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Wall of text incoming.
This blog entry will be about the nine greatest players of all time (will add on to the list as time goes by). The players list will be decided by a predetermined criteria upon which these players will be listed in order, so the final list may be different what I already had in mind before I started this blog.
So how do we accurately judge these players whose achievements are sometimes more than a decade apart from one another? How do we objectively assess the various changes the scene had throughout history.
The first thing I shall do is to categorize the different eras according to which tournaments were going on at the time, and how they were regarded at the time.
These are the eras
1) Era of OGN StarLeague and trophy based individual leagues (1999 ~ 2001)
2) Era of OGN StarLeague of KPGA Tour leagues (2002)
3) Era of OGN StarLeague and MSL and multiple team leagues (2003~2004)
4) Era of the ProLeague (2005~2012)
Now the eras are categorized like the following because it would be wrong of me to judge all the great players we had by only counting KeSPA sanctioned leagues we are familiar with as of today. In fact, the only consistent league that can be seen as a "constant" throughout history is the OGN StarLeague, but if I only judge players by their OGN StarLeague performances, I would end up missing out on some of the greatest players of all time such as sAviOr, Bisu, and Nal_rA.
OGN StarLeagues will be the most important league in all of these eras, due to its long history and prestige. The other leagues will be weighted depending on their trophy size, how many players participated in it, and how they were perceived at the time (not how they were perceived later on).
I will make it so that a year's worth of achievements available will be equal in all of the eras, but due to my lack of knowledge about the earlier years where OGN StarLeague had yet to establish itself as the top dog, I will judge the tournaments purely on their cash prizes (data available at YGOSU, a site that has the prize pool of many leagues throughout the era).
Rules of the game.
1) Individual leagues will be ranked so that there are six premiere tournaments available for count each year (with the exception of 2007 where the premiere individual leagues were in shortage). Winning a premiere tournament will count for 32 points, and the points will be halved until a player receives 2 points for getting to the round of 16.
2) I will allocate 32 points to smaller individual leagues and performances in team leagues. There will be no exact science to this rule, but I will try to be as fair as I can. So if a player does amazing at all the non-premiere tournaments, it will roughly be worth the same as winning a premiere individual tournament. This may seem unfair, especially with how the ProLeague increased in importance later on, but I am of the belief that any leagues outside of the premiere leagues such as the OGN StarLeague should not be given too much notice otherwise we might see the likes of Leta or Sea go higher than they should in the rankings.
3) All the eras will have the same amount of total points available, meaning that dominating a single era will not mean more than dominating another era. Sticking to this rule will mean that some leagues will be scored out of context, but I have to this to make it fair for all the different eras.
So here we go.
1999: Even though BoxeR competed and won tournaments in this era, I will not include this era in my rankings due to my lack of knowledge, and incomplete data from this era. Yes this will be detrimental to BoxeR's overall ranking, but I hope by not too much.
2000
Premiere tournaments: 1st KBK Masters, Hanaro OSL, Freechal OSL, 2nd KBK Masters, WCGC2000 Korea, 2000 KIGL King of Kings
Extra tournaments: 2000 PKO King of Kings (1st place worth 16 points), OGN King of Kings 2000 (1st place worth 8 points), Crezio 8 Player Battle (1st place worth 8 points)
2001
Premiere tournaments: Hanbitsoft OSL, 3rd Game-Q Starleague, Coca-Cola OSL, KBK 2001 Jeju Festival, SKY 2001 OSL, WCG 2001
Extra tournaments: 2001 ZZGame Invite (1st place worth 16 points), GGTV StarWars Episode 1 (1st place worth 8 points), GGTV StarWars Episode 2 (1st place worth 8 points)
2002
Premiere tournaments: The three OGN StarLeagues and the three KPGA Tours
Extra tournaments: KT King of Kings (1st place worth 8 points), 2nd GhemTV StarLeague (1st place worth 8 points), WCG 2002 (1st place worth 16 points)
