A decade of SC2: 2013 Blizzard Great Experiment

What’s the new HOTS stuff?
The expansion single-player campaign promised to follow up on Wings of Liberty story by shifting the focus from the cigars-chewing marines of the Terran to the Queen of Blades. What transpired was a more character-driven RTS campaign that left squarely behind the semi-Shakespearean narrative of Starcraft 1 and Brood War and fully embraced the B-movie mantra of the new trilogy. This time Kerrigan was not the duplicitous power-hungry leader of an all-engulfing swarm menacing to wipe civilization from the galaxy, but instead, a shining beacon of light for all, fighting for rightful revenge and liberty against the tyrannic Mengsk and the new “Hybrid” race. The latter now playing the role of the ultimate menace, as the zergs could now have a harmonious place alongside the rest of the races of the galaxy, as exemplified by the rekindling of Kerrigan’s human-life romance with Raynor and her newfound friendship with the Protoss Zeratul. That narrative orientation was reflected in the gameplay, HOTS single player is less interested in presenting the players with strategic puzzles as it is in giving them a fun and fresh set of experiences. Kerrigan’s progressively overpowered abilities cleave through enemies like papers and an impressive set of variations on multiplayer units allow players to create absurdly strong armies without giving too much thoughts to the balance difficulty of the campaign.

The multiplayer also saw some novelties, starting with reworking the matchmaking UI, but the game stayed mostly in line with WOL. Seven new units were introduced, the Widow mine and the Hellbat for the Terran, the Swarm Host and the Viper for the Zerg and the Oracle, Tempest and Mothership Core for the Protoss. While all had their impact at different points in time, it was undoubtedly the latest that was the biggest game changer. The Mothership Core (MSC) forced everyone to completely rethink the way to approach the protoss matchups and affected every opening from blink stalkers all-ins to nexus first builds.

But, neither the ‘‘will-they won’t-they’’ of a space sheriff with shoulders bigger than a gorilla and a slightly genocidal alien bug-lady, nor the possibility to defend two-pronged drop attacks on a low stalkers count affected the trajectory of Starcraft 2 esport nearly as much as Blizzard great experiment, the creation of the modern WCS circuit.


The World Championship Series
While I expect a good number of my readers are already well acquainted with the World Championship Series of Starcraft 2 of 2013 and onward, some may have only joined us in the last few years, so to explain the bases of the format I’ll let Mike Morhaime himself enlighten you. For the rest, I invite you to note, for the future, the assurance of the then Blizzard CEO presenting a system designed to last years if not decades, but that would in the end see major overhauls almost every year.



The WCS was at the time, the most ambitious esport project the world had ever seen, starting concurrently with Riot’s foray into a more hands-on organization of lol competition. Plenty of video game publishers had thrown buckets of money into tournaments for their games in the hope to sell more copies, but Blizzard was the first company to make massive investments in the hope to shape the competitive scene as its own, distinct, product, venturing into the uncharted role of tournament organizer, broadcasters, competition legislator and accountable authority figure.

The new WCS circuit was not created in a vacuum, it was a response to some of the shortcomings that were considered to have held back Starcraft 2 full potential during Wings of Liberty. The Blizzard team was open about these challenges, for the WCS to be called a success, it needed to accomplish two major goals.


First, it needed to organize a scene made of disparate events running concurrently under a single system, to give clarity and coherence to the ensemble and create storylines that could stand the test of time





That problem would be solved by creating a yearlong circuit under a united brand and by bringing the biggest organizations into the WCS circuit, including the Korean leagues, into it, and by making everything culminate into a single world championship. The WCS system would also try to integrate the rest of Starcraft activities as a second layer of its system by awarding WCS points to side events if they respected certain criteria and forbidding organizers to run their events parallel to WCS events. While Blizzard would rely on others to run for the day-to-day broadcast, they would also, although without bringing too much attention to it, become somewhat of a financial backer of the SC2 world, paying hefty amounts of money to their European, Korean, and American partners to run event on their behalf. This, in addition to the imposition of broadcasting and diffusion standards, would assure consistency in the quality of the product, while maintaining an image of self-sustainability and profitability to the Starcraft ecosystem.


Secondly, the WCS needed to propose a solution to Starcraft 2 fundamental imbalance, a concentration of talent in South Korea and fans largely based in the Western world. To make a product inviting for viewers, it needed to make the competition in Europe and America on par with what was going on in Korea without falling into the trap of the flight-in flight-out Koreans that had come to define late WOL.

That meant standardizing the WCS regions, not only regarding the matter of the tournament format, every region copying the GSL format of code-B (qualifiers), code-A and Up-and-Down (challenger), and Code S (premier), but also regarding prize money and WCS points distribution. Despite an expected uneven skill level between the regions, Blizzard made sure the competitions would be virtually identical. The second big decision was to forgo region locking in favor of an open system, but with players having to choose a region and stick to it. Having witnessed others like NASL fail spectacularly by trying to create mainstream foreign-centric tournaments and having themselves seen the limitation of such an idea at the 2012 World Championship Final, Blizzard concluded that letting Koreans come to the West was a necessary component to make each WCS region be able to stand on its own.







They would find in Kespa an unlikely ally in this effort. Playing in WCS America or Europe meant not only abandoning the GSL/OSL but also clashing with Proleague schedule and as such barely appearing on Korean broadcasts in general. A rather uninviting offer for the sponsors of the Kespa teams frequently exclusive to their country. Consequently, almost no Kespa player would play outside of Korea regularly, limiting the Korean pressure on the outside world.


If those were the two overt goals that the WCS systems had to attain, there was a third goal that would come to define the actions of Blizzard entertainment as the driving force in SC2 esport. One that has seemingly little logistical or direct financial implication for the California-based company, but that would be laid upon them by a weird combination of modern loyalty marketing tactics, a growing sense of ownership and entitlement toward corporate entity by part of the consumers, and the new imperatives of the media world they world entering. The WCS system would need to ensure the health and sustainability of Starcraft 2 esport in the best way possible. Note “the best” way, not the most lucrative or even necessarily the most popular, but the fairest, the most exciting, the most transparent way, the one that assured a future for professional Starcraft 2 outside of the strict constraints of financial interest.

With the rise of Brood Lords-Infestors at the end of WOL and the development of Hearth of the Swarm, fans around the world had taken Blizzard as directly responsible for the bad state of the competitive environment and as having an obligation toward them and the pro-players to make the game not only more balanced but a more marketable and attractive esport product. With the creation of the new version of the World Championship Series, Blizzard was about to push this relationship with fans and spectators even further. It would take, willingly or not, responsibility for the entire SC2 ecosystem. By entering the esport world, the company became a public figure that fans quickly deemed accountable to their demands.

It was of course nothing new for fans to decry an organization for a badly run tournament or go on lengthy Blizzard forum rant about balance, but the novelty was that now everything would lay at the feet of Blizzard; from stream numbers to qualifiers mishaps, from the race of the champion to their actual Race, from broadcasting partners worried about the profitability of their venture to the day to day income of the North-American semi-pro, from a team disbanding to the strength of the ladders and the number of barcodes. These would no longer be separate issues, but interconnected realities all pointing back to the sole conductor of Starcraft 2.

The irony of the situation can hardly be lost on anyone. While Blizzard employee were working in an environment where sexual assaults were legion in near silence, professional SC2 players would need to be treated with the utmost fairness and respect, while World of Warcraft continued to push further and further an economic system designed to pray on so-called “whales” with micro-transaction in an already outrageously expensive game, the prize pool distribution of tournaments would be scrutinized, needing not only to respect certain moral criteria, but also take into account the healthy growth of the overall ecosystem and while they could increase their reliance on subsidiary and contractual workers as a way to gain more flexibility toward their workforce and facilitate firing in general indifference, the public would demand that every parties get thoroughly consulted and included within Blizzard esport plans and would be aggrieved when it felt that the well being of some had not been fairly taken into consideration, be it big tournament organizers, grassroots organizations, groups of players, the fans themselves, or even the whole ecosystem. Cynical minds could be quick to point out the hypocrisy inherent to such an attitude, but I instead chose to see it as a refusal of the Starcraft 2 community to let go of its grasp on the game and the way it would shape the lives of the people impacted by it, a refusal to let it all in the hand of shareholders and executives. Say what you will about 2000 words essay falling on deaf ears or the toxic wasteland that some of these debates have created, I have never, in all my years on the Internet, seen a subject that was discussed with the same dept, persistence, and yes, even intellectual honesty, as the well being of the Starcraft 2 competitive scene and the necessary steps Blizzard had to take to ensure it.

So. It is with these lofty goals, and the millions of dollars invested, in mind that Blizzard launched SC2’s second expansion into the world. Now enough with the background talk, time to enter the thick of it.

Growing pain
The Blizzard esport team quickly ran into problems that inevitably come with the ambition to start and administrate a global competitive circuit.

First and foremost, the question of who would participate in this new WCS would need to be addressed. WCS 2013 would come to be remembered as having no region lock, this is not exactly right. Players were asked to choose a region in which they would have to play for the rest of the year, but with the WCS circuit announcement coming late into the year (in April) many players had just a few days to decide if they wanted to play in Korea or somewhere else, as GSL (now WCS Korea) code-A was just around the corner, and some were even already qualified for code-S. In response to that problem, Blizzard added a caveat to their rules. They would allow for a single change between seasons 1 and 2, meaning that players could choose to play in challenger league for WCS season 1 (but not premier league) while also playing in GSL and switching for season 2.(6) This was a fairly good solution, sadly the precipitation and very mixed messaging not helped by a language barrier complicated the process a lot. as multiple players chose to cancel their code-A participation last minute to make sure they were allowed into WCS, notably foreigners like HuK, SortOf and Scarlett.

