Am I just imagining things, or have we developed a stock of inactive popular players, who keep getting invited into high rolling invitationals, and who do not participate in any competitive event unless given an advantage over people who try to qualify on their own (if those people even exists, see invitationals) or unless the player pool is, overall weak enough which raise their chance to finish in the prize money?
I mean, if you look at the ranking site aligulac, you will see players on relatively wealthy teams, who are paid to play under the banner of their team, and who are taken out of the ranking, because they haven't played a competitive match for too long! (players are taken out of the ranking, if they haven't played a documented match in two months.)
Also, again with the hope of that it is not my imagination, I think that there is a large pool of relatively unknown players, who – week after week – continuously compete in lowly paid cups, and who repeatedly prove that they are legitimately good players by placing high in most of the cups.
If so, well, then good luck on trying to keep up with the Korean scene. Even pre KeSPA, they managed to create better players with less money in the scene.
Note: I am not saying that all inactive popular players are bad. In fact, most of them were extremely good at a point of time, and they might even be very good right now. But the fact that they appear to be in some "ivory tower" compared to the rest of the players has to be extremely demoralizing to all up-and-coming players.
 
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I wouldn't say you are imagining it so much as it behooves tournaments to offer players such concessions in exchange for their drawing power. Regardless of whether or not the seed was necessary no one wants to say, "Parting is going to be in Tournament X," and then have him (hyperbole of course) drop out in an open bracket as sick as it would be to have a relative unknown do that. Bigger names+later in the tournament=more money on the most general of curves.
I wish more people would pay attention to the higher levels on any server. Korea would be interesting, but NA and EU specifically (Sorry SEA don't know enough about you), there are friendly clan wars or high level scrimming going on between top GM players all the time.
For me at least it isn't always about watching this robot in terms of mechanics never messing up a blink, it is about the interesting situations that can arise when two very apt, dedicated players get scrappy and play a great set for no other reason than to practice (This GSL is making my point look wonky with all the crazy games). Up until recently it wasn't the players that were getting stale in Korea, but the way the game was played.
Your general interpretation could also be chalked up to HotS and all the playing people have been doing to make sure their game looks something decent in the early days.
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EPT
