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B.Net National Qualifiers - Q&A with Ilja Rotelli
April 18th, 2012 23:33 GMT
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/blizzcon/battlenet2012worldchampionsq.jpg)
For the recent MLG Spring Arena open qualifiers, Blizzard was directly involved in sending out invites to the top players on the regional ladders. Is there any way the ladder might be more involved in the qualification process, or is that mostly up to the partner organizations? Ilja RotelliYes. We’re actually planning to use the ladder for a number of slots in several Nationals. Stay tuned for more details.With some of the national qualifiers being run through online events, will there be any improvements to Battle.net to allow large tournaments to be run more easily? (Whether it's similar to Warcraft 3's automated tournament system or other methods). Ilja RotelliWe’re obviously always looking into this kind of functionality, but we don’t have specific plans to announce right now.With building more 'participatory esports' being a goal, have you suggested more open qualification processes to your partner organizations, opposed to the heavily seeded and invite based systems that are common at present? Ilja RotelliThe short answer is, yes. The eSports infrastructure we want to build for the World Championship Series needs to be transparent and easy to understand. While the invitational format works well for the eSports industry, when it comes down to representing one’s country in a true world championship everyone deserves a transparent path to the title. It might take more than a year to have a fully open road to the title, but that’s exactly where we’re going and we’ll get there.What kind of criteria was used in deciding which countries would host national qualifiers? Ilja RotelliWe looked at the size of the active StarCraft II playing population. We adjusted the number of slots up slightly at the continental championship level when a country has a recognizable professional scene, but otherwise it’s just a measure of activity. What kind of system will be used in awarding the spots to national championships? A system where a fixed number of top placing players receive spots? Or a point based system where people accrue points over multiple events? Ilja RotelliWe offer a combination of qualifier invitations and ladder invitations. The qualifier invitations work like you described: we’ll select some of the more fitting competitions and leagues and award the top players that emerge from those with qualification slots. The remaining slots will go to top ladder players from every nation. We don’t have any plans to use a point system this year, but we have considered it as an option for the future. At each phase, how many representatives will each country and continent be given? Will it be weighted based on StarCraft II playing population and other considerations, or will they be equal like last year's invitational? Ilja RotelliThe number of representatives from each country or region will be weighted at each level based on the StarCraft II player population, with some additional weighting offered to regions that have an official pro scene.You mentioned that National Championship spots will be added to existing events. Most existing events pit players against international competition, so does this mean players will be able to qualify for their country's National Championship from a tournament where they played players of other nationalities? (For example, Koreans qualifying for Korea by beating Europeans at an IEM event) Ilja RotelliYes, there will be cases where National Qualifier events will involve players competing against players of other nationalities. We’ll look at the top finishers who are of the appropriate citizenship (including those with appropriate Visas) for that region as a part of that qualification. So, for example, players from many nationalities participate in MLG events -- we will be offering MLG qualifier spots for the US National, so they would only qualify the top-ranked MLG player(s) with valid United States citizenship. In the future, we will look at adjusting the system with independent qualifiers and/or a point system where players could qualify from international tournaments.Is there a ballpark number of national qualifier events you are aiming for? Do you plan to use a few, centralized events, or do you plan to spread it out over as many events as possible? Ilja RotelliThis year, we plan to use a few centralized events from established StarCraft II organizers. In the future, we hope to spread the qualifiers among a larger number of events.Will there be certain rules or standards Blizzard seeks to enforce at the national qualifier level in order to maintain consistency with the later rounds? (Map pool, etc). Ilja RotelliThe rules in for the 2012 events will be provided by Blizzard, for consistency, across National and Continental Finals. Given the way we want to reward players who are participating in existing leagues, we can’t enforce the same set of rules below Nationals level.While Blizzard plans to partner with major organizations to hold and broadcast the various stages of qualifiers, many esports organizations have moved to partial (for HD quality) or full pay-per-view models. With Blizzard be requiring a certain level of free quality video availability in order to cooperate in the Battle.net World Championship process? Ilja RotelliAll major Battle.net World Championship events will have a free stream available for the community to watch, with a minimum quality level of 480p. In some cases, higher quality free streams will be available. Depending on the event, the highest quality stream may be offered as a premium service, but no event will be exclusive to premium viewers. Note that, while most Nationals will be streamed, a few of the smaller countries may only be able to provide replays or VODs. We didn’t want to cut out smaller countries from the competition just because they weren’t able to get an international stream running. In either case, more information on each event will be on the StarCraft II website.
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Sounds like a great person! :D
It's going to be a big year. :3
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Ukraine will win. :D
Sorry for chobo question, but is korea in? 
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Eyooooo using the ladder to get players, classic. May 1st super close though, hope it goes well
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imagine being invited VIA point system (GM or High top masters). This will motivate alot of people forsure!
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On April 19 2012 08:49 CeriseCherries wrote:
yah korea is part of the world XD
since when??
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Of course South Korea is in 
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Sadly nothing really interesting, but reaffirms that they want to do it.