2003
Premiere tournaments: The three OGN StarLeagues and 4th KPGA Tour, and the following two MSLs
Extra tournaments: 2003 KT-KTF Premier League Championship (1st place worth 16 points), 3rd GhemTV StarLeague (1st place worth 8 points), KTF EVERCup Proleague/KeMongSa Team League/LifeZone Team League/pmang Proleague/LG IBM Team League (Yes there were five team leagues going on, and I'll pretend that it's a single year long season of ProLeague, and the player with the highest number of wins from all these leagues will be given 8 points, and any player with less wins will be given points that's proportional, as in if they have half the number of wins they will be rewarded with 4 points)
2004
Premiere tournaments: The three OGN StarLeagues, and the three MSLs
Extra tournaments: SKY2004 Proleague R1/Tucson Team League /SKY2004 Proleague R2/MBCMovies Team League/SKY2004 Proleague R3 (The player with the highest number of wins from all these leagues will be given 32 points due to the increased prestige of the ProLeague, and any player with less wins will be given points that's proportional, as in if they have half the number of wins of the player with the highest number of wins they will be rewarded with 16 points)
2005
Premiere tournaments: 2004 KT-KTF Premier League, the three OGN StarLeagues, and two MSLs that happened this year due to YATGK MSL taking too goddamned long
Extra tournaments: SKY 2005 Proleague R1/SKY 2005 Proleague R2 (The player with the highest number of wins from all these leagues will be given 32 points, and any player with less wins will be given points that's proportional, as in if they have half the number of wins they will be rewarded with 16 points)
2006
Premiere tournaments: The three OGN StarLeagues, and the three MSLs
Extra tournaments: SKY 2006 Proleague R1/SKY 2006 Proleague R2 (The player with the highest number of wins from all these leagues will be given 32 points, and any player with less wins will be given points that's proportional)
2007
Premiere tournaments: The two OGN StarLeagues, and the two MSLs (the shortage of points due to the lack of OGN StarLeagues and MSLs will be filled up by extra tournaments)
Extra tournaments: Shinhan 2007 Proleague R1/Shinhan 2007 Proleague R2 (The player with the highest number of wins from all these leagues will be given 32 points), Shinhan Masters (1st place worth 21 points), Seoul e-Sports Festival (1st place worth 21 points), WCG 2007 (1st place worth 22 points)
2008 Part 1
Premiere tournaments: Arena MSL, and Bacchus OSL/EVER 2008 OSL
Extra tournaments: Shinhan 2008 Proleague (The player with the highest number of wins from all these leagues will be given 16 points, due to the short duration of the league, and any player with less wins will be given points that's proportional)
2008/2009
Premiere tournaments: The three OGN StarLeagues, and the three MSLs
Extra tournaments: Shinhan 2008/2009 Proleague (The player with the highest number of wins from all these leagues will be given 32 points, and any player with less wins will be given points that's proportional)
2009/2010
Premiere tournaments: The three OGN StarLeagues, and the three MSLs
Extra tournaments: Shinhan 2009/2010 Proleague (The player with the highest number of wins from all these leagues will be given 32 points, and any player with less wins will be given points that's proportional)
2010 onwards (Things get a little iffy here)
Premiere tournaments: The three OGN StarLeagues, and the two MSLs (the second time we have to break the rule of the six premiere tournament rule, due to professional Brood War dying out)
Extra tournaments: Shinhan 2010/2011 Proleague (The player with the highest number of wins from all these leagues will be given 32 points), WCG 2010 (1st place worth 16 points)
As you can see, all the eras are weighted more or less equally (which era has 224 points available), except for the first half of 2008, where 112 points are available due to the era being half the duration of the other eras, and in the final moments of the Brood War scene where there were only 208 points available, despite the era lasting roughly two years. I simply couldn't hand out points for the bastardized hybrid ProLeague or any of the joke leagues to fill the gap. Also, any data from 1999 will not be counted (only affecting BoxeR out of the truly great players)
Now we've got all this over and done with let's rate the players. I will add each one over time.
Players under question.