Once that was out of the way, it came time to figure out how to fill the European and American leagues, they could do invite or qualifiers, they chose a bit of both, but leaned on the invites, with 24 players of each region seeded into premier league and 8 qualified players coming to join them. There would be pretty much no explanation on the reasoning behind ESL and MLG (Blizzard European and American partners respectively) invitations(7). In Europe, it didn’t cause too many problems, apart from a surprising exile of Snute to America, their choices were sensible, with Mvp, MMA, and ForGG getting worthy invites as the best Koreans who had declared to WCS EU.
In America thought, there were some controversies. First, the decision not to invite DeMusliM despite him being near the top of the ladder and at the same time having some arguably weaker players like Hellokitty or Capoch, but behind that initial controversy, a much bigger anomaly in the invites was hidden in plain sight. In the TL and Reddit reaction to the invite list, seemingly no one was remarking that MLG had included players from the Americas and a couple of Koreans and Europeans choosing to play in America, but only a single player from the “not-actually America-at-all-region” aka Taiwan, Oceania, and China. (It was of course the unmissable Sen)

That lapse in judgment from MLG would prove a durable blind spot, once came time to organize the qualifiers for the rest of the premier and challenger places. There also the EU portion was without controversy, but the American one would be full of them. The first problem raised from a fee of 18$ to sign up for the qualifier(8), one that was deemed excessive and unnecessary to the point that, after much pressure, it was finally dropped the day before the qualifiers. MLG was not out of the wood yet, believe it or not, there was once a time when a 512 players qualifier was too limited. People pointed that out rapidly, yet MLG stuck with that choice to fill the premier league spots (EU had four 1024-entries qualifiers). That choice, in combination with poor communication, led many players from China and Oceania to be unable to sign up for the qualifier and increased the resentment against MLG, and by proxy Blizzard’s decision to ‘’give’’ them WCS America(9). To salvage the situation, another qualifier would be organized solely for Challenger with a special invitation for Chinese players as well as the Korean defector in prevision of season 2(10), but for season 1, there would be no Chinese players in premier league.

Now, we’ve talked plenty about the logistical side of the league, what about the actual players playing in it? Well, first it turned out a lot more Korean were interested to play in WCS than most expected, with 26 Koreans announcing they would make the switch. AM had about three times more than EU with the Liquid, EG, Quantic, and Axiom squads all going there, while EU had a small selection of Korea’s finest looking to get out in the world by themselves. The important lag and more expensive travel rate protecting Europe from a similar fate as America for the time being.

As for Korea, it was Kespa’s time to shine. A new expansion had reset the clock and Kespa players were faster to get back to the top, now taking 14 of the 32 code S spots, including reining WCS champion PartinG that had accepted an offer to join the prestigious SK Telecom T1 team. An unmissable sign that the times were changing, for the first time since its inception the GSL would have neither NesTea nor Mvp, both historical champions having decided to depart respectively to America and Europe, as did many others of their era.


Group stages - Season 1
America
With the best North Americans already invited into premier and the mentioned problems with the Chinese entries, the Koreans easily established their dominance in the qualifiers of WCS America, taking all 8 spots for Premier League. The day was particularly good for Axiom and EG who both saw three of their players making it. But among their success, fan-favorite Jaedong would come as an unexpected disappointment, losing first to “quasAr” an unknown amateur zerg, then to Demuslim in the loser bracket, he would be relegated to Challenger for the time being.

In the round of 32, the players from the country of the gentle morning continued their excellent performances, although some foreign defense was mustered. State managed to eliminate Oz(11) before himself falling to Scarlett who punched her ticket for the round of 16(12). Suppy played some of the best Starcraft of his life, scoring clean victories over both Ryung(13) and Heart(14), with the latter bombing out of the group in last place. Taiwan’s finest Sen, also delivered, losing to CranK(15) but inching out Huk to advance(16), as did Australian representative mOOnGLaDe benefiting of a relatively easy group(17), and finally, Snute defended EU pride from across the pond by moving ahead of the WCS US champion ViBE(18).

With 11 Koreans in the round of 16, many were expecting a clean sweep, having little restraints mocking the American scene. They would be right; the two last American players were put in group C alongside Hero and Revival and neither would emerge from a zvz for their tournament life against the EG player(19-20). However, other foreigners, now honorary Americans, did better. In group A, Snute beat NesTea(21) and Alicia(22) to qualify as the Creator of the Universe got knocked out in another reminder that he was but a shadow of his former self. In group B, it was Moonglade who spoiled the Korean party, the Aussie took advantage of another weaker group to upset Apocalypse(23) and TheStC(24) and make his way to the playoff behind Crank. To round it all up, what was supposed to be the group of death, Group D, got mixed up by visa issues(25). viOLet was forced to forfeit, caught in a saga that would continue for months until the former Azubu member became the first esport player to be given an athlete visa by the US government. In his absence, the group saw Polt be the lone loser of a Terran triplet with Ryung advancing first and aLive rounding up the round of 8.

Europe
The qualifiers for WCS EU proved more arduous for the few Koreans who dare to enter it. Only Shuttle, playing from the Clarity team house in the US, managed to win a spot for premier league, as TAiLS, Finale (duckdeok), and StarDust bit the dust. Other surprising results saw the likes of Welmu and Beastyqt fail to qualify while relative unknown Siw managed to sneak his way through(26).

Being the first big tournament in while without a heavy contingent of Koreans and adding considerable latency to the 4 KR players, the online round of 32 proved a good opportunity to reassess the local balance of power in the European scene. The groups were very open and among the surprises, we saw MaNa(27), SortOf(28) and Grubby(29) bow down early and neither the Koreans nor the European favorite Stephano, managed to win their group while LucifroN(30) and BabyKnight(31) impressed.

The round of 16 was even more interesting. In group A, an inspired TLO came first(32), leaving only a single spot for two of the most high-profile Korean in MMA and ForGG alongside a surprising Strelok. Having made the move to live full-time in France, ForGG proved that his choice could pay off against MMA(33). For the fallen Slayers Prince, it was arguably the lowest point of his career, not only had he fled the harsh competition of Korea, but he also now seemed unable to even compete for the title in Europe. Meanwhile, in group B Happy and Babyknight qualified, to the great disappointment of NaNiwa(34) and VortiX(35), and in group C the former undisputed best in the world Mvp dispatched of SaSe twice(36) but was unable to touch Lucifron(37), who entered the round of 8 as the only undefeated player of the tournament. Finally, Stephano was victorious in group D(38) and DIMAGA managed to show flashes of his former glory to grab the last spot in the playoff(39).

The round of 16 was the start of the offline portion of the tournament, and the inauguration of the ESL Cologne studio as our new WCS home. The studio was intimate but allowed for a little crowd that was enough to make some ambiance helped by steadfast hosting by Redeye, Tod, Kaelaris, and Apollo. If the WCS format made for a somewhat disembodied structure, the Cologne studio it would come to represent the beating heart of the system, using the spaces well and including the fans there a lot(40).



Korea
While for the rest of the world, 2013 marked a disruption of the tournament structures, it didn’t change much for GSL, as the WCS format was copied on GOMTV’s long-running tournament. Even if the WCS announcement was generally very badly received by the Korean community(41).

Code S round of 32 was its usual blood bath. We had the confirmation that a couple of former WOL greats had trouble transitioning, with DRG, Curious, MKP, Creator, Squirtle, HyuN, and Leenock all being unable to advance, generally replaced by new Kespa players including a certain someone we will revisit in the future, described as such in the TL preview.




Notably, we saw a red-hot Flash advancing with a clean 4-0(43), GuMiho coming ahead of INnoVation and Rain as the former got eliminated(44) and Blizzard cup finalists Life and Parting going one and two in their group.

The round of 16 opened with the latest, hottest, newest, thing in town in the form of Woongjin Stars sOs, making it to the round of 8(45). A promissing BW player that had done very little wave in SC2 until a few months back, he had been an integral part of his team’s journey to the top of the Proleague standing and brought that form to code S, disposing of Bomber and TaeJa along the way, the Startale captain taking the other playoff spot(46). Meanwhile, groups A and D saw four zergs qualifying as fate had dealt them some of the rare very manageable GSL groups. Soulkey and defending champion RorO triumphed against Flying(47) and YoDa(48), as the latter couldn’t keep up his IEM World Championship momentum, and Symbol(49) and KangHo (Losira) marched in front of soO and Gumiho(50).

Two relatively weak groups of course leave us with group B being the group of death to end all groups of death, but before delving into it, and the WCS rounds of 8 that will follow, we need to take a second to look at what else was happening in the Starcraft world.


Third-party events - Season 1
As stated in the introduction, the WCS system allowed for third-party events to be part of the circuit. But it somewhat transformed them into “special events” that punctuated the calendar and served to evaluate who was in form and who was not between the seasons as well as a way to scoop up some precious extra points toward Blizzcon.
But before WCS was even announced there was one tournament that managed to slip through just in time to create a perfect SC2 trivia question as Yoda became the first HOTS tournament winner and the 2013 IEM World Champion(51). The whole affair was a bit strange, every IEM leading up to it had been played in WOL, but ESL decided that instead of having the chance to close Wing of Liberty professional circuit with a bang, the world championship would instead be played in the Beta of HOTS, completely changing dynamic of the event. It is as such appropriate that it was a replacement, Yoda who came in for Symbol, that would outperform everyone while in a domination reminiscing of early WOL, IM took the first four places. The event was also noticeable for the very promising performance of Mvp after hard months at the end of WOL, the King of Wings proved in control of the new HOTS mechanics going a very respectable 13-2 score on his way to a 3-2 semi-final loss against the future champion.


Parallel to WCS, MLG, and Dreamhack also had their first independent event. For the Swedish company, it would be Dreamhack Stockholm. The early stages saw ForGG, Polt, and MC stock fall as they suffer early losses, but also the rise of Jaedong as he achieved his first ever great SC2 results with a top four, reassuring the fans that his counter-performance in the WCS qualifiers was just a fluke. In the final match at the Globe Arena, Leenock and Naniwa found themselves in a rematch of their famous MLG Providence duel. The home crowd hero was looking to recreate ThorZaIN’s exploit a year earlier, but Leenock had other plans in mind. He had easily made it to the final, going 18-1, and was looking to get back on track a week after a tough draw had seen him bomb out of code S in the round of 32. The Swede got awfully close to doing it, but in the deciding game, a poor warp prison positioning allowed Leenock three lone corruptors to snipe it, along with his only colossus, stopping the protoss two base all-in on Whirlwind and giving the zerg the Dreamhack star(52). Few at this moment could imagine that it would be the Leenocktopus last celebration. After being the original SC2 wunderkind and one of WOL best zerg, DH Stockholm seemed to be a confirmation that he had plenty of gas left in the tank. Now, it stands as an interesting look into what could have been if Leenock had chosen to expatriate himself outside of Seoul.


In the US, the Winter Championship 2013 started the yearly MLG circuit. Despite their newfound WCS responsibilities, the company would still have its events although with a lighter calendar compared to the prior year.

