wrote: It started with the players. Playing for your country has taken a back seat to getting a potential paycheck. Not that all people will blame them, but in prior years, before there were salaries, expenses, etc... there was just the love of the game. That's slowly dwindled away and has left WCG as a shell of its former self.
To be fair. A few years back WCG was pretty much the only tournament to attend for bw players. For Wc3 there were a few more, but non of them dared to interfere with WCG (which probably also had one of if not the biggest prizepool)..
It's saddens me to see WCG falling off the map like this. I followed US qualifying and the WCG finals every year back in the BW days. Now, it's really just an afterthought. I feel like WCS fills the void quite nicely though.
I feel like one of the appeals of WCG in the past (BW days) was having Koreans compete against foreigners. (that and the fact that it was a legit tournament instead of some online event). That appeal was lost once almost every sc2 tournaments became multi-national tournaments.
The website of WCG has always been horrible, the coverage was just plain terrible. Not only was the stream really crap but also finding out what matches were supposed to air and then finding out nothing was airing for about two hours at said time and what was aired was not a match that was anywhere on the schedule.
That and the amount of people per country to attend would depend heavily on how the local organizers in each country want to invest in / could obtain sponsorship for the flight and stay for. Really big BW countries with a bad local organization or a organization that didn't care about BW were screwed and big favorites consequently missing for the tournament. I remember a year in which a lot of the top foreigners were Swedish but the organizer in Sweden didn't held a BW qualifier and thus they couldn't participate.
WCG was cocky when they were the only tournament that people could participate in and they didn't invest in quality coverage and a good infrastructure. It was inevitable they would go under as soon as another tournament got a sponsor to organize a big live tournament and did get their act together in terms of coverage etc.
Was there seriously a time when WCG was considered a prestigious tournament? It's been a total mess every time I've tried to follow it basically forever. We put up with it for BW because it was literally the only tournament for a long time and even then it we laughed at how bad it was.
I guess I have fond memories of following it when I was in high school, 2004ish, but that was because I didn't know any better.
On November 19 2012 02:03 heyoka wrote: Was there seriously a time when WCG was considered a prestigious tournament? It's been a total mess every time I've tried to follow it basically forever. We put up with it for BW because it was literally the only tournament for a long time and even then it we laughed at how bad it was.
I guess I have fond memories of following it when I was in high school, 2004ish, but that was because I didn't know any better.
Yeah, back in 2004, 2005 it was THE world championship for StarCraft. But then they brought so many sponsored games, then came some bullshit mobile games and it all went down the drain :-(. Also I remember 2005 best because of this documentary
WCG was amazing in 2004-2008 or so. Been downhill pretty hard the past few years especially. WCG USA has been shit for a longer time. They're annoying to work with and their website has always been awful. Made playing in qualifiers over the years pretty hellish.
lol WCG was always a joke. I started to hate the tournament when they thought it was funny to have Dota and Dota 2 in their game list but not BW/SC2. Perhaps during ~2004 that was the peak IMO
On November 19 2012 02:03 heyoka wrote: Was there seriously a time when WCG was considered a prestigious tournament? It's been a total mess every time I've tried to follow it basically forever. We put up with it for BW because it was literally the only tournament for a long time and even then it we laughed at how bad it was.
I guess I have fond memories of following it when I was in high school, 2004ish, but that was because I didn't know any better.
I agree with this 100%
There were some really memorable moments in wcg (froz vs boxer, Midas vs draco, etc), but all in all wcg has always been been ranEXTREMELY poorly.
EPT
