Korea StarCraft League is back for its fourth installment, due to start on the 31st of October. The tournament, previously held at the VSG Arena in Seoul, is now moving to NEXON Arena, which was used most notably for the SpoTV-organised SSL and the final seasons of Proleague.
With three successful seasons in 2019 under its belt, KSL is preparing to make a comeback in October 2019. We saw the likes of protoss player Yoonjong ‘Rain’ Jung and zerg player Mincheol ‘Soulkey’ Kim take home the KSL trophy during the last two seasons. With the second season of 2019 just around the corner, fans are waiting to find out which of their favorite players will jump into the fray to be crowned the fourth KSL champion. For its fourth season, KSL will be taking place at dedicated Esports stadium NEXON Arena in the heart of downtown Seoul. The NEXON Arena, which is a multipurpose esports cultural complex, is complete with state-of-the-art audio and visual capabilities, as well as convenient facilities that provide fans and players with an excellent competitive experience.
Preparations for the fourth KSL season will start with online registrations, which are scheduled to take place from October 1 through October 9. Online qualifiers will then take place on October 11 and 12, followed by offline qualifiers on October 19. These qualifiers will decide which players will make it to the official round-of-16 roster.
Ro16: Bo5 Double elimination, October 31 - November 14 (Every Thursday and Friday, 3:00 PM KST) Ro8: Bo5 Single elimination, November 15 (Fri), 3:00 PM KST Ro4: Bo7 Single elimination, November 21 (Thu), 5:00 PM KST Grand final: Bo7, November 29 (Fri), 7:00 PM KST
KSL will be broadcasted exclusively on Twitch. VODs will be available on Twitch, Youtube and the official KSL website. (SpoTV own NEXON Arena, but it doesn't seem like the KSL is making its way onto SPOTVGAMES)
Finally I was starting to get BW abstinence-syndromes! I really prefer this isn't streamed on SPOTTV because more people will notice BW when its streamed on twitch.
Kinda disappointed about the maps, but they could be worse. Hopefully the quality of matches is a bit better than past KSLs, but I'm not complaining either way!
On September 27 2019 20:36 M3t4PhYzX wrote: good, very good!
finally some concrete info about it
how about the map pool?
Map pool for previous seasons has been the ladder map pool.
let us hope so that it will be the same this time around.. because I've read somewhere that this time the tournament map pool will not be the ladder map pool..
:D Always get a bit worried during the wait. Hope we get some breakout stars this time. I love me some toss but a new zerg dark horse would be welcome.
Yeah, I saw it. Like 5 times at least. This is one of my favourite BW games of all time..
doesn't change the fact that map pool is just INCREDIBLY boring this season..
*Yawn*
that's pretty INCREDIBLE:
well, I guess we have the same taste in Vods, just not the same in maps; I for example am not particulary impressed in any Korean map that came out after the remastered, (not that I know all of them); but still, the maps of a tournament should in no way be about what someone wants to watch, from the outside; it should be about what is happening in this moment (old maps too), the current meta trends, the nature of the tournament, the percentuage of races involved, and the ranks of the players who participate in said tournament. If a map is popular to play, you can be sure that it will be popular to watch, because the players will have practiced it, and may pull out interesting or unorthodox strategies. Of course, I am basing this on my idea and Foreign Tournaments, the structures, supports, sponsors and all must be somewhat different in Korea.
Also, saying why are Big scale tournaments playing CB or FS is just like, uhm, stupid? I understand if you are sick and tired of seeying this maps on stream, (I don' t even like CB to be honest), but really man... All in all, you could be a little more cheering, instead of saying that's the map pool is boring. like what do you except will come from this behaviour? I don' t think Ksl reads these threads on TL, I might be wrong, so this is like sending a letter to someone who will never receive it.
Yeah, I saw it. Like 5 times at least. This is one of my favourite BW games of all time..
doesn't change the fact that map pool is just INCREDIBLY boring this season..
*Yawn*
that's pretty INCREDIBLE:
well, I guess we have the same taste in Vods, just not the same in maps; I for example am not particulary impressed in any Korean map that came out after the remastered, (not that I know all of them); but still, the maps of a tournament should in no way be about what someone wants to watch, from the outside; it should be about what is happening in this moment (old maps too), the current meta trends, the nature of the tournament, the percentuage of races involved, and the ranks of the players who participate in said tournament. If a map is popular to play, you can be sure that it will be popular to watch, because the players will have practiced it, and may pull out interesting or unorthodox strategies. Of course, I am basing this on my idea and Foreign Tournaments, the structures, supports, sponsors and all must be somewhat different in Korea.
Also, saying why are Big scale tournaments playing CB or FS is just like, uhm, stupid? I understand if you are sick and tired of seeying this maps on stream, (I don' t even like CB to be honest), but really man... All in all, you could be a little more cheering, instead of saying that's the map pool is boring. like what do you except will come from this behaviour? I don' t think Ksl reads these threads on TL, I might be wrong, so this is like sending a letter to someone who will never receive it.
I've said that I hope that at least the games will be of good quality and the tournament will be better than the last one.
And because of this atrocious map pool Nothing more "cheerful" will be coming from me until the tournament will actually start and we are able to see the groups, the games, the production, etc.
Nothing wrong with standard maps at all, but ffs.. this is a pro tournament of the highest caliber.. go for 4 to 3 ratio - 4 standard ones and 3 "odd" ones just to spice things up a bit. That's all I'm saying. Was always like that in korean tournaments and it should stay that way if you ask me.
But still.. Using FS and CB in a top tier tournament in 2019 is just inexplicable to me..
Eh not a fan of online qualifiers, but what can you do. Maybe if they keep changing venue every season, one day this'll end up at a competent production company for once. One can always hope. Let's see if they can have somewhat decent sound for once. Not a fan of the map pool either, but it's what you'd expect from a blizz run event. Still hoping that one day some other company, maybe SPO or OGN, finds an agreement with Blizzard to run their own events so Blizzard doesn't have to anymore. Though I doubt that modern Blizz would ever wave/reduce that massive fee. I'm so grateful to Afreeca for paying it every season/year. That CEO is one hell of a guy. Still having my fingers crossed for Bisu, but Blizzard had to do this with Twitch, when all the big Starcraft streamers are on Afreeca...
I just wanted to point out that it's not really a matter of personal opinion on the map pool, it's clear that the Korean audience likes fancy maps that enables colourful experiments by the pros. That's why delivering innovative maps should be a priority for the KSL production.
Having both CB and FS is like when Lucina & dark pit were both selectable characters in Smash. There's 100's of old maps and also tons of new ones to select from having 2 of the most overplayed standard map is wrong even with most sets in KSL inflated to Bo5/7 no one needs it I believe.
Could not find details on two things, hopefully you people can help me out:
1. Is Bisu gonna try and qualify? (Maybe the koreans watching his stream would know best) 2. Saying that all matches will be casted in English - does that include qualifiers as well?
On October 19 2019 11:53 Light_VIP wrote: Gonna be rough updating liquipedia for this, other than what is shown on stream idk if they will show updated map scores for what isn't streamed.
I can and i'm sure many others can get the results of the games, i'm sure the results will be on ygosu or some other KR websites. If not I will ask for it from one of the participants in WHITE, PM if you need any help.
On October 19 2019 11:53 Light_VIP wrote: Gonna be rough updating liquipedia for this, other than what is shown on stream idk if they will show updated map scores for what isn't streamed.
I can and i'm sure many others can get the results of the games, i'm sure the results will be on ygosu or some other KR websites. If not I will ask for it from one of the participants in WHITE, PM if you need any help.