The Winter Championship was a 32 players tournament, but with a little twist on it. The top 4 of the Fall championship 2012 were invited (Bomber, Flash, Leenock, and Life) while the other 28 were selected in a series of “showdowns”, one time best of 5 between two players of the same region or, for Korea, of the same organization (Kespa, ESF, Independent)(53). They were held before the launch of HOTS and were an opportunity to showcase both the players and the new expansion and worked as a good way to build up the hype for the weekend.

As the first seed of the tournament, Startale Life made his way to the final in a grueling bracket only inching both Polt and Last, before beating MC. The boss toss had a good run as well, proving himself well adapted to HOTS brand of protoss, the introduction of the mothership core having expanded and deepened the two bases build available.
On the other side of the bracket, Innovation, aka “The Machine” destroyed Huk, Leenock, and Rain in the hunt for his first trophy, but it was without counting God himself. Flash was living up to the hype, after two relatively easy first matches, he met with the WCS champion, Startale Parting. We will follow up on their rivalry, but in this first battle, Flash seemed to have a much better understanding of the game, Parting failing to use the all-powerful MSC in his builds. Flash continued his momentum to beat Innovation and make his way to his first SC2 final.

One could hardly have asked for a better scenario, a duel between the most talented zerg to ever touch SC2 and the undisputed greatest player to ever play Brood War. And it delivered, giving us one of SC2 great finishes. Life triumphed over Flash mech-based play in the end, winning back-to-back MLG titles as well as becoming the first to win trophies in both WOL and HOTS(54). Nonetheless, despite the victory of the Enfant terrible, it was Flash that got most of the attention, coming into HOTS it seems like the ultimate weapon was once again locked and loaded.




It is at this point that we go back to WCS Korea season 1 group B, the players: Innovation-Life-Parting and Flash all fresh from their trip to Dallas, the so-called “Group of Death”, a voluntary creation of Life and Parting as they smacked talked their way to mutual destruction(55). While MLG had been a great exhibition, GSL was the real deal and fans were watching eagerly four of the heavy favorites line up together on the starting block of HOTS, looking for who would make the first move. The answer came quickly, back in his familiar environment Innovation proved the better player beating both MLG finalists(56), with his tvz in particular looking imperial. Parting followed in its trail, as Life and Flash were cast aside. It would start a long drought for Life and a familiar pattern of disappointments for Flash, but more importantly winning the group of death meant that from this point forward the Machine was deemed the favorite to win the tournament, the best player in the world, and the man to watch in the months to come.


Playoffs - Season 1
For our first round of 8 of the American circuit at the MLG studio in New York City, we found ourselves with an Australian, a Norwegian, and 6 Koreans. The closest thing WCS America had to an American being NASL winner Liquid HerO. Moonglade kicked us off and was promptly grind out by Ryung(57), making it a three-team affair between TL, EG, and Axiom. Crank and Alicia both sang the praise of TB and Gena’s team, but couldn’t bring them success, falling to aLive(58) and HerO(59), as Revival out zvz’ed his 3rd foreigner of the tournament in Snute(60). In the semi, the favorite since day one HerO put an end to the last of Axiom hopes by beating Ryung in a close series(61), as the other semi-final saw a rather surprising Revival emerge of the team-kill(62). It’s not that the EG zerg was a complete outsider, but he hardly was the kind of figure one would have considered a serious contender. HerO seemed to agree and promptly sent him back to the backdrop of history, and by doing so won the first WCS America trophy, already his 3rd on US soil(63). The moment was a happy one, but hardly an ecstatic one, even for the typically emotional protoss; the cramped studio had no crowd and there was little fanfare for the victor. The Korean players almost outnumbered the English host and commentators, and both parties seldom appeared together on screen, increasing the feeling of distance between Korean players mingling between themselves and broadcasters behind their desks talking to a disembodied audience. For a league that was supposed to “nationalize” Korean players, it was certainly not a glaring success.

In Europe, Dimaga surprised Happy in the round of 8(64) as Stephano and Mvp calmly asserted their dominance over Babyknight(65) and TLO(66), but the high point of the round of 8 was undoubtedly the confrontation between the undefeated Lucifron and TvT master ForGG(67). The Korean protected his 90% mirror win rate after a mech vs bio confrontation to keep the possibility of a Korean tvt final alive. He probably would have liked to switch sides of the bracket though. While DIMAGA’s magic finally ran out against the King of Wings, he had the far more arduous task of going toes to toes against his newfound French compatriot Stephano. The reigning European champion was just a little bit too good, and after some widow mines fireworks(68), he advanced to the final. It seems that before starting Hearth of the Swarm in earnest, the Starcraft gods had decided to finish some old business.

The undisputed best foreigner of WOL and the undisputed best player of WOL had only played twice in the original expansion, a best of 1 in Blizzard cup 2011 and a largely meaningless group stage match at Iron Squid. Now, after years of theory and argumentations, we finally got it in a final of a big event. The natural order was respected, the Korean champion came in with a vast array of builds to win the series 4-1 and his 9th premier event in a rather menial fashion.(69)

Even if the Cologne studio was barely larger than the New York one, there was plenty of ambiance as the familiar chant of M.V.P. were heard loud and clear. Winning a European league over TLO, Dimaga and Stephano was a far cry away from his glory days, but Mvp had still done what he was best known for, finding a way to come home with a win when he seemed down and out, even if that way meant expatriate himself to Europe.




In Korea, the new generation Mvp had escaped from was shining brighter than ever. The Woongjin Stars aces sOs and Soulkey managed to distance the ESF bannerman Losira (70) and Parting(71), as INnnovation made quick work of the defending champion RorO(72), before drowning Symbol with his unrelenting parade pushes(73), guaranteeing the first Kespa vs Kespa final of SC2. Two days before, Soulkey had almost let victory slip through his fingers. Up 3-0, he had let sOs climb back to 3-3 and in the last game was on the brink of letting the very rare reverse sweep happen. Misreading his teammate’s build, he found himself with a useless spire defending an immortal-stalker-sentry push, but sOs couldn’t pounce on what seemed like a free third, leaving it with a sliver of health before being forced to retreat and Soulkey used that opportunity as a springboard to turn the game around in the long run, pushing a deep sigh of relief as the casters announced him as a GSL finalist(74).
Innovation entered as the overwhelming favorite, he arrived at the final with a 21-3 TvZ record in HOTS, excellent performances in other tournaments, and had just put a clinic on the two last GSL finalists while Soulkey had struggled all the way to the final posting a doubtful 4-4 in ZvT this tournament, although he did manage to snatch one of Innovation three TvZ loss in Proleague.

If that was the advantage on paper, in the mind of fans the final was a done deal, seemingly as one-sided as Inca-Nestea or jjakji-Leenok (for all the good that did him). Fans pooling gave INno 90 to 10 odds, and he also got the backing of all but one TL writer, the lone Zealously going for the “someone got to do it” 4-3 Soulkey victory.
The games were proving everyone right after 40 minutes. Innovation was up 3-0 with Tastosis discussing not if he was going to win the season, but if he was going to win the other season after that. With his back against the wall Soulkey pulled off a roach-bane bust that went pretty well…. so he did another…. then he ling-bane busted Inno trying a two-rax and “Poof!” just like that it was 3-3! The last game was a one-sided macro game, with the zerg all over the terran, and Soulkey who barely stopped a reverse sweep in the semi pulled one of his own in the final, leaving the Starcraft world with equal part confusion about what had just happened and admiration over the GSL champion(75).





Season final - Season 1
In the power rank following the code S final, Teamliquid writers elected Innovation the best in the world(76). The roach-bane all-in that had crumbled him was just a little bump on the road. Reality be dammed, INno was still better than Soulkey and the latest invention of the WCS circuit would be the perfect opportunity to prove this point.

The season finals reunited the best performers of each region for a 16-man weekend tournament, giving out 40 000$ and 3000 WCS points to the winner, double the regional amount. Some were a bit skeptical of this format giving even more advantage to Koreans who opted for WCS AM or EU, but most were still excited to witness the clash between the different champions. It was decided that the season finals would be split between the three regions with Korea opening the ball. OGN ran the event, marking Blizzard’s success at appeasing the difficult relations between the Korean broadcasters and bringing the TV organization back into the fray.

The groups went largely as expected with Soulkey and Innovation topping theirs, but ForGG managed to steal first place in his group in front of sOs and HerO while Symbol, and aLive gave a cold shower to EU fans by eliminating Stephano(77) and TLO(78). The representatives of Korea continued to excel in the round of 8. sOs won his side of the bracket, getting his revenge on Soulkey 3-2 in the semi-final(79) while on the other side INnovation ran over aLive to meet up with Mvp who had weaseled his way to a semi-final (2-1 Ryung, 1-2 Alicia, 2-1 Losira, 3-1 ForGG).

With multiple health problems and hailing for the weakest region, Mvp nevertheless came to the brink of yet another miracle, giving himself two match points. It was Mvp trying to do the impossible one last time. While he maybe didn’t know it yet for sure, he surely could sense that his time was almost up, and the future would hold very few good things for him. His last effort would not be enough, Innovation had triumphed over the WCS champion Parting, stomped the archangel Rain, beaten SC2 prodigy Life, and cast aside God himself, all that before throwing everything away to a roach bane all-in. He had no time for storylines, achievements, or reputation, he was just there to calmly and methodically play Starcraft. He did as such in the final game, a simple mech vs mech win on the back of hellbat drops to close the series(80).

Innovation continued to do so in the final, winning a clean 4-0 against sOs to earn his first trophy(81). He then went on stage, smelled some flowers, waited for the big check, and went back home to continue the grind. His crowning had been delayed by a few weeks, but Hearth of the Swarm officially had its emperor.

The transition - Out with the old, in with the new
After qualifiers controversies, rumors of bad relations with the staff, and admins, criticism over the lack of crowd for the offline portion, and overall WCS America being singled out as lackluster(82), Blizzard and MLG decided to forgo their WCS contract. The move seemed to have been at the initiative of MLG as they announced that they would go back to their traditional weekender format (within the WCS point system). In their place, NASL was tasked to take on WCS America with help of the ex-IPL team, now working under Blizzard directly(83). The broadcasting team also went under changes, Axlav and Axeltoss were out, Day9 and Frodan were in, although it would be Mister Bitter and Rotterdam taking the main commentator’s spot. The split made light of some of the inner workings of the WCS system, mainly that MLG had hardly been excited about the prospect of running the Blizzard competition from the start and was only convinced to do it after strict negotiation.





