WCS 2013 feels like very bad news to me. I don't know what it is, whether it's the involvement of only three player regions or whether exclusivity. Anyway, here is what we know so far:
WCS 2013 will have a $1,600,000 prize pool
It will be divided into 3 seasons and will culminate in a finals at Blizzcon 2013.
The Europeam division will be handled exclusively by ESL. Dreamhack apparently have some involvement but unconfirmed.
The American division will be handled exclusively by MLG.
The Korean division will be handled by KeSPA, GOMTV and OnGameNet.
Major tournaments will serve as regional seasons for each step of the WCS. They will no longer be separate events.
Players are free to select whatever region they want but have to commit to it.
Events will be streamed exclusively on Twitch in 720p.
Now there is so much wrong with this announcement. Namely:
1. WCS 2013 will have a $1,600,000 prize pool
This is the exact same commitment that Valve made two years ago with The International and a year before that with The International 2. Riot Games' Season 2 finals also had around a $3,000,000 prize pool and it's speculated that LCS will have an even bigger prize pool.
2. It will be divided into 3 seasons and will culminate in a finals at Blizzcon 2013:
Has Blizzcon 2011 taught us anything? The venue will be much too small and much too exclusive for the WORLD FINALS OF STARCRAFT II. IEM Katowice and several Dreamhacks were held in a fucking arena while this is held at the Anaheim Convention Centre.
Also, want to see this live in person? Tough shit. You'll have to queue up with the WoW and Diablo nerds who will make any tickets for this event sell out in mere minutes.
WCS 2012 worked because it was entirely seprarate to Blizzcon (probably because Blizzcon wasn't around in 2012.) Why doesn't WCS do this for 2013 too? Blizzcon with its limited capacity and abundance of people not interested in Starcraft or e-sports really doesn't seem like a fitting end for an international StarCraft league.
It's like hosting the Superbowl on a small farm with room for only about 5000 people rather than a gigantic American Football stadium.
3. The Europeam division will be handled exclusively by ESL. Dreamhack apparently have some involvement but unconfirmed.
Dreamhack are the ideal partners for doing WCS as they know how to put on a good show. Besides, why not have two partners in the EU scene and not just the one that specialises in international and not necessarily European events?
Finally, if Dreamhack are involved, why did they go unmentioned?
4. The American division will be handled exclusively by MLG.
Really? MLG?
Don't get me wrong, MLG do some spectacular events but this completely leaves out the North American Star League, another big player that could easily throw some amazing events. I was tempted to say IPL too until I realised Ziff Davis Media basically murdered them in cold blood.
Anyway, why should MLG, who have made some of the most questionable decisions between 2010 and 2012, be allowed this spot?
Doing a league exchange program with GOM and not even making sure they uphold their end of the bargain. Anyone remember when Naniwa was denied a GSL seed because of a probe rushing incident in a completely unrelated tournament and how GOM tried to bullshit their way out of the situation? Anyone remember how MLG Orlando and MLG Providence didn't lead to any foreigners being granted Code A seeds?
Doing a one-sided partnership deal with KeSPA. We haven't seen any foreigners competing in Proleague and OSL, have we? (except of course EG-TL which is a completely separate thing.)
Kicking 2GD from a cast because he cracked a joke about how good Dreamhack's production values are compared to MLG's.
Continually changing the format of their 2012 season. Winter had 1 arena, Spring had 2 arenas, Summer had 1 arena and Fall had a crappy paywalled special event involving KeSPA players vs everybody else which went away from the status quo so badly that nobody could believe the fact that the MvP Invitaitonal was even offering seeds for the Fall Championships.
Hosting the MvP Invitational, a round robin league where Foreigners faced KeSPA pros and the results were predictable. The entire format of the tournament made it entirely unworthy of it being a 'qualifier' for MLG Fall.
5. The Korean division will be handled by KeSPA, GOMTV and OnGameNet.
This is the only good news, except it completely leaves out SPOTV. It would be fitting if they hosted a WCS Korea event. It's nice to see that the three big players in Korea will finally be working together and not trying to murder each other.
6. Major tournaments will serve as regional seasons for each step of the WCS. They will no longer be separate events.
I really question this decision. At least Riot can and have done their own production up to this point and evolved LoL beyond just using other events as qualifiers and actually hosting their own round robin league.
Also, this means we're gonna see far fewer international players at every single event since they'll have to commit to a particular region's major events. And with all the Koreans undoubtedly choosing NA or EU because competition is so easy, that means it will fix nothing.... Which leads to my next point....
