On September 08 2013 13:53 Leeto wrote: Samsung Galaxy Ozone is a pretty cool name though. And it looks good for the company since their team will most likely run deep through worlds.
On September 08 2013 13:53 Leeto wrote: Samsung Galaxy Ozone is a pretty cool name though. And it looks good for the company since their team will most likely run deep through worlds.
All about that branding. It looks for the phone.
Yeah, that's certainly true! The ROI should be excellent for Samsung.
On September 08 2013 15:59 Lysanias wrote: And yet TL keeps hiding LoL away in a down corner there <---------
Honestly, I don't think anyone who is active in the LoL subforum cares about that. They've got amazing coverage, just as good as the officially featured titles (maybe better? just kidding), because the staff/writers are completely amazing and really passionate. I'd rather have it stay as it is, although the coverage deserves even more attention of course, but the rest is perfect as it is, in my opinion.
On September 08 2013 17:22 WetSocks wrote: Sad truth. This esports golden age is not sc2's ... Good luck both!
One must be really sarcastic to call this "golden age of esports" after killing bw with sc2 and replacing it with LoL.
You misunderstood the text. He called it the "2nd Golden Age" of eSport, refering to BW being the 1st Golden Age, obviously. So calm down, nobody said anything against BW (many people in the LR threads for KR LoL events are BW fans, like myself) and it surely wasn't sarcasm. Everything is fine.
It is the golden age of e-sports. When Brood War was at its peak, it was still just Korea. Now you have China, Korea, Europe, North America, Taiwan, and even budding regions like South America and places like Turkey building up teams and showing major interest.
On September 08 2013 18:14 Fionn wrote: It is the golden age of e-sports. When Brood War was at its peak, it was still just Korea. Now you have China, Korea, Europe, North America, Taiwan, and even budding regions like South America and places like Turkey building up teams and showing major interest.
It's really an argument of quantity over quality, in my opinion. It's kind of like how American Football has (to my limited knowledge) one of the most vibrant, and certainly one of the most financially viable sport scene in the world, but is limited solely to the United States of America. The discussion of quality matters, because unlike football (the world-wide successful sport), the level of competition despite the wide participation from the various regions has not been elevated it all that much. To draw what may be an unsuitable comparison, the professional Starcraft 2 scene was globally accepted, yet was dominated by a minute, thoroughly unorganized scene in Korea. As fast as the League of Legends scene is growing in Korea, it has yet to reach the "glory days" of e-Sports back when even your grandmother knew who Boxer was.
And it matters, because people often talk about how League of Legends is so much better than the olden days because of its global nature, like they argued it with Starcraft 2, when the fact of the matter is, it's because none of the multiple regions has managed to create a scene that even be compared to what Starcraft has sustained for years. If even one region manages to replicate half of what was going on back in the days in Korea, they would dominate so hard it wouldn't even be funny, and make the other regions more or less irrelevant. Yes the money, the viewership is there. However, the level of competition, the depth of the talent level isn't even comparable. It doesn't matter how there are players from all over the world playing it. Starcraft had players from Canada, United States of America, and Korea all competiting for Brood War Tournament World Championship, but the level of the competition that followed years after made all that look thoroughly amateur.
I'd also think we still need at least 1-2 full years to even think about directly comparing the levels of competition. Korea's talent pool is already really deep by any standards, but still not where BW was at mid/late 2000's. I don't blame them, just think about where BW was one and a half years in, it was nothing compared to what it became later, but it still shows that it needs a bit more time as of now. So again, I don't want to belittle the Korean talent pool because it's already insane by any eSports standards, but right now it couldn't support such a huge team environment as BW in its full prime did. The air is already getting a bit thin now that all the KeSPA teams are hiring all the top Challenger players as drilling partners for their starting rosters. Trying to form a new team right now that could actually compete with the likes of SKT, KT, Ozone seems virtually impossible, because they are just sooo much better than everyone else and the talent pool simply needs time to catch up to that level of play. We can even see how big the difference between first and second best team in Korea is right now (SKT vs KT), while the difference from KT to the CJ teams (so a top 2/3 team versus top 5/6 teams) looks just absolutely ridiculous, as we saw in the Regionals. Like, no chance at all. They still need to step it up a notch and become more ruthless and cutthroat to reach that good ol' BW competition level. Not that I'm complaining though, I'm absolutely ecstatic about what's happening in the Korean scene and it's probably only 2nd to BW, but we shouldn't go overboard yet.
How can You guys even draw so groundless comparison is beyond me. Comparing two games- with different genres, one of which is played solo and the other is a teamgame- in terms of player talent....Thats just stupid.
On September 08 2013 20:58 Silvanel wrote: How can You guys even draw so groundless comparison is beyond me. Comparing two games- with different genres, one of which is played solo and the other is a teamgame- in terms of player talent....Thats just stupid.
In my opinion there is somewhat of a difference between comparing games and comparing scenes/competition. You don't have to like them of course, but comparisons just kind of come along naturally because there are so many similarities in these scenes. Personally I find the topic quite interesting, so why not? In case you're interested, I'd recommend that Grilled episode that Thorin did with Chobra, which also includes this topic.