Still, while it spurned the fear of many, the news was received generally positively, NASL had experience running weeks-long events and doing studio broadcasts, so most fans were hopeful things would get better. Looking back 8 years later…. They were right! WCS season 2 had almost no hiccups, the broadcast had a cozy yet professional feel to it, the crowds came back for a top 8 organized in partnership with RedBull esport, and (for the great benefit to yours truly mental health) NASL even set up a Youtube page with a comprehensive filing system and uniform titles for their videos.


Outside of Korea, the first weeks of WCS Season 2 marked a deep change of the guard as players that had dominated their regions in WOL and sometimes even well before were dethroned and effectively ended their careers. In WCS America, KiLLeR and Fenix’s years atop LatAm ended as both failed to get back in Premier League, while the young Major proved he was ready to take the mantle(85). In Oceania, SC2 and WC3 regional champion mOOnGLaDe also fell. Coming out of one of his career-best performances in SC2, he couldn’t survive his round of 32 group, getting pushed back to Challenger where a tough bracket promised him matches against Ryung and ByuL. Perhaps looking too far ahead he stumbled at the first hurdle, fellow Oceanian Tilea executed a series of cheeses knocking out her much more renowned opponent, as a dethroned Moonglade would soon after transition to an analyst job(86).


But the biggest blows to the foreign scene were arguably the two most successful Starcraft progamer outside of Korea deciding to retire. French superstar and WCS runner-up Stephano announced in May that he would be hanging his mouse in August to go back to medical school(87). Playing some of the best Starcraft of his life, the news came out as a shock, but fans were quick to rally behind a successful young man wanting to move on. He would have a relatively successful last outing in WCS season 2, although not quite on par with his usual form.

The exit would be far less graceful for his American counterpart IdrA. Once the pride of US Starcraft, the most popular player in the world and the one destined to lead the foreign revolution, two and a half years in the public eye had ruined every ounce of good will the community had toward him, and in return that he once had toward his fans, toward the game and, at the time, seemingly toward himself. After a disastrous season 1 showing followed by yet another insult-filled rant on Internet(88), EG finally decided he was not worth it and released their star player from the team in dramatic fashion(89). Idra didn’t bother finishing the first season, announcing his retirement from competitions a few days after. There were discussions that his retirement wouldn’t last, but when season 2 came around Idra was nowhere to be found, confirming that the USA would need to find a new champion.

While many of the old foreign champions were bowing out, a whole new batch of Koreans entered WCS AM and EU. Those stuck in Challenger for season 1 because of bad qualifier performances or because they were already scheduled to play in GSL made their way to Premier and many of their comrades took their place in the Challenger waiting room, taking advantage of the grace period for transferring between season one and two. In Europe Premier league, it meant an addition of three Koreans bringing the total to a relatively modest seven, TAiLS, duckdeok, and the famous MC who was once again looking to one-up his once-upon-a-time rival Mvp with a WCS trophy of his own. In America, Koreans were now half of the premier league participants, monopolizing 16 of the 32 spots. Within those 16, two newcomers had everyone’s attention.

To make up for the departure of Idra, EG could present an arguably even more alluring replacement to their fans in the form of Lee Jae-Dong. After promising early tournament results, the Brood War tyrant was finally making his Premier League debut. His signing, the biggest in the history of a team known for its flashy additions, made some shockwaves(90). Jaedong was the first player and would stay one of the very few, to voluntarily quit the Kespa regime and their hefty salary in favor of an international team and the chance to travel around the world. Not one to be outdone, TeamLiquid retaliated with their own crown jewel TaeJa(91). The two-time GSL semi-finalist also chose to abandon Korea in favor of WCS America, setting up for an EG-TL clash of titans and bringing much-needed star power to the league.


As for Korea, it wasn’t the players in the championship that changed, but the organizers themselves. As part of an agreement between the two Korean broadcasters and Blizzard, it was now OGN time to run WCS through their flagship tournament, the OSL. The Kespa players made OGN proud, as they took over half the spot in WCS (17 out of 32). Before putting OGN in charge, Blizzard had seemingly made sure that their once-upon-a-time commercial adversary would do everything as they intended. They normalized the nomenclature, made sure the seeding from GomTV carried to OGN, and forced them to use the challenger/up-and-down then double group stage into a playoff bracket format, but the Blizzard lawyers probably forgot to add a couple of lines to the contract, because when OGN showed their calendar it turned out that the groups would be double elimination best of 1 into a round robin round of 16, throwing a perplexing twist to the whole thing. The english broadcast would also be quite odd, OGN had their own cast of the tournament, with Doa and Montecristo, but on top of that GOMTV was doing a live rebroadcast of it with Tastosis (ironically it's the latter that survived on youtube), a sign that while the hatchet of war may have been buried, tensions were far from over between the organizations. As such, WCS KR had some new casters, a new studio, a new format, and a new look, but mostly the same players.


Group stages - Season 2
America
In America, both the EG and TL stars delivered in both the round of 32 of 16, comfortably topping their group as the Korean domination over the North American native players was even clearer. Pilling on US Starcraft plights, WCS AM season 2 saw the arrival of an important Chinese group. After MLG logistical problems and a lack of invites had left them out of season 1, the Chinese players proved they were worth the wait. The protoss pair of Jim and MacSed were especially impressive. Breaking out a new phoenix-colossus style prepared specifically for high ping scenarios, they manage to move to the round of 16. Alongside them, three other foreigners; Chad “motherfucking” Jones aka Minigun toppled a young Neeb(92), DeMusliM, in arguably the best day of his career, 2-0 both HuK(93) and CranK(94) to win his group and finally Scarlett found her footing in HOTS with a shocking elimination of the reigning champion Liquid Hero. The protoss somewhat disrespectfully tried back-to-back zealot-archon-sentry pushes on the back of phoenix openers after a successful first attempt and the second time found a well-prepared Scarlett that pounced on him(95).

In the round of 16, she continued her momentum cruising passed Sage and Revival to get to the playoff(96) where she was joined by the Macsed(97). He would not be left alone halfway across the world, in group D CMStorm-Polt showed stellar pvt to toss aside Alicia and Jim(98), but the latter stunned the former taking the last spot after eliminating Alicia, marking a high point in Chinese SC2 and yet again the end of hopes for TB’s crew(99). Meanwhile, aLive wore off the last foreigner(100) and Oz benefited from a second forfeit from viOLet to round up an almost entirely fresh quarter-final.

Europe
I lied a bit when I said that the future didn’t hold anything good for Mvp, he had one last classic in the bag. In group A of WCS Europe against the mighty “Worst player on Earht” Tefel(101), he came back from being down 5 SCV to 50 drones in a one-of-a-kind demonstration of foreigner magic(102). The reigning champ would then top his group, as would MMA who looked like he regained some of his mojos, he did so at the detriment of TLO as the liquid player period of grace was quickly coming to an end(103). The round of 32 also saw some surprise, notably ThorZaIN bombed 0-4(104) and ForGG got quickly eliminated by VortiX and Grubby in a difficult group(105).
The round of 16 was a blood bath with every quarter-finalist of last season getting eliminated. Grubby and HasuObs combined to take out Mvp(106), the original Finnish phenom Welmu won group B(107) and DuckDeok didn’t make any friends beating Stephano in “his last ever tournament” (hum) and the one who was supposed to replace him in Lucifron after an epic hold on Whirlwind(108). The protoss kept excelling with NaNiwa winning group C(109) in front of MMA and to close it all up Vortix and MC emerged from group D.

Korea
Despite the new format of best of one being usually prone to crazy results, the round of 32 of the OSL was fairly straightforward. A few mentions worthy results did occur nonetheless, mainly a quick exit from sOs at the hands of soO and Maru(110), Life falling to FanTaSy, and Losira(111) and hyvaa eliminating RorO and Leenock(112).

The round of 16 was unlike any seen before in Korean SC2, four round-robin groups played over three weeks with a match of every group played on each day. To add to the madness, randomness had given us some particularly strange coupling, with three zerg (and PartinG) in group A and an all tvt group B of Flash-Bbyong-Bomber and INnoVation.

By the end of the second week, Soulkey, INno, Maru, and Bomber were all fairly comfortable with their 2-0’s score sheet and would advance to the next round. In group A, Symbol ousted soO in the last match to earn his 5th GSL round of 8(113), while SuperNova managed to get his revenge on the man that had denied him the second (or first depending on how you count it) Nestea award with a 2-1 over Trap that sent the STX Soul player packing(114). SuNo would end up at 2-1 and 5-3 still taking second place behind Maru 2-1 and 4-4 because of ties getting decided by head-to-head.
That rule would create some controversy in group C. In the last match, Rain was in a must-win scenario against his teammate Fantasy that was already out. If Rain won, him (2-1; 4-3), First (2-1; 4-2) and Hyvaa (2-1; 5-3) would be considered “tied” and would need to play an additional round. Rain did win 2-0 over his SKT teammate, sparking a few baseless suspicions. He would quickly put them to rest as he emerged first after two rounds of tie-breaker, joined by First. Hyvaa getting the axe and a challenger date against Life (which he would win) despite starting the tie with the best map score.


Third-party events - Season 2
The summer of 2013 had plenty to keep fans entertained, starting with Dreamhack Summer.

Multiples Koreans made the trip, although none of Kespa’s as proleague schedule tied them back home. In their place, we got the one who got away, EG Jaedong. Despite a group stage loss to Sting, he stormed through the groups and playoffs beating Stephano, Lucifron, and Taeja 2-0 to get to the final. Life was the obvious candidate to join him as that kind of tournament would have been easy picking for him a year back, yet in an implosion the like we have rarely seen before or since he managed to lose to Sweden home man SjoW. A moment that could seriously challenge getting sent to jail as the lowest point of his career.

In his place, a perplexing fellow by the name of Stardust came to challenge JaeDong. Those very well-versed in the BroodWar scene could remember him as the AirForce Ace player that had once taken a map of Flash(115), for the rest of the fans he was at most the winner of the “ESET Winter Master” aka almost a complete nobody. Yet at Dreamhack he had already beaten Naniwa, Snute, HyuN, and Violet to get to the final, he also spoke pretty much the best English of any Korean, was on Swiss team Mindsanity and just looked so god damn happy to be there. In short, he seemed like a perfectly adequate victim for the calm and collected Jaedong to give to the Elephants their first trophy. But the prey proved to be livelier than most would have thought, beating JD 3-2 including a nail-baiting base trade where lady luck gave him a little help. His final units, a bunch of probes, unknowingly meeting the last extractor of the zerg and killing it seconds before the mutalisk of JD could wipe them all(116). Protoss had their second trophy of HOTS on the back of the upset, which was received about as well as you can imagine by the community.