7. Players are free to select whatever region they want but have to commit to it.
Yes, Blizzard are seriously not restricting geography or nationality on this one. League's system works because you don't see teams like Najin Sword completely tearing up NA LCS because the competition which consists of overrated foreigner hopes like CLG, EG and TSM is easier than Snooki in comparison.
2012 WCS worked because we didn't see players like PartinG soul train every single WCS North America game and gain an instant seed to the Shanghai finals.
With this, we can already guess what regions some big name Korean players and teams who can afford to do so are going to pick:
North America
Europe
Korea Naaaah... too difficult.
Sundance already confirmed big name Koreans have approached MLG about competing in the NA WCS. This is just not good.
Also, this is going to be quite bad for players from outside these three regions. What about players like Moonglade? He'll either have to negotiate with Team Nv to fly him and the rest of Nv's roster to either every IEM or every MLG to even have a chance of competing in the WCS Finals this year. Or he can get a shorter flight to Korea and have his run ended in every Code B he chooses to compete in.
What about China? They have big name tournaments like the GIGABYTE StarsWar, NEOTV Star League, G-1 League, G-League and have big name players like LoveCD, xiaOt, XiGua, Jim, Loner and MacSed. WCS 2012's grand finals were also held in Shanghai and featured a separate Chinese division. WHY WERE THEY LEFT OUT?
And what about South African player PandaTank who reached the Ro8 of ESWC 2012 and proved himself to be a surprisingly decent player? Has he like all non-Europeans, non-Americans and non-Koreans suddenly been disenfranchised too?
8. Events will be streamed exclusively on Twitch in 720p.
Ah, Twitch, my absolute favourite gaming stream site. There's nothing I love more than watching a stream that stutters more than a guy with a major speech impediment when it hits above 40,000 viewers and watching VODs that take an eternity to load just in 240p.
As a European, I honestly found Own3D to be a much better service but since they're bankrupt, I guess we'll have to stick with the monopoly... Or do we?????
Hashd emerged mere weeks after the shutdown of Own3D and have so far gained no recognition whatsoever as a gaming stream site. And what about Azubu? What about Ustream, who streamed the PlayStation 2013 conference and held a surprisingly stable stream at 450k concurrent viewers? What about Livestream.com?
One of my biggest complaints with Twitch is the lag experienced for European viewers. For example I bought a season pass for Proleague (because I want to support e-sports and $5 is a bargain for a whole year worth of content.) I haven't properly been able to watch an English language VOD yet. Loading the VODs in GSL quality or 240p (yes, old joke considering GOM have really upped their stream quality and ditched GOM Player exclusivity) has taken an eternity. I remember waiting ten minutes for them to load, watching until around 2:40 in the VOD and then hitting a buffer wall. Watching in 360p, 480p, 720p or the 1080p promised? Sorry, you're shit out of luck unless you watch at 3am or live in America.
Twitch's VOD servers in Europe are so bad, I've actually found it far more worthwhile to watch free Korean language 720p VODs on YouTube. Yes, the ones on EsportsTV (or KeSPA's official YouTube channel.) At least they load.
And don't get me started on their Android app either... the Twitch Android app is so terrible that in the last few weeks, I have yet to even get a stream to load. It used to work and now it just doesn't. And even then the stuttering and buffering issues are far worse than it is on desktop, despite using the same Wifi connection as I use on my desktop PC...
Why not do what Valve and GOMTV did? TI2 was hosted on simultaneous Own3D and Twitch streams and so was GSL for some time when a hurricane hit New York.
This is a horrible analysis and extremely contradictory. SC2 isn't the biggest game Blizzard have so I don't see what your problem is.
Also, want to see this live? Tough shit. You'll have to queue up with the WoW and Diablo nerds who will make any tickets for this event sell out in mere minutes.
I really dislike this culture in the starcraft community at the moment of "Oh, somebody's announcing something, it must be shit so I'm going to look for shit everywhere possible and rant about how much I hate this game" and this seems like one of the most petty examples of it. Arguing that Korean players are just going to go and spend their entire lives in the states or Europe is ridiculous and shows no understanding of the Korean Starcraft scene in the slightest.
You really have no idea what you're talking about. Did you ever wonder where all those IPL employees went? Did you ever consider that many of the Korean's are playing in the GSL extremely soon, so it will be a race to get to the foreign leagues in time? On top of that, Blizzard self inflating prize pools is an awful idea, and the reason Riot and Valve do it is solely for marketing. It's all very well and good having a 2 million dollar first place prize, but you don't help the local grass roots scenes in anyway. What I've pointed out here just skims the surface on why you're completely wrong.
