EPTSurface Level
At a basic level, it seems like there's going to be two different environments. The foreign scene and the Korean scene. The rules seem to allow foreigners with citizenship to a foreign country to participate in both by staying in Korea but participating in the qualifiers for foreign events, while Koreans would supposedly be locked down to Korea if they do not jump through some hurdles. The old WCS challenger/premier league system is gone and instead Blizzard will back tournaments run by big organizers like Dreamhack and ESL in their stead, paying for flight accommodations for players that qualify.
My first thought when I saw the list of organizers was, this may end up being a really terrible system for North America. How so? The listed organizers are only Dreamhack and ESL. Dreamhack is awesome and releases their full schedule for events for the whole year way in advance. According to this schedule, the only North American Dreamhack event listed is in Austin, Texas. That's one event. Supposedly, the rest of the events would all be run by ESL then right?
What about Redbull! A very good question. Redbull had been running events, even in 2015, albeit events that were often times focused on Archon mode. So why aren't they a part of the list of organizers. Did Blizzard not reach out to them? This is something that's perplexing me given one of the major e-sports program managers at Redbull was completely oblivious to the new WCS system before it was announced.
Now remember that Apollo and other sources have mentioned that organizers like ESL have been talking with Blizzard and helping them shape the current WCS system for a while. So if Red Bull was totally out of the loop with Blizzard(and with a former Blizzard employee, what the heck is going on? Does Red Bull not have an interest in WCS 2016 or did Blizzard really not think to reach out to one of the biggest potential tournament organizers for Starcraft right now?
Concern number 1: Why is Red Bull not involved with the WCS 2016 system?
Let's move beyond Redbull. ESL has not released their full event schedule as far as I'm aware. So surely they will do the remaining events. My fear here is that historically a majority of the events ESL has done have been in Europe. ESL has done IEM Toronto(twice if you include WCS season 2 finals), IEM New York(thrice although the last one was in 2013) and IEM San Jose(once because the removed Starcraft from the lineup for it in 2015). I hope I'm wrong about this but...
Concern number 2: We will see a very limited number of NA events in 2016.
But that shouldn't matter right? Blizzard is paying for the flights of players who qualify! Technically yes, a few players will have their flights paid for. But with Polt, Violet, Hyda, and maybe Jaedong all still able to compete in WCS as non-residents, the number of available spots suddenly grows pretty thin. Remember that with no WCS, these qualifiers are effectively the life blood for any aspiring NA player to actually play in an event. What's worse is that the few remaining spots will likely be dominated by the same old NA names we've seen like Neeb, puCK, Huk, Scarlett, Major, etc. Rising talent does have an opportunity to break through and qualify, but it's a very slim margin. Comparatively, the old WCS system of 2015 was far better for rising talent to make a name for themselves. With this kind of system, how can a player not already at the top honestly justify spending more time trying to make it as a full time Starcraft pro? It's not just that there's so little money in it. The money that's there is so top heavy that up & coming talent has to somehow go from next to nobody to beating the top players in their region to even get a small piece of the pie. The importance of having more big events IN NA is because the open Bracket provides a larger opportunity for players to make a name for themselves and get that offline tournament experience, even if they don't make it all the way to the top.
Concern number 3: A reduction in opportunities for up & coming talent.
At least Koreans playing in the WCS circuit will be forced to play on the NA server right? Well, the 100 wins a month restriction is very...easily achieved. For these Koreans, 100 wins a month will be child's play as they spend a vast majority of their time playing on the Korean server. Not only that but it will be a short lived incentive. North Americans themselves have a hard time justifying playing on NA because there's very little incentive to do so. Knowing that some koreans will play on it for just 100 wins a month, for likely only one part of the month, is not enough to accomplish anything. As much of a self plug as this will be, the concept for a tournament series I do called Ladder Heroes was made to create a consistent incentive on a weekly basis. The reason why I included weekly incentives and points qualifying toward a monthly finals in the system is so that there would be competition on the ladder every week, not for 6 hours a month. Totalbiscuit himself has said ladder qualifications toward a monthly tournament would be the ideal system, albeit with a lot more money than I have to throw around.
As a side note because I've been told by people to seek Ladder Heroes to be sponsored by Blizzard as a regional cup:
+ Show Spoiler +
So I mentioned Ladder Heroes as something that could work, but probably doesn't have enough money in it right now to do enough. Well what about Blizzard's regional cup sponsorships they mentioned! See if Blizzard will sponsor the event! I have submitted a proposal to Blizzard to see if I could get Ladder Heroes sponsored for a much larger prize pool(and possibly create an EU version), but I haven't heard anything as of yet. Maybe they will get back to me and they've been busy with the holidays but with how slowly Blizzard seems to move on things I'm uncertain if I would even be able to settle on something with them and implement a new "sponsored event" system anytime soon. I'm of course going to keep trying for it but until I hear back, I think it's safe to assume I won't.
Concern 4: The "NA Koreans" will continue to dominate NA players and contribute little to their growth.
A lot of these concerns revolve around the NA scene because this is what I'm most experienced and familiar with. I think enough people are aware of the huge damage the new system will have to the Korean scene given the recent wave of retirement announcements we've heard. I think this new system will actually be great for Europe since the region still has a lot of smaller events to participate in and is a fairly competitive region. But will this help North America at all? What about South America? SEA?
Looking forward
I got involved in the up & coming scene for Starcraft because I feel that it's the hidden lifeblood of the scene. One of the big overlooked factors in creating a sustainable scene. Build up the foundation and work your way up. There are things that I'm looking forward to in WCS 2016 but I have a lot of deep concerns about how things will shape up in the long term. Suffice to say, I'm hoping I'm wrong about assuming ESL won't do many NA events and that Blizzard will be pouring a hell of a lot of support into lots of regional cups. There are so many unanswered questions and at the end of the day, all we can really do is wait, speculate, and hope for the best.
Here's to hoping.