1) NaDa
2002: 101 points
2003: 92 points
2004: 106 points
2005: 42 points
2006: 67 points
2007: 30 points
2008: 11 points
2008/2009: 13 points
2009/2010: 3 points
Total: 465 points
2) Flash
2007: 33 points
2008: 60 points
2008/2009: 44 points
2009/2010: 192 points
2010~: 91 points
Total: 420 points
3) Jaedong
2006: 34 points
2007: 81 points
2008: 30 points
2008/2009: 106 points
2009/2010: 113 points
2010~: 45 points
Total: 409 points
4) BoxeR
2000: 32 points
2001: 144 points
2002: 83 points
2003: 32 points
2004: 36 points
2005: 40 points
2006: 10 points
2007: 10 points
2008: 5 points
2008/2009: 1 point
2009/2010: 1 point
Total: 394 points
5) Stork
2005: 38 points
2006: 15 points
2007: 95 points
2008: 29 points
2008/2009: 68 points
2009/2010: 31 points
2010~: 47 points
Total: 323 points
6) iloveoov
2003: 64 points
2004: 128 points
2005: 74 points
2006: 14 points
2007: 12 points
2008: 0 points
2008/2009: 2 points
Total: 294 points
7) sAviOr
2004: 23 points
2005: 60 points
2006: 142 points
2007: 40 points
2008: 2 points
2008/2009: 13 points
2009/2010: 2 points
Total: 282 points
8) Bisu
2005: 4 points
2006: 43 points
2007: 70 points
2008: 16 points
2008/2009: 81 points
2009/2010: 17 points
2010~: 34 points
Total: 265 points
9) July
2003: 1 point
2004: 72 points
2005: 108 points
2006: 17 points
2007: 13 points
2008: 34 points
2008/2009: 14 points
Total: 259 points
My criteria may have not been perfect, but I do think it does reward players who have been excellent across all stages of the game throughout the years. BoxeR may have not blossomed much during the modern era of the game, but his peak year was one of the most dominant, and he really had a long career to rack up all the points. Flash had quite a short career, but that one insane season he had boosts him up to the number two spot. Stork never had a year where he achieved three digit figures unlike the other eight, but his consistency throughout the years gets him quite high up the list.
Players whose careers I'll try to assess once I get some sleep are as follows:
1) yellOw
2) Nal_rA
3) ChoJJa
 
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For those of you who are interested in ranking players purely by OSLs and MSLs, instead of the weighted system I put in. Here's a post done by a poster on PGR21 sometime in 2011, before the hybrid season kicked in (therefore not including the final three individual leagues (which would alter the list slightly).
http://www.pgrer.net/pb/pb.php?id=free2&no=44007&category=1&sn1=on&divpage=6&sn=on&keyword=信主&select_arrange=hit
This post is more intricate than mine, as it calculates obscure placements like 3rd or 5th (I just calculated 3rd as a round of four, and 5th as a round of 8). According to this poster, the ranking for OSL/MSL is as follows (I've added the results of the last three Brood War individual leagues):
1) NaDa
2) Flash
3) Jaedong
4) BoxeR
5) iloveoov
6) sAviOr
7) July
8) Bisu
9) Stork
10) YellOw
Now. The list slightly differs from mine after the first four (which tells me these four stand out whichever method you use to rank them as long as it's not too out of whack). However, the emphasis on OSL/MSL only drops Stork by quite a lot, while rewarding clutch players like July. My criteria puts much more emphasis on performing well across all platforms, and rewards consistency a little more.
There's a lot of criticism that can be made about my criteria, but keep in mind that it's really hard to balance out the differences from all the different eras into a manageable point system. I don't necessarily believe that the best performing team league player of say, 2004 (NaDa) was as impressive as Bisu's ProLeague performance in 2010/2011, but at the same time, I definitely don't believe that players like Leta who hit nearly 50 wins in a ProLeague year was twice as impressive as the team league beasts of the past (iloveoov, NaDa and Jaedong) who could only hit 20~30 wins due to the massive limitations in games available.
One thing is clear to me though. No matter how you cut it. Most number of wins. Most number of titles. Most number of appearances. NaDa stands above all.
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List looks about right, I'm fine with this. And ignoring the hybrid ProLeague is the right decision.
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watching july FPVODs when he had 500 apm, that guy is crazy good... JD is like a surgeon though... if only we could combine them, zerg would be unstoppable
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As promised.