On April 03 2013 21:58 Yonnua wrote: I really dislike this culture in the starcraft community at the moment of "Oh, somebody's announcing something, it must be shit so I'm going to look for shit everywhere possible and rant about how much I hate this game" and this seems like one of the most petty examples of it. Arguing that Korean players are just going to go and spend their entire lives in the states or Europe is ridiculous and shows no understanding of the Korean Starcraft scene in the slightest.
I agree.
OP, many of your problems have already been explained in great length in the LR thread and on Lo3 (e.g., that Dreamhack can't be a central station for Europe because it lacks infrastructure), and many of your other complaints (MLG heading it alone is bad because they're bad) are just plain whiny. Furthermore, the fact that the best players are spreading out across all three areas means that all three regions will have higher-skilled games and competitors, and that we don't end up with 1/3 Koreans and 2/3 irrelevant players in the final round. The fact that the WCS allows the final groupings to be the best players (regardless of whether that's all Koreans or not) is fantastic, and much more exciting than seeing people move on when you think they're not justified (i.e., oh those foreigners just got lucky that they didn't have to play any Koreans).
Plus, the fact that this is a model where many huge organizations are working together and Blizzard is hugely investing in e-sports and the StarCraft community are things to be happy about. This is clearly being taken very seriously, and can do a world of good for promoting e-sports.
On April 03 2013 21:58 Yonnua wrote: I really dislike this culture in the starcraft community at the moment of "Oh, somebody's announcing something, it must be shit so I'm going to look for shit everywhere possible and rant about how much I hate this game" and this seems like one of the most petty examples of it. Arguing that Korean players are just going to go and spend their entire lives in the states or Europe is ridiculous and shows no understanding of the Korean Starcraft scene in the slightest.
I agree.
OP, many of your problems have already been explained in great length in the LR thread and on Lo3 (e.g., that Dreamhack can't be a central station for Europe because it lacks infrastructure), and many of your other complaints (MLG heading it alone is bad because they're bad) are just plain whiny. Furthermore, the fact that the best players are spreading out across all three areas means that all three regions will have higher-skilled games and competitors, and that we don't end up with 1/3 Koreans and 2/3 irrelevant players in the final round. The fact that the WCS allows the final groupings to be the best players (regardless of whether that's all Koreans or not) is fantastic, and much more exciting than seeing people move on when you think they're not justified (i.e., oh those foreigners just got lucky that they didn't have to play any Koreans).
Plus, the fact that this is a model where many huge organizations are working together and Blizzard is hugely investing in e-sports and the StarCraft community are things to be happy about. This is clearly being taken very seriously, and can do a world of good for promoting e-sports.
Yeah you hit the nail on the head with this post. The ONLY downside is that we don't have an ongoing 'best league in the world' anymore, because not all the best players will be centred in a single location.
On April 03 2013 21:58 Yonnua wrote: I really dislike this culture in the starcraft community at the moment of "Oh, somebody's announcing something, it must be shit so I'm going to look for shit everywhere possible and rant about how much I hate this game" and this seems like one of the most petty examples of it. Arguing that Korean players are just going to go and spend their entire lives in the states or Europe is ridiculous and shows no understanding of the Korean Starcraft scene in the slightest.
I agree.
OP, many of your problems have already been explained in great length in the LR thread and on Lo3 (e.g., that Dreamhack can't be a central station for Europe because it lacks infrastructure), and many of your other complaints (MLG heading it alone is bad because they're bad) are just plain whiny. Furthermore, the fact that the best players are spreading out across all three areas means that all three regions will have higher-skilled games and competitors, and that we don't end up with 1/3 Koreans and 2/3 irrelevant players in the final round. The fact that the WCS allows the final groupings to be the best players (regardless of whether that's all Koreans or not) is fantastic, and much more exciting than seeing people move on when you think they're not justified (i.e., oh those foreigners just got lucky that they didn't have to play any Koreans).
Plus, the fact that this is a model where many huge organizations are working together and Blizzard is hugely investing in e-sports and the StarCraft community are things to be happy about. This is clearly being taken very seriously, and can do a world of good for promoting e-sports.
Yeah you hit the nail on the head with this post. The ONLY downside is that we don't have an ongoing 'best league in the world' anymore, because not all the best players will be centred in a single location.
