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Korea Esports #5
My Problem with Starcraft
It is not sociable.
It’s not even the battle.net UI, it’s not the doom and gloom of the community (but it does have some correlation with it) it’s the actual real life communication that hardly exists anymore.
I had a lot of real life friends(15+) a long time ago when Starcraft first launched, and now I think one of them logs in once in a while into SC2. They either moved onto other Blizzard games, or just left blizzard games in general.
There was nothing left for them in SC2. Why would there be?
The focus of the game is to 1v1. Nobody wants to log in and play 1v1 and be hardcore every day.
Nobody, not even me anymore and I just reached High Master on the Korean Server. What’s the point? If you read ROOTCatZ blog on reddit, we are in dire need of region lock. WCS NA Quals are in 2 days, I will give it a shot, but I am hoping I can go far enough that a team recognizes that I am decent at the game and maybe I can get onto one of the better NA academy teams(SEED,coL, Quant). Other than that I have nothing to work towards to. The qualifiers for other tournaments for IEM/DH’s are usually more stacked than GSL Code S and I am nowhere near that level. Do I really want to make my goal to join a sub-par randomly sponsored NA team? Not really.
Whenever I go to a gaming café I am forced to play LoL with friends, because it’s pretty anti-social to just sit there play SC2 when they are having fun playing LoL. Don’t get me wrong SC2 is fun, but alone-fun and friends fun are 2 different types of fun.
I recently re-bought my subscription to WoW. I played for almost 6 years with 4000+ hours played(I know sickening), but I instantly remembered why this game was good.
The people.
You don’t feel alone when you log into the game right away you are thrown into some sort of chat channel. It is actually fun even though the game has some of the most, what would seem, boring tasks.(farming etc) Hell I am still in the same guild I was in 2 years ago when I quit and when I logged in I was greeted by people that still remembered me.
Hell even when I log into Pokemon Trading Card game ONLINE, there is a big chat channel at the bottom left of the sceen. where everyone talks and posts trades etc.
Log into SC2. Nada. Barrens.
Sometimes I wish SC2 was more like WoW. You would have a character and roam and shit and would have the ability to play 1v1 through, something like WoW and WoW Arena.
Obviously that a ridiculous amount of development and it would never happen, but a man can dream!
Right now my reason to log into SC2 is to ______________. Exactly, no reason to other than “hey maybe I’ll be a pro” which I don’t even really want to be, and to be honest at this stage of the game it is [almost] impossible.
Why is it “impossible”?
Well people forget one major thing about Esports, at the end of the day it doesn’t matter about your skill, it is how marketable you are. It is about your twitter followers, how many stream views you get, your FB likes, and all that other junk. The guys who have made it, have made it. They have all the tools and connections they need to stay in the business, leave the business, and come back into the business.
Ever hear that Xx is so bad and Yy is so good and you can’t believe Xx hasn’t been kicked from the team yet?
It’s becaause he Yy doesn’t get 1000 viewers on his stream. He gets 50.
If you looked at the SC2 scene, how many actual new comers have “made it.” We had Stephano, Scarlett, gowser, Sasquatch(more on a NA level but still a little popular). Yeah, not much really(I’m sure im forgetting 1-2 sorry)
Whats next?
I don’t know. I am playing LoL more and returning to my pokemon TCG roots. It is definitely more fun than Starcraft at the moment. I am maxing my games of SC2 played at about 3 wins(Usually 5 games). I want to keep my mechanics and game knowledge up but I have no reason to mass games anymore. I am floating around top15-top7 on the Korean Server and that makes me happy.
I would like to reach an equal level of skill or close to it in LoL. It is a very good game, minus the trolls.
We will see. I hope that Blizzard does something about it one day, but I know it won’t be for a while. I am happy what I achieved in SC2, some tournament wins, interviews, sponsors so if that is where my “career” ends then I would be happy with it and wouldn’t change my experience.
Next Editions of Korea and Esports will be just called Esports Thoughts. So watch out for the next installment!
~cheers