10) Nal_rA
2003: 85 points
2004: 41 points
2005: 30 points
2006: 42 points
2007: 17 points
2008: 3 points
Total: 218 points
11) YellOw
2001: 29 points
2002: 70 points
2003: 42 points
2004: 18 points
2005: 22 points
2006: 10 points
2007: 2 points
2008: 0 point
2008/2009: 1 point
2009/2010: 5 points
2010~: 1 point
Total: 200 points
12) GoRush
2000: 32 points
2001: 10 points
2002: 0 point
2003: 10 points
2004: 49 points
2005: 46 points
2006: 23 points
2007: 13 points
2008: 1 point
2008/2009: 4 points
2009/2010: 6 points
2010~: 2 points
Total: 196 points
13) Reach
2001: 10 points
2002: 52 points
2003: 18 points
2004: 44 points
2005: 46 points
2006: 10 points
2007: 4 points
2008: 0 point
2008/2009: 7 points
2009/2010: 3 points
2010~: 0 points
Total: 194 points
14) XellOs
2002: 4 points
2003: 52 points
2004: 43 points
2005: 36 points
2006: 25 points
2007: 16 points
2008: 7 points
2008/2009: 1 point
2009/2010: 1 point
2010~: 1 point
Total: 186 points
15) FanTaSy
2007: 2 points
2008: 1 point
2008/2009: 59 points
2009/2010: 38 points
2010~: 84 points
Total: 184 points
16) ChoJJa
2002: 28 points
2003: 42 points
2004: 27 points
2005: 48 points
2006: 33 points
2007: 5 points
Total: 183 points
17) JangBi
2007: 17 points
2008: 25 points
2008/2009: 50 points
2009/2010: 19 points
2010~: 72 points
Total: 183 points
18) Anytime
2004: 9 points
2005: 60 points
2006: 37 points
2007: 34 points
2008: 5 points
2008/2009: 12 points
2009/2010: 6 points
2010~: 3 points
Total: 166 points
19) Sea
2005: 12 points
2006: 28 points
2007: 35 points
2008: 12 points
2008/2009: 22 points
2009/2010: 26 points
2010~: 24 points
Total: 159 points
20) Kal
2006: 2 points
2007: 21 points
2008: 31 points
2008/2009: 32 points
2009/2010: 40 points
2010~: 30 points
Total: 156 points
21) Calm
2006: 8 points
2007: 12 points
2008: 5 points
2008/2009: 56 points
2009/2010: 39 points
2010~: 31 points
Total: 151 points
22) Free
2005: 2 points
2006: 17 points
2007: 36 points
2008: 13 points
2008/2009: 31 points
2009/2010: 32 points
2010~: 14 points
Total: 145 points
23) Midas
2003: 2 points
2004: 14 points
2005: 40 points
2006: 35 points
2007: 17 points
2008: 11 points
2008/2009: 4 points
2009/2010: 14 points
2010~: 7 points
Total: 144 points
I expected YellOw to be higher, but I discovered that his performances to be pretty lackluster in any of the team league stages, considering I'm not rating any 2v2 performances. It was the same for ChoJJa as well, apart from his very early days where he was pretty beast like in MBC Team Leagues, he was pretty mediocre in the ProLeague, which made his overall rating lower than I expected. Nal_rA was very streaky in individual leagues, but his sturdy team league performances allow him to place top ten greatest players of all time according to my criteria. FanTaSy has an incredibly short career but his amazing performances in OGN StarLeagues (I must say I suspect that he benefited slightly from the hybrid era, somewhat like JangBi) allowed him to get more points than ChoJJa, one of the greatest zergs of all time.
For those interested, here are the best team league performers for each era.
2003: iloveoov with 26 wins
2004: NaDa with 21 wins
2005: NaDa/Stork/Midas with 16 wins
2006: Jaedong with 17 wins
2007: Anytime with 33 wins
2008: Flash with 17 wins
2008/2009: Flash/Jaedong with 54 wins
2009/2010: Flash with 57 wins
2010~: Bisu with 66 wins
As you can see, in 2003~2004, the multiple team leagues allowed for greater number of games, especially since MBC Team Leagues had an All Kill format. The number of games got reduced in the 3 day ProLeague era of 2005~2006. Then it roughly doubled in number as it changed into a 5 day format in 2007~2008. The introduction of the Winner's League and the year long format allowed the best players to achieve numbers unreachable in the previous eras.
