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The only thing that really "went wrong" with last year's monster Korea lineup was the epic Savior debacle in which he lost to PJ. This was an incredible failure on the Maestro's part, but it has been OVEREMPHASIZED significantly due to the fact that it's Savior, who in his prime put together arguably the greatest year of dominance ever (at least, it's the only true year and a half of dominance post Oov's macro-revolution).
Yeah, some Koreans dropped games here and there to foreigners - this has happened almost every year, no?
Yeah, Hwasin didn't make it very far ... oh wait, he lost to Stork, who did still win.
Yeah, Stork lost to White-Ra. But, with all due respect to White-Ra, does anyone think he's really anywhere near as good as Stork? Watch the most recent games on TSL, and then watch some of Stork's textbook (ie NOT during a final) Protoss play games where you see near-perfect mechanics and execution. White-Ra is a great player but Stork, as much as we all love to hate on his inability to come through in the finals, is now one of the greatest Protoss players in SC history (easily top 10, arguably top 5).
I think you might be right with your 3 predictions. I'm just pointing out that I don't think last year's WCG was as big of a deal as we often like to make of it, mostly thanks to Savior.
Also, I would actually venture to argue that the top 2 players in Korea right now are actually more clear cut than they were last year, which means they have a better chance to advance. Them being Flash and Jaedong of course. Both of these guys are battle-tested, have ridiculous mechanics that no foreigner is even close to, and are vicious killers who in my opinion do a better job of jumping on opponents' mistakes than Savior and Stork did (at least in the state they were in at last year's WCG).
If the WCG was today and Flash and Jaedong were in it, I would bet neither would lose a game to any foreigner and would unfairly make foreign players look far inferior to the Koreans (when in reality this is no longer true anymore). Luck and timing both play a big role in perspective.
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Your points make sense, and I could see them happening (depending on who they send, of course). However, I hope 3 isn't true 
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Physician
United States4146 Posts
Man I was going to say it was an optimistic opinion column until I read the last sentence.
This will be the last WCG with SCBW on the ticket.
Incontrol you bastage, you ruined my Sunday. Many of us have feared the removal of Brood War in WCG so the surprise reminder just gave me the heebeegeebees. May all your predictions bite the dust if only to kill that last one.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
On May 19 2008 13:33 Last Romantic wrote:Show nested quote +On May 19 2008 13:26 infinity21 wrote:
I hope flash comes to WCG so we get to see some of his reps. I want to know the secret behind his monstrosity. What if Flash = X
That's so easy. Nada will qualify for WCG as well and all we have to do is ask the author of that sc comic for an alternate ending.
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On May 19 2008 13:33 Last Romantic wrote:Show nested quote +On May 19 2008 13:26 infinity21 wrote:
I hope flash comes to WCG so we get to see some of his reps. I want to know the secret behind his monstrosity. What if Flash = X
Then clearly Brat_OK must defeat him in place of NaDa
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as much as we'd all like to see an upset, I think your only real valid arguing point is the latency, which we'll take your word for since you have experience in that regard.
Korea is stagnating? Your evidence is that Savior lost a few games last year. Well, Josez beat Boxer. Froz beat Boxer twice. Blackman beat Odyssay. Hellghost beat H.O.T. Silent Control got embarrassed by Testie and Androide. These upsets happen all the time and pretty much every year. So far, nothing has come of it in terms of the big winner. I don't see why this year is any different.
Level of non-koreans at its peak? Of course it is. Why wouldn't it get better every year? Yes, there are some new names. That's just the nature of gaming. Are Drieven, Nony, etc. really any more skilled than Fisheye, Nazgul, Elky, etc. with respect to the Korean best during their heydays?
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Why does broodwar need to leave wcg, thats total bullshit.
Even when starcraft 2 comes out, bw will still have a bigger base than half the games there
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Aotearoa39261 Posts
#3 is utterly depressing
i hate you incontrol
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I think that 1-2-3 place is only hapenned in 2006? Am i right? And even that domination, oov lost to draco in ro8 first game, midas lost twice in group stages. The accidents could happen but i think that, a random set of 3 progamer would still have %98 chance to win WCG.