After Dreamhack, many Koreans would prolong their stay in Europe to play in a Home Story Cup that would go the way of TaeJa, beating Snute 4-3 in the final(117) with TLO and Hyun taking 3rd and 4th. TaeJa would take another European trophy before going back to the WCS Quarter final winning AsusRog in front of San in yet another successful trip outside of Korea(118).

Despite his momentum, the Liquid terran would pass on MLG, as would many other top players, making MLG Spring a bit on the weaker side, however, a weak MLG is still harder than lots of tournaments and the return to their traditional format with the huge crowd was an undeniable success. Hyun made his way to the final on the harder part of the bracket scoring wins over soO, Sound, and Hero (twice). It must have been a relief for the Quantic zerg. The first few months of HOTS had been nothing short of disastrous for him; he got completely rolled over in GSL and lost to Nina and Sage in the WCS America qualifiers for Challenger. It was a far cry away from being one map away from a Code S trophy, but as foreign events kept on rolling, Hyun seemed to finally find his rhythm and MLG proved that he would be a threat if he could make it into Premier League for season 3(119).

On the other side of the MLG bracket, Naniwa took a serious option for the title of the best foreigner, beating Huk, Jaedong, and Dear, and as such making sure he would be the man to watch in the incoming WCS Europe playoff for a possible upset. He, however, wouldn’t be able to touch Polt. The Korean American studying out of Austin, Texas, seemed to benefit from the summer vacation to get back in shape. His two back-to-back victories against the last foreigner Naniwa could have created some flames, but Polt decided to become the last foreigner himself. He had no problem, nor complex, inscribing himself in the long line of immigrants adopting the USA in overly patriotic gesture, waving a giant American flag around and winning the heart of the local crowd. In the final, the Texas champ beat his old TSL teammates and good friend 3-2 to complete his triple crown and become just the second player to win an event in 2011-2012, and 2013.


Finally, to round up the mid-season, IEM ran an event in China and Dreamhack in Spain at the end of July. At IEM Shanghai Revival got his first and last trophy over some of his WCS America rivals including Polt, JD, aLive, HerO, and in the final his EG teammates Oz, it was an indication that he may still be a threat for the last stretch of the year(120).

A sign that the hectic summer had been draining, the appointment in Valencia the week after attracted only a few top players. Hyun beat TheStC and a couple of foreigners including a career-best run by Goswser, while Jaedong managed to get his revenge on Stardust in the semi-final to set up a final in his best matchup. The dreaded “JvZ” could not stand up to the Hyunbelivable Hyun and the Quantic zerg clutched his first ever trophy(121).





In team-leagues news, IM won GSTL, but the team was unrecognizable from their early WOL days, winning the playoff on the back of an all-kill by YoDa (against Azubu)(122), an all-kill by YongHwa (against Axiom-Acer)(123), and good performance from Yoda, First and Squirtle in the final against MVP(124). The league was showing some serious sign of fatigue, having to deal on one side with the better-funded Proleague and on the other side with their player leaving to play abroad.

Speaking of Proleague, it had round up its regular season, with Woogjin Stars, KT, STX Soul, and SKT in the playoff, Samsung barely missing out and CJ-Team8 and EGLiquid being at the bottom. Flash would yet again top the individual charts with 44 wins and a 68% win rate as INno, Rain, and sOs were the most valuable player of their respective teams. On a side note, JangBi ended up with a 32-24 score and the most wins out of any Samsung player, an often-forgotten fact that goes to prove that the SC2 career of the last BW OSL champion wasn’t just the disappointment everyone remembers.

Finally, in the West a new team league had emerged, the Acer TeamStory Cup, a good contender in the worst name category. It had a mix of Korean, European, and American teams and was a bit more on the “community” side, with all matches but the last few being played online. Acer and MVP managed to wash away their failure in the GSTL with MVP ultimately winning the season on the back of the DRG duels versus Scarlett in both the winner final and the grand finale. MMA was the league’s most valuable player, having transferred on Acer he scored an impressive 31-14 as well as two all-kills proving that he still had that team league magic, although both DRG (7-3) and Sniper (7-1) made most of their limited appearances for the winning team.


Playoffs - Season 2
Back to the USA just in time for the round of 8. Jim almost pulled off another upset in the opening quarter-final match, pushing JaeDong to the limit before capitulating in a base race against the Tyrant trademark mutalisk switch(125). On the opposite side of the bracket, fellow Chinese protoss Macsed suffered a more brutal fate, as TaeJa crumbled the protoss defenses with some well-thought-off responses to phoenix colossus(126). Scarlett 3-0 aLive in a stunning display of zvt(127) and finally Polt smoked Oz who couldn’t keep up the momentum of his IEM Shanghai silver medal(128).

It would have been hard to hope for a stronger final four, the three Korean had played in the final of the last 5 foreign events and won three of them and they were joined by the undisputed best North American quickly becoming a figure known well outside the circle of SC2 esport.
The task was immense for Scarlett who had to overcome JD in his best match-up. She nearly did, but in game 5 the Tyrant left it all to luck with a 6 pool and fate broke the home crowd’s heart(129). In the absence of Scarlett, fans felt on the next best thing, the newly elected “Captain America”, CM Storm Polt. He also had his work cut out for him, liquid and EG seemed destined for another duel at the top from the start of the season as TaeJa seemingly could do no wrong in the heat of summer. After a tense tvt, the USA chant erupted as Polt clinched his ticket to the grand finale(130).

On one side, the slight favorite JD, the brood war legend and maybe the most well-recognized Korean player in the world looking for his first SC2 trophy, on the other Polt, once deemed a villain of Starcraft, now Texas prodigal son, looking to win his second American tournament in a matter of days, after two nail baiting semi-finals, the stage was set for a classic. It’s definitely not what transpired, with Polt taking the 4-0(131). The games themselves were good back-and-forth macro slugfest, but it just seemed like the EG zerg was never able to convert on his opportunities while Polt ground him down each time. What followed was not the gentle murmur of Koreans of season 1 but rather the crowd basking their champion in champagne. He had stood up to Axiom, TL, and EG and earned the right to represent Americans against the world.




At the ESL studio in Cologne, European had prepared a hefty defense against the Korean, even after the departure of Stephano, but neither HasuObs (1-3 vs MMA)(132), Welmu (0-3 vs MC)(133) nor Naniwa (1-3 vs Duckdeok)(134) were able to withstand. The last spot was taken by Grubby who beat Vortix, but the WC3 star couldn’t do much better against his own Korean challenger, MVP Duckdeok, who won the pvp 3-2(135).

The other semi-final was of course the one everyone had eyes on, after some rocky time at the start of HOTS, the perennial globetrotter MC seemed to have found his home. He was radiating in the WCS studio, he was part of every joke, threw a bit of shade, and brought his best korea-nglish to give us a refreshed Bosstoss determined to bring a trophy home, but the small crater MC had traversed was nothing compared to his adversary. The Slayer’s Prince had used WCS to climb out of his own grave, now on a new foreign team, thousands of miles away from the controversies that had plagued him, and after plenty of time to get back into his rhythm against foreigners, he was once again a tournament contender. The key word here is contender, as MC tossed him aside, in what was, quite honestly, a bit of sloppy series(136).

That left us with two protoss for a mirror match-up that had been revigorated by the introduction of the Mothership core. Both players traded maps back and forth until a final game 7 to decide the European champion.



Contrary to the cynical vision of TL writers, Duckdeok’s victory was not followed by any immolation nor defenestration, but rather an eruption of tears as an emotional Kim Kyeong-Deok had managed to find the most unexpected of success after a career passed in the background(138).

But leaving behind the romanticism and my affection for the DuckDeok story aside, it is undeniable that his victory, coupled with a harsh summer for foreigners, had many people fuming. Seeing a rather obscure Korean beat a gauntlet of the best European on his way to a Korean vs Korean final was for many an indication of a failure of the WCS system and many were quick to analyze a dip in the viewership numbers and theorize in length if it was in fact because of the skin color and lack of English of the new European champion and if, as sad as it was or him, it would not be better for others like him to just stay in Korea until they fade away in anonymity and indifference. It was neither the first nor nearly the last time the subject would be brought up, but few moments highlight better the cruelty of the region lock debate than discussing if the tears of Duckdeok were worth their toll on the future of Starcraft 2.




Speaking of staying in Korea, we need to go back in time a bit to catch back with the OSL playoff. The bottom side of the bracket saw the more established Rain and Bomber triumphed over two players on the rise in the person of First and SuperNova, Bomber with some facility(139), the Archangel just by the skin of his tooth(140). However, the upper side was where most eyes were drawn, specifically on the rematch of last season’s final between Innovation and Soulkey. While the Machine had managed to bounce back from their GSL final with ease, Soulkey himself had not faired too badly himself, he was the reigning champion, lead his team to the top of the Proleague regular season earning the best zerg award on the way and only a close defeat at the hands of his notoriously tricky teammates sOs had stopped the rematch at the WCS season 1 final. After the season one group of death, INno had once again found himself with the hardest draw he could, and he once again came out of it heighten. His 3-0 win wasn’t domination from start to finish, but it was a resounding statement that last season’s meltdown was just a smudge that could be wiped from his resume(141).
Ever since HOTS was released, he had finished 3rd at MLG, second in GSL, first in the WCS final, had just led STX Soul to the Proleague playoff final going 6-1 against SKT and KT Rolster including two ace-win and he was on the verge of getting the OSL crown, win Proleague and complete one of the greatest streaks of dominance we had ever seen.


And then he was blindsided. In under an hour, break time included, the calm and collected Innovation, the one that was supposed to represent the ideal Starcraft 2 player, was left in pieces after suffering one of the most vicious beatdowns in all of Starcraft 2(142). If that wasn’t enough to push everyone to rethink the hierarchy of Starcraft 2, it didn’t happen at the hand of a Starcraft 2 legend or even another creature of the Kespa workshop. No, the culprit of this heinous act was barely 16 years old MaruPrime, at the time mostly known for being “that kid” in the background of the Prime videos and as the youngest ever person to win a GSL match three years ago. He had attained the distinct honor of being classified as having emptied his potential well before most get to start their career. An underdog victory against Symbol in the round of 8 had cast him as a dangerous opponent, but nothing could have prepared the fans for the pure cheesefest he served innovation.