Of course, there are more players I'd like to rate. However, I'm pretty certain without actually assessing their careers that this is the greatest 14 Brood War players of all time if judged by my criteria. [Edit] I was wrong, I assessed the careers of GoRush and Reach, and found out their accumulative career points ranks them above the likes of XellOs, FanTaSy, and ChoJJa. I then went over the careers of the likes of JangBi, Sea, Calm, Kingdom, Goodfriend, GARIMTO, and Anytime. I also expanded the list to the top 20 greatest players. I keep being wrong about the list being finished as I review more players.
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On January 15 2016 08:20 Endymion wrote:
watching july FPVODs when he had 500 apm, that guy is crazy good... JD is like a surgeon though... if only we could combine them, zerg would be unstoppable
I love July, but he was a micromanagement based player, and Jaedong is basically July on steroids. If I could create the perfect zerg player, I'd combine the following players.
Base statistics: Jaedong (he was as perfect as a zerg could get)
1) Zergling movement (not micromanagement, but how to use them): EffOrt
I loved how EffOrt utilized zergling to keep the opponent afraid, and to keep them guessing. It was kind of sAviOr or YellOw-esque how he mind gamed the enemy. Jaedong had by far the best micromanagement of zerglings, but add the mind play of EffOrt he would have been even more beast-like
2) Queen usage/versus terran mechanic play: SoulKey
As perfect as his versus bionic play was, Jaedong was slightly lacking in his adaptation to terran mechanic play, and in this respect was lacking in comparison to the newer generation of zergs such as SoulKey
3) Air battle capability in zerg versus zerg
As beast-like as Jaedong was in zerg versus zerg (at one point in his career he had an overall win rate of overall 80% circa ~2008), he started to lose air battles versus top notch zergs of his time, and I'd like to replace his air battle capability of someone like Shine or Modesty.
4) Advanced metagame usage of sAviOr
sAviOr wrecked everyone with builds and style of play that was probably a year or two ahead of its time. While Jaedong did have his contributions to the zerg race in terms of builds, he was not as good as sAviOr in this respect. Players like iloveoov, sAviOr all had insane peaks because of how ahead of the curve, not necessarily because they were actually good players under any circumstances.
5) Mind games of Calm
Jaedong did get considerably better at this, had enough guile which he had to use to overcome obstacles during the latter stages of his career, compared to his absolute mechanical peak in circa 2007/2008 where he simply out-muscled even the best players of his era such as Flash/Bisu/Stork even though he got mind played a bunch. Jaedong was always beast-like during practice/without specific preparation, but I'm not sure if he got even better if he was given time to study for a certain opponent. It always felt like that part of his game wasn't as good as his actual skills at the game, although te gap did catch up a lot later on (also because I feel like his skill advantage over other players decreased drastically).
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an expro z friend of mine told me that the top z consider zvz the purest zerg matchup, and that only those who understand zvz truly understand zerg, while zvt and zvp are just extensions of zvz.. with that in mind it's easy to see why JD is such a beast ^^
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On January 15 2016 17:53 Letmelose wrote:
3) Air battle capability in zerg versus zerg
As beast-like as Jaedong was in zerg versus zerg (at one point in his career he had an overall win rate of overall 80% circa ~2008), he started to lose air battles versus top notch zergs of his time, and I'd like to replace his air battle capability of someone like Shine or Modesty.
wut
i wouldn't replace JD with anyone when it comes to muta/scourge dogfight
now his protege Killer maybe but not back then.
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The top 4 out of 5 are Terran players. Just let that sink in. It's not rocket science that there is a large advantage for Terran BW players at the top progamer level (TvT least volatile-mirror, TvZ huge advantage, TvP equality, etc.)