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I forgot about the LAN Latency. When I notice that the TSL replays look like semi-pro games I thought it was just the quality of the players. LAN setting makes a HUGEEE difference.
MasterOfChaos deserves to be include in Starcraft wikipedia for his Latency Changer. It's revolutionary because it finally allows people to play at their fullest potential with people around the world instead of limiting to LAN.
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hrm.......................................................naaaaaa
lol, 99% of koreans knows what starcraft is. they have 2 T.V. channels broadcasting sc 24/7. what do foreigners have? false hopes and dreams thats wat. dream on though, it doesn't hurt.
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United States10774 Posts
On May 19 2008 14:04 radar14 wrote:
as much as we'd all like to see an upset, I think your only real valid arguing point is the latency, which we'll take your word for since you have experience in that regard.
Korea is stagnating? Your evidence is that Savior lost a few games last year. Well, Josez beat Boxer. Froz beat Boxer twice. Blackman beat Odyssay. Hellghost beat H.O.T. Silent Control got embarrassed by Testie and Androide. These upsets happen all the time and pretty much every year. So far, nothing has come of it in terms of the big winner. I don't see why this year is any different.
Level of non-koreans at its peak? Of course it is. Why wouldn't it get better every year? Yes, there are some new names. That's just the nature of gaming. Are Drieven, Nony, etc. really any more skilled than Fisheye, Nazgul, Elky, etc. with respect to the Korean best during their heydays?
my thoughts. good post radar14. seeing a foreigner win WCG for the first time would be cool, but is the latency really enough?
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On May 19 2008 13:18 Kwark wrote:
You make a good argument and I agree with most the points. However, while everything is in our favour, you simply cannot argue with skill. They have more of it. I believe this'll be the closest WCG I've seen but I do not believe we will win.
I have to agree here, i think the koreans are peaking skill wise, or damn close to playing perfect starcraft, we are not really as close to that, and i don't think we will get close to that for a damn long time at this rate, foreign starcraft hasn't adapted aswel as the kroeans, not by a long shot.
China is close, if they step it up and become more dominant and profession then maybe just maybe a chinese person will win, but i don't know about a european or american. Maybe if china somehow didn't have shit lag issues becuae of their great ass firewall. But either way, maybe if they send an all protoss line up and we just have mondragon kill them all.
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On May 19 2008 12:21 Showtime! wrote:
I agree with 1 and 3; however, not 2.
Nice article incontrol.
How could 3 be true and not 2?
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Bold and Speculative is right, Just wait, the koreans have developed a perfect gamer training him with
1.ee han timing since he was a litle kid, cooking something for 3 minutes in the microwave and not letting him eat it unless he got up 1-5 seconds before the timer went off, otherwise he'd have to repeat it and it would be burned.
2. By cutting off his ... stuff, because your length is obviously inversely proportional to your ability to own at star craft.
3. finger steroids!!
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First of all this is a really nice read Geoff. Unfortunately I don't agree with everything you wrote. But this doesn't mean that you are wrong obviously. I'm not an oracle.
You wrote that the given maps favor foreigners over koreans which I think is simply not true. We obviously play maps progamers play. We play lots of games on Python, Blue Storm, Tau Cross, Peaks and Gaia where Gaia probably is the only map that progamers are not common with. (given the fact a progamer advances to WCG who hasn't in the past 3 years)
Probably the fact that makes you think the maps favor us is the fact that koreans have to train on newer maps and totally ignoring the old(er) WCG maps, but I can guarantee that the koreans have played Python, Blue Storm, Tau Cross and Peaks to no end. They know every single build order you can pull off and they probably know everything about these maps.
On the other hand I agree with you, the foreign level is higher than it ever was. I won't say I believe any foreigner can take a macro game from a korean progamer, but its unlikely that a top foreigner (i.e. Nony) cannot take a game with a little bit of an advantage he gains in early game.