The newfound Prime star was denied a shot at another tvt as Rain did short work of Bomber to get a chance to defend his OSL crown. Despite some rocky performances in Proleague and the first few tournaments of HOTS, Rain was still Rain, and fans rallied in masses behind him in the final, predicting him to dispatch of his much less experienced challenger by a proportion of 8 against 2. Even discounting experience, on paper it seemed like a good match-up for Rain, the more defense style of the SKT Toss, as well as the more stable tvp match-up, should have neutralized Maru’s more cheesy tendency and pushed the game into a seemingly more favorable macro game. It started all according to plan, Rain calmly drove himself to a macro victory in game 1, then deflected Maru hellion-banshee aggression in game 2. But then everything started to unravel, Maru somehow managed to slip a successful 2 rax in game three, Rain found his footing again in a macro game 4, but the Terran “judo’ed” him in one quick fight. The protoss then busted out an aggressive build he had prepared in game 5, but Maru saw it coming a miles away and barely left time for fans to understand what was happening before jumping at his throat to finish his OLS royal road(143).



Almost a decade later, it’s easy to forget how much of a surprise Maru caused on that faithful August night. In a nutshell, his OSL run would stand as one of the most absurd Korean Starleague victories, only matched by Seed’s blissful July. He came in blazing like a comet, upending the whole competitive scene in Korea out of nowhere in a way we would never see again.
The WCS Korea season 2 trophy would be the last Starleague trophy given by OGN to a Starcraft player, by a strange twist of fate they happened to give it to one of the people in Starcraft that had the least to do with the once titan of worldwide Esport, someone young enough to not even be able to recall the company debut.


Season final - Season 2
With all three regions producing unexpected champions, the Starcraft world now turned their eye to Cologne, Germany, for the season finale, looking to know which of these new champions would stand the test of time. After an all-Korean-based final in Seoul the previous season, it was also an opportunity that the foreign region had grown with the addition of new “foreign” Koreans. It certainly didn’t start as European were hopping, with Welmu and MC exiting on the curtain rises, the OSL runner-up Rain advanced in front of them, but in second place, Jaedong finishing first(144). While the runner-up of KR and AM did not have much problem, their regions respective champions had less chance. Despite having a relatively easy group and arriving at Cologne with great momentum, Polt couldn’t manage to crack First, getting 2-0 twice by the IM Protoss(145). As for Maru, he first felt to aLive before beating MMA in the loser match, earning himself a duel vs Scarlett. The Canadian had made her reputation as a potent ZvT specialist and prove herself once again, eliminating Maru in two dominant games, making a very strong case for being the best zvt player in the world(146).



She wouldn’t be the only foreigner to stick around. In group B, Naniwa managed to upset both Innovation and Duckdeok to sneak in behind TaeJa as the ever-so-crafty terran played a tvt for the ages against the STX Soul ace(147). It was a bitter pill to swallow for the STX Soul terran fans. After his defeat at the hands of Maru, it seemed for a hot second like he would be unphased, as he carried his team over the finish line in Proleague as they ran back the entire bracket to triumph versus the favorites, Woogjin Stars, on the back of his victory against Soulkey, as well as point by Mini, Trap, and Classic(148).

All that left us with a very odd playoff bracket, of the favorites going in only Rain (and arguably TaeJa) remained, while most of the players were from a foreign region. It seemed like the system was working as intended, by choosing to go against a region lock, Blizzard had managed in just a few months to displace Korea from the center of the SC2 elite.
That newfound competitiveness was reflected right off the bat in the quarter-final as First and aLive squared up in what is without a doubt the world’s least anticipated match in the history of SC2 (it was nevertheless very high level) with First winning(149). Once that was out of the way, JD kept on impressing eliminating Naniwa and showing never-before-seen adaptability in the protoss match up for him(150). Just as JD got rid of the ZvP monkey off his back, TaeJa got the opportunity to break his own streak of failure, cleaning the floor with Rain, a player he had never managed to beat in his career(151). Finally, Scarlett and Bomber squared off in a classic ling-bane-muta vs bio-mine confrontation, offering us one of the best series of the tournament and the whole year until Bomber manage to destabilize the Canadian with a proxy reaper to clinch game 5(152).

It was another bitter ending for Scarlett after the 6-pool fiasco of WCS, but she could leave Cologne knowing that she had reduced the competition for the throne Stephano had left empty to a two-person race between her and Naniwa.

After JD cast aside First, Bomber and TaeJa went blow for blow with Bomber denying an all-American (ish) final. Jaedong had the opportunity to mimic Innovation and erase an embarrassing regional second place with a Season Finale victory, and commentators were quick to remind us, already a bit tediously, that the Tyran was an amazing BW player, who was looking focused and determined, and in general that he was doom to fulfill his destiny as a Winner. Win, he did not. Offering a performance perhaps even more inept than against Polt, Jaedong folded like paper in four quick games(153) and collected his 7th silver in a row, a streak dating all the way back to the infamous MSL power outage of 2010.


Barely cracking a smile, the forever cool Bomber went to collect the kind of trophy that had always eluded him, breaking the famous “Bomber Law”. He could finally stand as one of the greats. It was a long time coming for him and his fans, and a puzzling result in what had been a season full of surprises. Startale Bomber victory also meant a full sweep of the old-school SC2 players, with Duckdeok, Polt, and Maru, the 2010 generation had managed to strike back against Kespa in a series of upsets, holding on the storm just a little bit longer.






For Blizzard, season 2 proved that the WCS systems could adapt to some organizational challenges. OGN had seamlessly taken the relay of GOMTV, the move from MLG to NASL had put WCS America on the right track with the integration of the Chinese scene and Blizzard had traversed the hectic summer calendar with success, integrating weekenders into their narrative without hurting the central position of WCS. The lack of foreign superstars was still a problem, but some of their most marketable players (MC, Polt, Scarlett, JD) were in good form.

The state of the WCS race at the start of the season was as followed:



Group stages - Season 3
America
In America, with the semi-region locking kicking in, Season 2 challenger had made little difference in the Premier League lineup, barred from the disappearance of viOLet battling US custom bureaucracy and the arrival of fellow zerg HyuN to the big league after a somewhat humiliating trip in challenger. The first group stage reserved a couple of surprises, HuK came crawling back, advancing to the round of 16 after months off the radars(154), it probably gave EG a bit of solace after a disastrous group stage that saw disappointing performances by DeMusliM, Suppy, Revival and especially aLive. The defending champion Polt also flirted with catastrophe as an Internet problem forced him to forfeit the first series of his group (an MLG rematch vs Hyun), but he came back online just in time to get second place(155).

The round of 16 became a crucial point for the race to Anaheim, a win would open the chance for a WCS Season Final spot and the vast number of points it held. Right off the bat, the second group stage saw Heart and Hack upset legitimate contenders to the throne in groups A and B, respectively TaeJa(156) and Hyun(157), to move to the round of 8 alongside JD and HerO, both of whom essentially punched their ticket to the world stage by doing so. Group C would provide an arguably bigger surprise with MacSed topping the group(158), Scarlett and NesTea falling to challenger, and Oz tagging along. For Scarlett, it nearly meant the end of her chance to go to Blizzcon as she desperately needed the points to hang out on to that crucial 16th spot. Finally, group D played according to logic, with Polt and ByuL advancing.

Europe
Following DuckDeok fairy tale victory, WCS Europe was looking more open than ever. Naniwa should have been one of those looking to profit from the occasion, but the perennially angry Swede gave a lackluster performance on the opening day of the season, getting eliminated by TargA and putting his Global final aspirations in grave danger(159). One that had little worries about making it to Blizzcon was Mvp, but his early elimination confirmed everyone’s suspicions that he would probably have plenty of time to go sightseeing at Anaheim. Some other notable results, saw yet another great showing by Happy, confirmation of some difficulty to follow the rapidly evolving meta game of HOTS for TLO(160), LucifroN(161), and Grubby(162), as well as a victorious ShoWTimE in his first appearance(163).

Just like in WCS America, many players couldn’t afford any mistakes in the round of 16 if they wanted to stay in the run for Blizzcon, MMA, Duckdeok, and MC all managed to survive, although the latest probably scare himself a bit, it was the most European of Korean, Millenium ForGG, that slipped. A loss to Nerchio left his Blizzcon fate in the hand of his competitors(164). VortiX and Targa made sure they wouldn’t have to call the Acer zerg the best European by following him to the playoff as did StarDust and Genius.

Korea
As per the agreement, WCS was back in GOMTV hands for season 3. The WCS maths were much simpler in Korea. With Proleague’s schedule holding most Kespa players home all years, they were overall trailing in the WCS points department but given the strength of the circuit in the Mecca of esport, a single good run followed by a good season final could be enough for anyone to get to the top 16.

The “first” contender to fall (pun intended) was First, who, after a good season finale, lost to jjakji in the round of 32 never to rise back to the top again(165). Symbol also didn’t make the cut(166), same with Bomber(167). A mere two weeks after his season 2 victory, he was unable to beat Super and soO, suffering a quick exit. On the plus side, he was one of the very few that could afford an early exit and not lose any sleep over his Blizzcon ticket. Finally, SuperNova couldn’t profit from the last-minute retirement of Jangbi(168) as the protoss duo of sOs and Dear proved too much, while the rest of the favorites advanced.

In the round of 16, it was Flash’s hopes that got squandered, despite excellence in Proleague and numerous talks about his mastery of SC2, he could neither overcome his rival PartinG nor the reigning champion OSL Maru(169). Going down swinging, it still ended his year on a bitter note. INnoVation also disappointed, placed in a relatively easy round of 16 group after a memorable DH Bucharest run (see below), he got knocked down by jjakji and soO, marking the definite end of his reign on top of the world(170). A patch of the hellbat had seemingly clipped his wings, going a measly 7 and 22 in tvt ever since Blizzard had fixed his favorite unit, Blizzcon would hold one more shot at redemption for him.

Keeping their WCS final hope alive, fellow Kespa super-stars Rain and Soulkey did not falter to make it to the round of 8 and were joined by two of the foremost Protosses hopes in Trap(171), and the first-time code-S participant Dear(172) who had made a name for themselves in STX Soul successful proleague run.


Third-party events – Season 3
Only two events ran concurrently to the third season of WCS, making them precious opportunities to earn a few extra WCS points.