This is why I regard JD as #1 in this list. For what he did against his disadvantaged position deserves a lot of respect. Or other Protoss players who managed to leave a mark on BW history.
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On January 16 2016 05:37 parkufarku wrote:
The top 4 out of 5 are Terran players. Just let that sink in. It's not rocket science that there is a large advantage for Terran BW players at the top progamer level (TvT least volatile-mirror, TvZ huge advantage, TvP equality, etc.)
This is why I regard JD as #1 in this list. For what he did against his disadvantaged position deserves a lot of respect. Or other Protoss players who managed to leave a mark on BW history.
Stork plays Protoss. oov plays Terran, so maybe 4/6 is what you're talking about?
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On January 16 2016 07:22 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On January 16 2016 05:37 parkufarku wrote:
The top 4 out of 5 are Terran players. Just let that sink in. It's not rocket science that there is a large advantage for Terran BW players at the top progamer level (TvT least volatile-mirror, TvZ huge advantage, TvP equality, etc.)
This is why I regard JD as #1 in this list. For what he did against his disadvantaged position deserves a lot of respect. Or other Protoss players who managed to leave a mark on BW history. Stork plays Protoss. oov plays Terran, so maybe 4/6 is what you're talking about?
Yup, misread. Still doesn't detract from my point. 4 out of 6 is huge.
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wow, I expected bisu and yellow to be a little higher
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Damn, this is come great information!
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On January 16 2016 09:16 Cricketer12 wrote:
wow, I expected bisu and yellow to be a little higher
Both have a history of being quite mediocre in team league settings for the majority of their career and failed to get easy points. Yellow basically never had an outstanding Team League or ProLeague performance in his entire career to accompany his good body of work in individual leagues. Bisu had mediocre ProLeague performances in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009/2010 (all less than half the number of wins than the ProLeague best performer of that season). Bisu also suffers from being quite a bad OGN StarLeague performer, and his insane MSL performances and two years of ProLeague greatness isn't enough to overtake the likes of Stork (who has quite a similar individual league performance according to my point system to Bisu due to his longevity and consistency), and whose excellent ProLeague performances in 2005, 2007, and decent performances (over half the wins of the best performing player) in 2008, 2008/2009, 2009/2010, 2010/2011 basically made him a "greater" player according to my criteria. Keep in mind that my scoring system rewards excellence over the years more than the few great peaks, which is also why iloveoov is quite low in terms of ranking despite his absolutely awesome performances at his absolute peak.
For those of you who are surprised by the respective placing of Stork and Bisu (I didn't rate Bisu that highly anyways, but Stork coming 5th was something I didn't expect), this is how the scoring breaks down.
Stork
OGN StarLeague: 120 points (For those wondering 32 points for 1st place, 16 points for 2nd place, and it keeps halving until I give 2 points for a round of 16)
MSL: 38 points
ProLeague: 32 + 11 + 31 + 11 + 21 + 17 + 18 = 141 points
Other tournaments: 25 points (For his WCG 2007 win, and round of 8 at Seoul e-Sports Festival, probably a huge beneficiary of the lack of premiere tournaments in 2007, which made me include minor individual leagues to compensate for the 64 point deficit created by the four OGN StarLeague/MSL titles available instead of the usual six)
Bisu
OGN StarLeague: 40 points
MSL: 120 points
ProLeague: 4 + 9 + 10 + 6 + 31 + 13 + 32 = 105 points
Other tournaments: 0 points
Even if you take away the "minor tournament" points I gave out in 2007 season to even out the total number of points available, Stork leads by 299 points to 265 points.
This is due to the following reasons,
1) Bisu was an incredibly streaky player, as in he was capable of winning tournaments, but dropping out really early on, which basically gave away free points you can gather just by being relevant in the scene for a long time. This is showcased by Bisu having only 16 post-round of 16 performances, compared to 24 post-round of 16 performance from Stork (despite having a very mediocre MSL career in general). Bisu was either clutch beast in finals, or just a non-factor in some of the seasons. While that kind of a career is good for creating a strong impression upon the casual viewer, over the long haul, Bisu really failed to get enough freebie points in the individual league for a player of his trophy count.