Thanks
Why not GSL? The Koreans who don't want to play in the Korea region for WCS don't have to move. I'm pretty sure it was stated that they can stay in Korea but still play on a different region. An obvious drawback to this is cross-server latency and lag, but if it's manageable, then they can still stay and play in Korea, right? (I don't think the GSL will lose too much steam. If all the wind was going to be removed from GSL's sails to promote WCS, then I don't think GOM or even KeSPA would be on board with Blizzard's WCS plan.)
On April 03 2013 21:58 Yonnua wrote: I really dislike this culture in the starcraft community at the moment of "Oh, somebody's announcing something, it must be shit so I'm going to look for shit everywhere possible and rant about how much I hate this game" and this seems like one of the most petty examples of it. Arguing that Korean players are just going to go and spend their entire lives in the states or Europe is ridiculous and shows no understanding of the Korean Starcraft scene in the slightest.
I agree.
OP, many of your problems have already been explained in great length in the LR thread and on Lo3 (e.g., that Dreamhack can't be a central station for Europe because it lacks infrastructure), and many of your other complaints (MLG heading it alone is bad because they're bad) are just plain whiny. Furthermore, the fact that the best players are spreading out across all three areas means that all three regions will have higher-skilled games and competitors, and that we don't end up with 1/3 Koreans and 2/3 irrelevant players in the final round. The fact that the WCS allows the final groupings to be the best players (regardless of whether that's all Koreans or not) is fantastic, and much more exciting than seeing people move on when you think they're not justified (i.e., oh those foreigners just got lucky that they didn't have to play any Koreans).
Plus, the fact that this is a model where many huge organizations are working together and Blizzard is hugely investing in e-sports and the StarCraft community are things to be happy about. This is clearly being taken very seriously, and can do a world of good for promoting e-sports.
Yeah you hit the nail on the head with this post. The ONLY downside is that we don't have an ongoing 'best league in the world' anymore, because not all the best players will be centred in a single location.
Thanks
Why not GSL? The Koreans who don't want to play in the Korea region for WCS don't have to move. I'm pretty sure it was stated that they can stay in Korea but still play on a different region. An obvious drawback to this is cross-server latency and lag, but if it's manageable, then they can still stay and play in Korea, right? (I don't think the GSL will lose too much steam. If all the wind was going to be removed from GSL's sails to promote WCS, then I don't think GOM or even KeSPA would be on board with Blizzard's WCS plan.)
I could be wrong about this (there's a ton of misinformation floating around right now), but I think that WCS region locks things. So if you do the Korean WCS league, you can't go to NA and EU tournaments, and the same with the other two regions.
On April 03 2013 21:58 Yonnua wrote: I really dislike this culture in the starcraft community at the moment of "Oh, somebody's announcing something, it must be shit so I'm going to look for shit everywhere possible and rant about how much I hate this game" and this seems like one of the most petty examples of it. Arguing that Korean players are just going to go and spend their entire lives in the states or Europe is ridiculous and shows no understanding of the Korean Starcraft scene in the slightest.
I agree.
OP, many of your problems have already been explained in great length in the LR thread and on Lo3 (e.g., that Dreamhack can't be a central station for Europe because it lacks infrastructure), and many of your other complaints (MLG heading it alone is bad because they're bad) are just plain whiny. Furthermore, the fact that the best players are spreading out across all three areas means that all three regions will have higher-skilled games and competitors, and that we don't end up with 1/3 Koreans and 2/3 irrelevant players in the final round. The fact that the WCS allows the final groupings to be the best players (regardless of whether that's all Koreans or not) is fantastic, and much more exciting than seeing people move on when you think they're not justified (i.e., oh those foreigners just got lucky that they didn't have to play any Koreans).
Plus, the fact that this is a model where many huge organizations are working together and Blizzard is hugely investing in e-sports and the StarCraft community are things to be happy about. This is clearly being taken very seriously, and can do a world of good for promoting e-sports.
Yeah you hit the nail on the head with this post. The ONLY downside is that we don't have an ongoing 'best league in the world' anymore, because not all the best players will be centred in a single location.
Thanks
Why not GSL? The Koreans who don't want to play in the Korea region for WCS don't have to move. I'm pretty sure it was stated that they can stay in Korea but still play on a different region. An obvious drawback to this is cross-server latency and lag, but if it's manageable, then they can still stay and play in Korea, right? (I don't think the GSL will lose too much steam. If all the wind was going to be removed from GSL's sails to promote WCS, then I don't think GOM or even KeSPA would be on board with Blizzard's WCS plan.)