DH-Bucharest came as a weird time, with most players in the running for a Blizzcon spot in the thick of their local competition, but with proleague having ended and players understanding the gravity of the situation and the money at stake, many made the time for it anyway, including rare appearances from Flash, INnovation, sOs, JD, Life and more.

sOs and ForGG both managed to navigate the group stage and the round of 16, picking up 200 points or so, enough to secure a Blizzcon spot for the first and just enough to reach the 16th and final spot for the second. innovation made his way to the final on the top side of the bracket, beating WCS champions HerO and MMA along the way as well as literal-God Elfi to get his fair share of WCS points. The rest of it went to Liquid TaeJa, closing his second great summer, the Liquid ace put on a masterclass, going 9-0 vs YugiOh, sOs, Life, and Innovation for his second DH star(173).

As the Liquid player clapped his hands following his greatest victory yet, with the world of Starcraft at his feet, he seemed dazed and unfocussed for his final opponent, the champagne bottle gave him its most brutal defeat yet, as even the CEO of Dreamhack that ran on stage to help save the face of his champion couldn’t help the poor Taeja, who couldn’t even get a single drip of the nectar out of the bottle. Taeja would have to fight another day and pray Mike Morhaime wasn’t planning any champagne ceremony.




As the second and last weekender event of the season, IEM New York mixed the wackiness of Comiccon with the seriousness of a tight race to Blizzcon. It took place as WCS Europe had already played their entire season, but before WCS America played their round of 16. That may have pushed some North American players that would find themselves desperately needing points a few days later to skip the event, most notably Scarlett. But the other foreigner in the race, Naniwa, didn’t miss his opportunity and jumped on a plane to NYC. One that would have very much liked to be on that plane with him was Millennium ForGG who had to bow down to the authority of the French government. He chose to prioritize his visa situation to establish himself in France permanently rather than to protect his position on the bubble for Blizzcon. The misfortune of one does the joy of another, as Revival got his replacement spot at IEM. The zerg couldn’t do much with his golden opportunity, losing in the group stages, but Naniwa did much better. Taking advantage of an easy group (aka the one with the US players), he advanced to out-pvp’ed San and just inched out Spider-Hyun going for a ballsy proxy 2-gate in a game 5 that earned him a standing ovation as well as his second grand final appearances of the year. There, he couldn’t muster enough tricks to best Startale Life, who left NYC victorious. It showed glimpses of a resurgence for the prodigy who had a disappointing year after starting HOTS on top, with many rumors on his lackluster practice habits going around(174).


Playoffs - Season 3
While there were plenty of money and a regional championship at stake, for the 24 players on the starting block of the WCS regional playoff the stakes were as much the first place as a seed to the Toronto season final and the WCS point and the thousands of dollars it held.
In North America, underdogs proved challenging for all except Polt, who did quick work of Hearth(175). Hack pushed JD to the limit(176), Macsed gave some headache to ByuL(177) and Oz surprisingly swept Liquid Hero(178) to keep his Blizzcon hopes alive.

The stars seemed to be aligned for a Polt-Jaedong rematch, but ByuL managed to best JD, reaching his first ever final while the overwhelming favorite Polt delivered in a tough series against Oz. Switching JD for ByuL didn’t particularly help the quality of the final (although the irony of the situation can only be appreciated years later), Polt rolled over the zerg to get his second WCS NA crown, and cemented his identity as Captain America and the unchallenged king of NA(179).

Meanwhile, HerO and Hack won the oh-so-important 5th and 6th spots for the season finale.



In Europe, Duckdeok couldn’t imitate his North American counterpart and fell early to Genius as the ex-GSL finalist seemed to finally find his stride in Europe(180), but it didn’t last long as he was himself promptly slapped down by MC on his way to his second final after a bit of cannon rush versus proxy void ray nonsense(181). MMA did equally short work of his adversaries in the form of Nerchio and Vortix(192). As for the 5th place match, Duckdeok would quickly recuperate from the beating he received and remind everyone that despite the MSC introduction, pvp was still a stupid random matchup as he would 3-0 Stardust to punch his plane ticket to America, for a date with the greats in Canada(183).

Just a couple of months removed from their last semi-final clash, the two biggest headlines of the European scene found themselves in, perhaps surprisingly, their first ever head-to-head final. MMA got to a roaring start with three straight wins and while for a moment it seemed like MC could mount a comeback, he had to tap out in the final for the second straight time(184). After earning his first trophy in over a year, it seemed like each day passing got MMA further from SlayerS implosion and closer to his form of old. He had come back from the dead and escaped the oh-so-rarely-merciful clutches of Internet drama and was once again the people champion, looking to go reclaim the succession of Mvp that he had squandered away.


In Korea, the round upper half of the round of 8 saw two mirror matchups between eerily similar players at a crossroads. The two STX-Soul protoss revealed by Proleague Trap and Dear, battled first, with Dear scoring an easy 3-0 sweep of his younger rival(185) and in the other mirror, Maru refused to follow the path of the ephemeral surprise champion once walked by the ex-NSH ace and cast away his disastrous Gamescom performance, emerging victorious of a scrappy tvt against jjakji(186). In the lower half, Parting and soO matched in a teamkill, the usual logic would dictate the reigning world champion to be the favorite against his largely unproven opponent, but Parting had disappointed for most of the year and proceeded to do so once again, only salvaging a map with a cannon rush(187).
That left us with the most anticipated match of the tournament between Rain and Soulkey. Without a doubt a duel many had for the final it promised to be a nail bitter with heavy Blizzcon implications for the protoss. Clearly, Soulkey didn’t get the memo though, as he swept Rain with overwhelming macro play and an impressive throw from his opponent in game 2(188).

Like in WCS EU and AM, the battle between the losers for the WCS final spot and a minimum of 500 guaranteed points, was fierce. A mere qualification would have been enough to put Rain, currently stuck in 17th place, past the edge for the time being. Sadly for him, jjakji still had one last upset left in him, in his last showing in Korea, he tripped Rain marking an end to his Blizzcon run(189). It was well deserved for Rain, as despite all the hype around his reputation as a defensive guru, he was caught grossly out of position in the last game, completely miss-reading jjakji movement as he darted on an open 3rd. However, the joy of victory wouldn’t last for the now Myinsanity terran, as Trap beat him to get that final spot to Canada.

In the semi-final, just a couple of months removed from achieving one of the biggest upsets in the history of Korean Starcraft, Maru now found himself as the favorite, against a first-time code S participant, looking to walk the royal road, although the STX Soul Protoss came in with noticeably more momentum than the Prime Terran before him, his Proleague performances casting a long shadow. He performed up to his reputation, firing on all cylinders to beat Maru 3-1 and get to the final on his first try(190). In the other semi-final, Soulkey seemingly had done the hardest part with soO coming into the final with a rather measly 14-13 zvz record in HOTS, but the so-called “angry zerg” flipped the script and swept Soulkey to get the first final of his own(191).



While soO had more code-S experience, Dear was coming in red-hot, nonetheless, if their play were analyzed it was the way both of their lives were impacted by forces outside their control that dominated the narrative. soO had carried the lengthy and storied legacy of SKT zerg perennial insignificance in Brood War before finally pulling through, he was one of Brood War’s fastest rising stock when his career got halted by the commercial aspirations of Blizzard and Kespa that sent him back at the bottom. For Dear it was the opposite, while he would be remembered as the man who once stopped a 14-win streak of Flash, SC2 had given him much more opportunities than BW ever could, but he suffered the backlash of the switch all the same. Proleague champions STX Soul were promptly dropped by the STX conglomerate amid financial woes and as no one seemed ready to take the place of their sponsor, the team fractured. Mini retired, Innovation joined team Acer, and Classic was picked up by SKT. The hard core of Soul nonetheless was still somewhat alive with Dear being part of it, although kicked out of Kespa and in the basement of the GSTL standing. After losing the financial stability of the Kespa system, this was his opportunity to make a name for himself as an individual star and hopefully land back on his feet.


Dear prevailed over soO in the first of many, many, 4-2 pvz final to come, and became only the third GSL protoss champion(192), while soO would have to go back to the drawing board, having played an honorable but uninspired final. The job was not over yet for Dear though, with 2250 WCS points to his name, nothing short of a final appearance at the season final could guarantee him his Blizzcon spot.


Season final - Season 3
Coming into the season finale, 7 players were essentially locked into Blizzcon, JaeDong, Polt, MMA, Maru, MC Soulkey, and HerO, four could hope to have a spot with a deep run, soO, Dear and Oz, needing at least a semi-final, probably a final, and Duckdeok, just needing as much point as possible to avoid any weird scenario. The last 5 needed nothing else than to win the tournament.

In group A, MC showed his form of old beating Soulkey(193) and as such condemning Polt to a tvz, he could not win(194). In groups, B, C, and D, the always reliable Trap kept his hopes alive as did OZ and Dear, but not soO. As for Duckdeok, he managed to finish 3rd, bumping his score just enough to make his 15th position comfortable. In a round of 8 that opposed Korea vs Fake Korea, the foreign champions could not hold on and got stomped at every turn. It was a particularly cruel twist of fate for Oz, despite finishing first in his group he had drawn Soulkey, who used the weekend to remind everyone that the only reason he didn’t have half a dozen trophies was that he had stayed in Korea. He demolished the poor Oz(195) and then did the same to Trap in the semi(196). Joining him was Dear, who survived Maru’s whirlwind of aggression for a second time in a semi-final, including a defensive masterclass on Frost that would become his signature match(197).

Soulkey was the perfect man to put the final point to Dear’s declaration of dominance. After having beaten a protoss (MC)(198) and a terran, he had a zerg coming off two 3-0 zvp sweep in front of him. He overcame the challenge with roaring success, scoring a 4-0 victory against a combative Soulkey that gave him plenty of opportunities to prove his excellence in every part of the matchup(199).

Despite plenty of challengers from INnovation to Rain passing by Maru, JD, Soulkey, Bomber, and Polt, Dear had peaked at the right time to earn the status of favorite one week removed from the World Championship.




Only a single matter needed to be resolved, the race for 16th place had ended in a complete tie between Naniwa and Revival, and a head-to-head decider had to take place. It only served to legitimate Naniwa’s presence at Blizzcon as he smoked the EG zerg(200), reassuring Blizzard that had least one white guy would be at Blizzcon.

16 players were called, 6 protoss, 8 terran and 2 zerg, 15 Korean and a single foreigner. Along with the sole foreigner NaNiwa(201), came from the Old Continent a group of relics from the past in the form of 4-time GSL winner Mvp(202), 2011 Blizzard Cup winner MMA(203), the WOL Boss-Toss MC(204), and of course duckdeok, the escapee from ESF(205). WCS America sent the Liquid dynamic duo of TaeJa and Hero(206), two EG representatives in the form of the sneakily consistent aLive(207) and the forever resilient Jaedong(208), and its great champion ‘‘Captain America’’ Polt(209). And finally, Korea arrived with their six brightest, Soulkey(210) once again only edged INnoVation(211) atop the ranking, behind them came arguably the two favorites of the tournament, Dear(212) and Maru(213) fresh of their couple of duels, WCS season 2 Bomber(214) also made the trip as a strong outsider choice for the crown, and finally closing the participants was the always puzzling sOs(215).