Also, we're not specifically comparing "player talent" but rather the talent pool that is being fostered by the infrastructure and the resulting competition. Just wanted to add this for the sake of completeness. As long as it remains a level-headed discussion and doesn't derail into cliché pissing contests in the vein of "but my game is so much better" I think this topic can be quite rich. Unfortunately such a discussion is often lead very emotionally and is almost somewhat stigmatized by now, from my point of view.
On September 08 2013 20:58 Silvanel wrote: How can You guys even draw so groundless comparison is beyond me. Comparing two games- with different genres, one of which is played solo and the other is a teamgame- in terms of player talent....Thats just stupid.
I can draw comparisons because the difference in talent level is beyond reasonable doubt.
For example, do you realize that professional players still use solo-que as a legitimate form of practice, and actually learn things off amateur players? Flame, without question one of the most highly regarded top laner in Korea, if not the world, and a damned good Nidalee player himself, was found asking an amateur player for tips on how to improve as a Nidalee user. Not just one or two questions, but endless waves of questions that would never have been seen on a similar degree in the professional Stacraft scene. Could you imagine Jaedong asking an amateur zerg player on how to play against late-mechanic-switch in the zerg-versus-terran match-up? Of course, the nature of the game does provide differing situations, but there is no shape or form where you can argue that the level of talent is higher in the League of Legends scene, than the professional Starcraft scene at its highest peak.
Do you realize how insanely difficult it was for an amateur player to make it as a professional Starcraft player? There were various stages you had to pass, that tooks months, if not years to overcome, not the automatic "solo-que high ranker" into "professional player" you see these days. Two different games, two different situations. Yes, but if you take that argument too far, you can argue that the talent pool cannot be compared in ANY two separate scenes. There clearly was a difference in the level of competition and talent. You simply choose to acknowledge it, or you go back to your "cannot be compared" argument.
On September 08 2013 20:58 Silvanel wrote: How can You guys even draw so groundless comparison is beyond me. Comparing two games- with different genres, one of which is played solo and the other is a teamgame- in terms of player talent....Thats just stupid.
I can draw comparisons because the difference in talent level is beyond reasonable doubt.
For example, do you realize that professional players still use solo-que as a legitimate form of practice, and actually learn things off amateur players? Flame, without question one of the most highly regarded top laner in Korea, if not the world, and a damned good Nidalee player himself, was found asking an amateur player for tips on how to improve as a Nidalee user. Not just one or two questions, but endless waves of questions that would never have been seen on a similar degree in the professional Stacraft scene. Could you imagine Jaedong asking an amateur zerg player on how to play against late-mechanic-switch in the zerg-versus-terran match-up? Of course, the nature of the game does provide differing situations, but there is no shape or form where you can argue that the level of talent is higher in the League of Legends scene, than the professional Starcraft scene at its highest peak.
Do you realize how insanely difficult it was for an amateur player to make it as a professional Starcraft player? There were various stages you had to pass, that tooks months, if not years to overcome, not the automatic "solo-que high ranker" into "professional player" you see these days. Two different games, two different situations. Yes, but if you take that argument too far, you can argue that the talent pool cannot be compared in ANY two separate scenes. There clearly was a difference in the level of competition and talent. You simply choose to acknowledge it, or you go back to your "cannot be compared" argument.
While, as I said before, I pretty much agree with everything you said, we still have to factor in that to some degree the direct comparison will come off as a bit one sided and maybe won't be that fair. We're like 1 1/2 or 2 years in in Korea, so our comparisons to the prime of BW will obviously sound very harsh. It's just that the golden days of BW were so insane and had so much long time build up behind them, that any other scene will simply pale in comparison. I really didn't want to come off as bashing the Korean LoL scene, because with where it is right now things are looking very bright for the future and I enjoy it a lot, and to me personally it's the closest to BW that we have ever come, but there's still a long, long way to go. Maybe we can come back in 3 years and compare them again, and see how it went. Until then I guess I'll just enjoy the ride.
Also I think a more adequate analogy for your Jaedong example would be like Madlife asking some amateur about Blitz or Faker asking someone about... anyone.
Not surprising given SC2's performance in Korea. Must say I'm shocked that Blizzard still hasn't figured this out. I doubt they'll ever sell 1v1s in Korea, as a gaming hobby. Team matches and different modes are what they should focus on, but thus far they've failed pretty largely on that front.
If team games were more popular, Koreans would pay more attention to the pro scene.
I wouldnt call it the golden Age but we are in a very good moment of time for esports. For me golden age its something which already passed by and is in the past. But I think that quantity in terms of more region are participating in esports is more important the high skill level in Broodwar for reaching a "golden era". In addition reaching new countries is way harder than increasing the skilllevel. Skillevel will rise automatically over time but getting a foothold in a new region is incredible difficult.
I think we will see pro practicing on soloqueue for a long time (always) because playing only scrims is way more taxing on your mind then playing 1vs1 inhouse with your teammates.