I could be wrong about this (there's a ton of misinformation floating around right now), but I think that WCS region locks things. So if you do the Korean WCS league, you can't go to NA and EU tournaments, and the same with the other two regions.
Ah, I was under the impression that even though you do have to stick with one region to play out relevant online matches (which become offline for the top sixteen iirc), you can still gain points from tournaments all over the world. I have a hard time believing that each of these organizations would want to exclude all players that choose other tournaments over their own, and I think that they'd want to share all players and teams so that every tournament still benefits. Either way, I'm sure it'll become better explained as time goes on
Is it possible they could have the WCS finals as a sort of separate event from general blizzcon admission? We know it will be AT blizzcon, but maybe you could get a ticket just for WCS and it would be in its own area of the convention center?
Also I dont understand why you are so down on MLG. You really think it would have been wise for blizzard to use NASL to run the WCS instead? MLG is the obvious choice. They've got better production, ran way more events, larger events, they attract better players, etc.
It's good that ESL is doing the European WCS because it will have positive effects for e-sports in general. With both sc2 team and lol teams in the same region will make for some great synergy effects.
On April 03 2013 21:58 Yonnua wrote: I really dislike this culture in the starcraft community at the moment of "Oh, somebody's announcing something, it must be shit so I'm going to look for shit everywhere possible and rant about how much I hate this game" and this seems like one of the most petty examples of it. Arguing that Korean players are just going to go and spend their entire lives in the states or Europe is ridiculous and shows no understanding of the Korean Starcraft scene in the slightest.
Well luckily there is a group of people in the SC2 community that agrees with you and is willing to jump into these threads to shoot them down. I see the same people every time putting together well thought out arguments disproving the naysayers and showing their support for the scene. The number has been growing over the months. I think the community has learned to deal with these arm chair game developers and event runners that believe their opinion as if they are fact.
On April 04 2013 02:14 SlayerS_BoxxY wrote: Is it possible they could have the WCS finals as a sort of separate event from general blizzcon admission? We know it will be AT blizzcon, but maybe you could get a ticket just for WCS and it would be in its own area of the convention center?
Also I dont understand why you are so down on MLG. You really think it would have been wise for blizzard to use NASL to run the WCS instead? MLG is the obvious choice. They've got better production, ran way more events, larger events, they attract better players, etc.
I think it would have been wise to use both MLG and NASL for America and both ESL and Dreamhack for Europe. Korea shows they're not limited to exclusivity with one organiser.
On April 03 2013 21:58 Yonnua wrote: I really dislike this culture in the starcraft community at the moment of "Oh, somebody's announcing something, it must be shit so I'm going to look for shit everywhere possible and rant about how much I hate this game" and this seems like one of the most petty examples of it. Arguing that Korean players are just going to go and spend their entire lives in the states or Europe is ridiculous and shows no understanding of the Korean Starcraft scene in the slightest.
I agree.
OP, many of your problems have already been explained in great length in the LR thread and on Lo3 (e.g., that Dreamhack can't be a central station for Europe because it lacks infrastructure), and many of your other complaints (MLG heading it alone is bad because they're bad) are just plain whiny. Furthermore, the fact that the best players are spreading out across all three areas means that all three regions will have higher-skilled games and competitors, and that we don't end up with 1/3 Koreans and 2/3 irrelevant players in the final round. The fact that the WCS allows the final groupings to be the best players (regardless of whether that's all Koreans or not) is fantastic, and much more exciting than seeing people move on when you think they're not justified (i.e., oh those foreigners just got lucky that they didn't have to play any Koreans).
Plus, the fact that this is a model where many huge organizations are working together and Blizzard is hugely investing in e-sports and the StarCraft community are things to be happy about. This is clearly being taken very seriously, and can do a world of good for promoting e-sports.
EDIT: Also, the 720p is goddamn free.
I think with the incomprehensible clusterfuck that the WCS NA qualifiers were, I made my point correctly. MLG exclusively hosting WCS America was a really bad idea. Look at the single 512 man qualifier they hosted for the tournament where we've already seen 4 Koreans qualify and will probably see an all-Korean qualification.
Oh and what about disallowing many Grandmaster Chinese pros and allowing Gold/Platinum Leaguers and map hackers like PhysicsLee free reign over some of the 512 spots?
I thought the way ESL hosted the WCS Europe qualifiers was bad but MLG are just taking the piss now.
EPT