The tournaments also saw most of the English casters from all circuits. Tastosis of course was there, but also Rotterdam and MisterBitter as well as Tod and Apollo, highlighting the fact that it was a gathering of all the Starcraft world.

With a quarter million in prize pool and as the culmination of hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars of investment and countless amount of streaming hours, one could have hoped that Blizzcon production value was top notch, yet it seems like Blizzard was still a bit doubtful of their esport product. Despite having two full days to run a 16 players single elimination bracket with bo5 until the finals, Blizzard decided to have an A and a B stream, with the players on the B stream playing off-stage, robbing us of seeing some of the most anticipated matches of the year with the roar of the crowd in the background. They, however, certainly choose wisely with their first two matches, sOs dispatched of HerO in an adequately “protossy” pvp on the B stream(216) while MMA and Bomber slugged it out until the Startale captain stopped a one-base push to clutch game 5(217).

The broadcasting choice was less successful in the second matchups, Maru and MC played a perfectly adequate series that went the way of the Prime youngster(218), but it was nothing like what was happening on the B stream. DuckDeok shocked everyone by eliminating Innovation and blowing open the bracket in probably the biggest victory of his career that is sadly now nigh impossible to find on the Internet(219). Soulkey made sure he didn’t fall into the same trap as Innovation, navigating past Naniwa in the next match(220) while Dear continued on his momentum, despite being offered one of the toughest first-round matches he could have had drawn against TaeJa(221).

Closing the round of 16 were the two one-sided affairs of the tournament. Polt got a lucky draw as he got to go back to his favorite hunting ground and swept fellow WCS AM representative aLive(222) while Jaedong got as much as a free win as one can have in a world championship, eating alive a mostly retired Mvp in barely 30 minutes(223). It’s also at this point that it became evident that the Tyrant was the crowd favorite, be it because of his BW legacy, his electric reactions to victory, or the recognition of his struggles all year long, the Anaheim showed him unparalleled love late at night in the grand hall of Blizzcon.


There were now 8. Five from South Korea, two from America, and one from Europe. Again left to the annex, duckdeok almost disrupted the order atop the SC2 competition, pushing Maru to a 5th and last game before having to tap out(224). It would be the final match of the European champion’s career, at the pinnacle of his career he choose to walk away. As for the OSL champion, he made it to his 4th semi-final in his last 5 tournaments and waited for a potential third straight clash against Dear. On the bottom half of the bracket, Bomber managed the upset against Soulkey in a well-thought-off series featuring a wide array of builds(225). In the post-match interview, the victor declared that Soulkey was his hardest hurdle and that no one left in the tournament could beat him.

Going up against him would be Woongjin Stars sOs. Coming into the tournament his pvt was considered his weak point, the official TL prediction written by Lichter was ‘‘out against the first Terran he meets’’, he instead showed that he had more than a few clever builds in him. Against Polt, he did switch his style around a lot but also showed very solid mid and late-game macro centered around chargelot-storm opening, knocking the CM Storm terran out of the tournament(226). It raised a few eyebrows on Polt’s resume, as his dominant performance in America couldn’t translate into a more prestigious tournament once again.
Finally, in the last match of the day, with seemingly the entire Blizzcon crowd packing the arena, Dear was looking to confirm the WCS Korea dominance against Jaedong and manage the back-to-back-to-back royal road. Down 2-1 the Tyrant turned the series around, finishing the match with a borrow roaches play that would stay in the annals of Starcraft 2 history, decimating the protoss last desperate push before erupting in joy with his name echoing in the hall(227).



As the last day of the 2013 WCS circuit came, everything was still up in the air. Jaedong certainly had the crowd behind him, but his zvt woes against Polt and Bomber were still fresh in the memories, Maru had the momentum going in, but didn’t impress all that much considering a relatively easy bracket, Bomber looked to be the logical choice, but his crowing seemed to have come two years too late, as for sOs, he still hadn’t appeared on the main stream and the last time most fans had watched him was the beating INnovation had given him half a year prior, a semi-final appearance was already considered a surprise and pretty much no one really expected him to go further.

The first match was gearing up to be a battle of the mind, Bomber was already well known to be able to switch between styles gracefully and bring back builds from the dept of history, while everyone feared the aggressive options of sOs. Yet instead, what we saw was sOs showing off his defensive prowess, highlighted by a game 3 where he held on by the skin of teeth against a quick bio rush, managing to surround the Terran army with his probes as it was looking to sneak into the main and circumvent the photon overcharge at the natural, a time warp on top of the momentary stuck bio meant the marines and marauders got minced by the nexus shooting from the low ground as sOs defended the push with essentially no unit then rushed ultra-greedy double forges and storms on a single zealot to turn the game around then closing the series in four(228). Entering the tournament as arguably the most obscure player from the foreign fanbase perspective and with only a mere 2% of TL fans picking him as the future champion, sOs had earned a shot at the world championship.

Joining him would be either Jaedong or Maru. Both had a shot at making history, the little Prince of Terran could make a world championship final at barely 16 years old, writing his name next to any record Flash ever had, and in front of him was Flash’s old rival Jaedong who could be the first of the BW great to reach the top of SC2. The day would go to the elder, Jaedong snuck two quick wins with a ling-bane attack before losing a macro game and finally closing the series in a slugfest on Frost, keeping up with the tornado of Maru at every step of the way(229).


And there we had it, the perfect storyline, Jaedong playing to become not only the first Starcraft 2 true world champion and maybe the right to be called the best Starcraft player to ever touch a keyboard, but also become the living embodiment that the WCS did work. A legend of the game that had perfectly integrated into the American scene, learn English, hype the crowds like no others, and won the hearts of more fans than perhaps anyone before him could be about to give the foreign region victory over the Koreans. It was the holy grail the WCS engineers had envisioned, a shattering of Seoul’s position at the center of esport to let place to a world where the Western competitions would be on par with those in Korea.



















+ Show Spoiler +

sOs, the man no one saw coming, the ace of a team days removed from financial ruin, the man less than 2% of people chose to win the tournament, one of only two players to have neither won a trophy nor played in multiple final, someone who came to Anaheim completely under the radar was the World Championship Series champion of 2013. Seoul proved stronger in the end. With the first year of Starcraft 2 in the book, it was time to look back at its accomplishment.

It had undoubtedly reached its first goal, the Starcraft 2 scene was now integrated into a singular ecosystem with yearlong storylines and interaction between the different tournaments through the point system that lead to our first real world champion. The World Championship series had done the seemingly impossible and tame the Starcraft world of 2012 and made it an understandable and approachable esport.


As for the goal of creating parity between the three regions, it was a mixed bag. It had certainly managed to make WCS America and Europe must-watch-Starcraft 2 in a way no Starcraft competition had ever managed to become without the inclusion of Korean Star-leagues players. Foreign WCS attracted similar numbers of viewers as the Korean competitions and even the earlier round of challengers and qualifiers proved quite popular, even with a higher ratio of foreigners in them. But the toll of the WCS on the regional scene was perhaps greater than anticipated. The foreigner had been swept for the first time since SC2 history, not winning a single tournament all year long, that was arguably to be expected, although hard to swallow for many, what was more worrisome was that the Koreans were increasingly taking mid-level spots if WCS America was the most caricatural, Europe was hardly safe, Dreamhack Bucharest at the end of the year had seen 14 or the top 16 spots monopolized by Korean, and a staggering 22 of the top 32. The solution of Blizzard, nationalizing Koreans, had somewhat worked, players like Polt, Jaedong, Mc or ForGG had managed to integrate quite well into their new environment and somewhat recreate the foreigner vs Korean dynamic with Foreign-Korean vs Seoul-Korean, but although the confrontation was much stronger their ultimate failure to win the season finals, or the world championship had only made clearer gap with the actual foreigners. The region-lock debate would live on.


And that leads us nicely to the last goal, the creation of a sustainable and just Starcraft 2 environment. The WCS had proved itself responsive when critics came in knocking, especially with the transfer from MLG to NASL in America, and overall the sentiment was that the circuit had progressed nicely as the year when on. Most were also quite content with the way the world championship had turned out giving us a memorable showdown at Blizzcon. The overall raise in quality of the broadcast and the tournaments should also not be undersold, it was now clear that every event would be easily accessible on Twitch in HD with free VOD, little downtime, and technical problems.

However, the sustainability of Starcraft in the west was also called into question. The switch from MLG to NASL had revealed the financial toll the WCS had on its partners and with the increased prize pool and the lack of region lock attracting more and more Koreans, it seemed for many that far from helping the foreign scene, the WCS was instead actively accelerating its decline, by pushing Koreans to drown their local tournaments and killing the distinct personality that had been created by the foreign community.

As for Korea, behind an appearance of excellence and worldwide domination, the scene was getting bled dry at unparalleled speed, of the 164 players that had played one or more game in GSTL or Proleague, 49 were retired by the end of the year, worst, it is among the more stable and envious Kespa players that exile was the fastest. Proleague would lose over a third of their players in the spawn of 12 months on top of their two finalists having disbanded due to financial reasons. Perhaps due to having more resilience to the instability of the non-Kespa programming life, ESF players didn’t retire quite in the same numbers, but things were hardly looking great. FXO, TSL, and NSHO had been disbanded and Prime, IM, and Mvp had quit the GSTL. The dream of making a living of Starcraft 2 in Korea outside Kespa was quickly getting smothered while the Kespa teams themselves were quickly decreasing the size of their roaster and recentering their activities on stars players and as such increasing the competition for those few precious bunks bed at their team house. If foreign exile was first a way to find easier success, it was quickly becoming the only way for Koreans to pay their rent and grocery.

The pressure on the WCS system would only increase from now on.


But before plunging back into the tribulation of the WCS, he had an off-season to enjoy Starcraft free of worries. So join me next time as we explore some of the most eventful and memorable months of Starcraft 2, featuring a duel between World Champions, an assassin on the loose, Liquid greatest triumphs, a nerve-wracking showdown in Poland, and of course, the Best Starcraft match ever played. Next up A decade of Starcraft 2: The 2013-2014 off-season - Starcraft Unleashed.