As you mention the key nations with their strong players like ret and HayprO just for example I think this will give "us" (most likely good players, because I don't think ret or HayprO are going to train with average players) a good possibility to prepare for the World Cyber Games 2008. Unfortunately I think its just not enough of preparation to beat the koreans in a Best of 3 or Best of 5. (The final is best of 5 this time?)
Players who could accomplish something I'd say are most likely: Nony, IdrA, Mondragon, White-rA, Draco. So for me we have 3 Protoss, 1 Zerg and 1 Terran which are a threat to the koreans. Unfortunately the korean level is rising too. Not just foreigners are getting better. The real advantage that we get is the mentioned training of the new maps from korean progamers. They have to train the new maps non stop to reach their goal. To win a starleague. There is no more important tournament in Korea and I bet winning a starleague is still more important to them than winning an international tourney like the World Cyber Games. I'm not saying they just go with the attitude to "lets see how far I come" but they are for sure not practicing like for a starleague. For example in starleagues they have a lot of time to prepare for one special opponent on 5 special maps. Here they have no time to prepare or really not much time to prepare for their opponent they probably don't even know. This could give "us" an edge.
Last but not least you mentioned that the Lan Latency gives us an advantage. Not an advantage over koreans, but an advantage in general because we are getting used to no-latency games which is good for offline tourneys, obviously. I agree with you. Lan Latency is a great tool and we can archive a alot mechanics with it. Most of the time (you will agree) when you played usual battle.net games and switched to hamachi (not too common for about.. 2 years or so) your macro and micro were totally off, because you just were not used to the more liquid gameplay. Now we are used to that. Even though a real LAN game is even more liquid than a Lan Latency game.
Now I'd like to predict myself based on your predictions:
1) It really depends on who Korea sends. I don't say if Flash, Stork and for example Jaedong are coming they are unbeatable. I actually did think sAviOr , HwaSin and Stork were pretty much unbeatable to that time, but they failed. This is probably not just because they were too cocky more like because the foreign level has improved by far. HwaSin didn't fail vs a foreigner though.
I'd say if Flash, Mind and probably Jaedong coming its unlikely that 2 foreigners will be in the top 3, but its still far away from impossible.
2) WCG will be won by a foreigner. No, I cleary disagree. I don't think there's a way for a foreigner to win in the finals. Not because of the lack of skill, but more like the nerves. Koreans are used to play in finals (at least a lot of them) and they are used to play in big offline events with a huge audience. Probably with NonY vs Stork in the finals Stork will choke and gets the silver like at home.. in Korea. But I really can't imagine a foreigner taking gold, which again does not mean it won't happen!
3) I'm really surprised you actually predict that this will be the last time we see Broodwar in the World Cyber Games. World Cyber games proofed to be really solid and they will test Starcraft 2 before they add it to the WCG. Probably we will see Broodwar and Starcraft 2, but we won't see Starcraft 2 right after it is released. Thats my guess. There will be a next time we see Broodwar at the World Cyber Games.
I hope my post isn't offending anyone. If I didn't mention a top player its just that he didn't was in my mind when I wrote this, so I apologize beforehand. I'd be happy to read other opinions on what I wrote.
Edit: An admin move that please to featured threads or make it sticky, its really an awesome thing to discuss  !
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On May 19 2008 13:46 Physician wrote:
Incontrol you bastage
What a bastage.
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stork was doing amazingly stupid build vs white ra and whoever else.
he was definitely throwing games to try and set up the brackets for a 1,2,3 korean victory.
As for savior, well PJ is (certainly was at the time) one of the best foreign players, and savior was well into his slump.
Korea could send stork or jaedong or bisu or lux or mind
they dont have to send flash to win.
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Probably we will see Broodwar and Starcraft 2, but we won't see Starcraft 2 right after it is released.
A LOT of new games are added right after they are released.. of course this will happen with Starcraft II.
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EPT