2) Like I mentioned above, Bisu only had two years' worth of being a relevant ProLeague player in his 7 year stint in the ProLeague era (I'm not counting the hybrid season). Stork was the main driving force behind his team for the vast majority of his career, except for in 2006 when he was playing World of Warcraft, and in 2008 when JangBi replaced him as the ace of the team. While it may be a point of contention that dominating the ProLeague in 2005, or in 2007 like Stork did may not be as impressive as Bisu's best ProLeague seasons, so should be given less points, remember that Stork got the MVP trophies, team trophies, and the prestige of being a cut above the other mediocre ProLeague players. He just happened to play well in an era where you simply couldn't get 50 ProLeague wins no matter how godlike you were. And as ProLeague centric the latter eras of Starcraft was, always keep in mind that the absolute peak of the professional Brood War scene came sometime around 2005 (the insane viewership of So1, the famous crowd of Gwangalli we all came to be familiar with), and Stork was the best ProLeague player of that era despite being a rookie.
In summary, Bisu has very little to offer as a GOAT apart from his MSL trophy count, and two years of ProLeague excellence, and this is pretty similar to iloveoov or sAviOr, whose careers were also very limited apart from their absolute peaks. The difference was, iloveoov and sAviOr absolutely crushed their competition while they were in god-mode, and raked in huge points to make up for what they lacked in consistency. Bisu's peak alone did not manage to "carry" him in terms of points like iloveoov and sAviOr's peaks did.
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im always amazed by the amount of passion and knowledge korean BW fans have of their scene and legends (you are korean right?). i often see similar lengthy posts/lists made by like minded fans on the korean forums like ygosu. awesome!
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On January 16 2016 05:37 parkufarku wrote:
The top 4 out of 5 are Terran players. Just let that sink in. It's not rocket science that there is a large advantage for Terran BW players at the top progamer level (TvT least volatile-mirror, TvZ huge advantage, TvP equality, etc.)
This is why I regard JD as #1 in this list. For what he did against his disadvantaged position deserves a lot of respect. Or other Protoss players who managed to leave a mark on BW history.
This blog is about the objective status of the greatest careers available for assessment in Brood War history. It has nothing to do with how I rate these players in terms of "potential" or if I think they are the best or not. So despite terrans being the most blessed race in the game, and protoss being the least blessed, I'm not here to talk to talk about the ifs and buts. There are so many outside factors that have influenced these players careers, and we all have in our minds biases that lets us notice one factor that was "unfair" to a player, while turning a blind eye to the unfair factors that may have blessed the players who we are more fond of. I mean, forget about the racial imbalance issue, what if we take into account the following factors?
1) Teams. Should we give extra points to players who had to play on a bad team with lackluster teammates? July was basically giving up individual league practice in his absolute prime, and sharing his prize money to sustain his non-sponsored team with really bad practice partners, playing 2 versus 2, playing off-race to maximize his game appearance in the ProLeague, and was targeted heavily by the opponents in terms of specific match-up specialists and builds because every team knew that July was the main threat in the team. What if the likes of July, or Anytime didn't burn out turning their bottom feeder team into a championship material team? What if Bisu was forced to keep playing on MBC Game where they didn't give any incentives to win in the ProLeague like SK Telecom T1 did? What if Sea didn't get jaded by the "don't let the team do too well in the ProLeague otherwise we might be forced to pay the players more" policy that MBC Game had, and kept up his monstrous ProLeague performances deep into his career?
2) Outside factors. What if sAviOr wasn't so into pussy and kept practicing the game? What if BoxeR didn't spend so much time being an ambassador for the professional gaming scene and focused purely on maximizing his trophy count? What if the professional Brood War didn't get ended prematurely by the force feeding of Starcraft 2 in the twilight years of the scene? Would Flash overtake NaDa as the greatest? Was FanTaSy that great, or was the hybrid-league letting him get ground on Flash who may have been more focused on Stacraft 2? What if all the bracket stage trickery OGN (expanding the OGN StarLeague to 24 players conveniently as BoxeR failed to make the final 16) pulled to milk the star power BoxeR as much as possible didn't happen? What if Bisu had the looks of EffOrt, and didn't get picked up by POS like EffOrt got dropped by them because he wasn't good looking enough, and delayed his debut to the scene? What if zerg-versus-zerg wasn't such a catastrophe in terms of viewership that both broadcasting stations wanted to avoid it at all costs? What if NaDa wasn't influenced negatively by the huge fandom of BoxeR who didn't like him overtaking BoxeR as the best player in the scene, and actually got praised for his skills allowing him to blossom even more as a player? What if July wasn't so fat and had more fan-girls and became the next franchise star of the OGN broadcast with his exciting style of play and high skill and got a similar "special" treatment like BoxeR?
There are so many factors influencing the careers of these players both in and out of game that even the most stupid things like how tall you are, how good-looking you are, which sponsors you had, which style of play you have, and which players you were friendly with, all influenced these players just as much as, if not more so than the inherent racial imbalance (which I always argued was there). This is why we all have different ideas about who the best player was.
However, this is not the blog to discuss such issues. If we are to abandon the objective basis I attempted to create in order to rank these players' careers and start throwing in out own personal views on what could and should have been, we might as well be discussing the midichlorian count of Jaedong at that point (by the way, even on those vague imaginary terms, I still regard NaDa to be the best of them all)
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On January 17 2016 01:28 Probemicro wrote:
im always amazed by the amount of passion and knowledge korean BW fans have of their scene and legends (you are korean right?). i often see similar lengthy posts/lists made by like minded fans on the korean forums like ygosu. awesome!
Yes, I'm Korean, and there were so many insightful posts that have molded and shaped my views on the players on defunct sites like FOMOS. I spent my time trying to convey some of those ideas during my time on Team Liquid, but I never could get a "read" like some really great posters on PGR21/FOMOS/DCinside.
While the posters on Team Liquid had much less understanding about the overall ecosystem of the scene, this site did have a good read on which players were good (as in pure gaming skills, not as a professional gamer), because the posters on this site in general watched more replays, which is why this site was quicker to jump on the sAviOr bus back when he was IPXZerg, whereas as a FighterForum user (a stronghold for July fans back then), I was sure that July was the superior player. So I just tried to input my ideas about the various contexts of the professional Brood War scene which I felt was somewhat lacking on the site.
YGOSU has the best of both worlds as in it has insightful posters about the professional scene, and much replay analysis and pure strategical discussion of the game, but I've always been more of a follower of the professional scene, and was into breaking down the context and reasoning behind why the professional scene ticked the way it did, rather than having good pure strategical gaming theory you need to be a productive YGOSU poster. I wouldn't compare myself to an analytical YGOSU poster, as my gaming theory really is deficient, but what I lack in theory, I make up for in passion for the game, and spending many hours over hypothetical topics.
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On January 17 2016 05:22 Bill Murray wrote:
Bisu = way too low
I personally believe that NaDa, Flash, Jaedong, BoxeR, iloveoov are sAviOr are a cut above Bisu in terms of their careers no matter which way you cut it. The only way you can argue that Bisu had a career that was more productive some of the older legends is if you believe that achievements in the modern era to be "worth" more than the previous eras, in which case this topic should be ended right then and there. Whoever has the best performance towards the most recent era of Starcraft becomes the best, in which case it's Flash, Jaedong, then Bisu.
If the above is not true, I guess it leaves us with Stork, in which case it's just one guy placed above Bisu. I've already explained why Stork had more points according to my system, and the only way we can swing the balance in favour of Bisu without rewarding being good in one era more than another, is by rewarding more points for getting 1st place. We all have different philosophies when it comes to deciding exactly how much a 1st place finish is worth compared to 2nd place, round of four, or a round of sixteen finish. I decided to double the points as each round passed by so that consistency would be rewarded adequately so that players like GARIMTO, a player whose career outside of his two OGN StarLeague victories is almost next to non-existent wouldn't be ranked above players whose overall body of work was superior in my eyes.
So which one is it? Do you believe that some eras should be allocated more points? Or do you believe that the point system for the individual leagues should be more top heavy? Is it both? How would you suggest we change the system according to your philosophy?
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