I wish he said something more interesting about the auto tournaments though
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Good to see at least the guarantee of free streams
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nice to see there is someone in charge for this event. past blizzcon sc tourneys have been fail for years.. probably due to lack of planning and organizing.
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This is good, it sounds like they are starting to move into the right direction with the blizz cup working all the kinks out.
I would LOVE it if they added tournament functionality like they had in Wc3, That shit helped keep the community playing for alot longer in wc3.
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World Championship Series - SouthAmerica Nationals
Date:
14 April
Location:
Lima, Peru
Number of Participants: 16
# of Finals Slots: 2
Final: results...
+ Show Spoiler +
Final:
pashka 2
XionS 0
Semifinal:
Fenix lost to XionS 1-2
Source: sc2nationals.peru
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Oh dang! This is pretty exciting :D
Can't wait for it. 
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Free stream is always good ^^
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Australia18228 Posts
On April 19 2012 12:29 Grobyc wrote:
Free stream is always good ^^
Blizzard's free HD stream for GSL October was pretty awesome.
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Honestly rather Blizzard just work on supporting other tournaments and ESPORTS than doing this. And using ladder is a joke.
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Sooooo....... Sweden? how do i see the swedish qually?
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Good to see Fenix active again.
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Igues the finals will be Korea vs Sweden=)
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Austria? 
what about the smaller countries which are not listet? did i miss something?
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So why does ukraine only get 2 and sweden only 3 finals slots but germany 4.
Only because there are more german players on the ladder?
Seems a bit unfair too me, considering sweden and ukraine got more top players than germany.
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Nice to see the mandatory free stream. Otherwise there doesn't seem to be too much new information here or very much specific informaion at all, which is odd since these events are already in progress in some places.
Maybe it's just because the "established" scenes across the world are so diverse that they can't really release binding world-wide information on anything below the National Qualifiers.
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On April 19 2012 16:04 ZeitgeisT wrote:
So why does ukraine only get 2 and sweden only 3 finals slots but germany 4.
Only because there are more german players on the ladder?
Seems a bit unfair too me, considering sweden and ukraine got more top players than germany.
I think it is a matter of the perspective. From Blizzards perspective, Germany is a greater market due to the bigger gaming population (and potential buyer of HOTS), so they cater more to this scene.
From the perspective of skill (and amount of full time pro´s), a different distribution like Sweden 4/ Germany and Ukraine 3 seats would be more logical, though.
The positive aspect about it is, that the national finals of Sweden, Ukraine and Netherlands (only 1 seat) will be pretty exciting.
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What a masterpiece of journalism is it to ask the most convenient questions! This really did not have to be an interview, it would be enough to present a press release from Blizzard. Otherwise I cannot put my mind around how you managed to be so completely silent about the issue of people that are unable to participate because of their nationality.
I know that nationality-based competition is an old concept from "ordinary" sport but that does not make it less stupid. Even more stupid is the situation, where for a global event, people are divided into two groups: can participate = happens to liven a country chosen by Blizzard, cannot participate = rest of the world.
Interestingly, divinding people accroding to what kind of passport they hold, ooks like a big fun to everyone. Would you be so cheerfull if they made a tournament only for white people?
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On April 19 2012 17:24 opisska wrote:
What a masterpiece of journalism is it to ask the most convenient questions! This really did not have to be an interview, it would be enough to present a press release from Blizzard. Otherwise I cannot put my mind around how you managed to be so completely silent about the issue of people that are unable to participate because of their nationality.
I know that nationality-based competition is an old concept from "ordinary" sport but that does not make it less stupid. Even more stupid is the situation, where for a global event, people are divided into two groups: can participate = happens to liven a country chosen by Blizzard, cannot participate = rest of the world.
Interestingly, divinding people accroding to what kind of passport they hold, ooks like a big fun to everyone. Would you be so cheerfull if they made a tournament only for white people?
You are being kind of unreasonable... So what you say is that we can´t have a world championship because all countrys doesn´t play starcraft? That´s just stupid. Although i see you point and blizzard should at least fix so all the countrys, in for example Europe, who aren´t participating should merge togheter and do an online qualifyer where in it´s turn leads to a biggertournament in the middle of Europe. That way everyone who is willing are allowed to play. Also you´re talking about other countrys being inferior to others? well ofc have you seen GSL? In Code S there is only koreans gamers for the one time exception of one swedish gamer.
On the other hand i believe this is a huge step for ESports. This and the recently announced CSL scholarship are going to revolutionate the Starcraft we know today. I can´t wait untill i get to see the outcome of HOTS!
EDIT: sorry about my english^^
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No hungarian tournament :\
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On April 19 2012 15:39 RyF wrote:Austria? what about the smaller countries which are not listet? did i miss something?
We are forever alone
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On April 19 2012 08:33 TeamLiquid ESPORTS wrote:
The remaining slots will go to top ladder players from every nation.
So... I just need to play 5 placement matches then.
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this will be great!!! cannot wait!!!
wonde rif the is one for the UK?
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On April 19 2012 18:52 Tommylew wrote:
this will be great!!! cannot wait!!!
wonde rif the is one for the UK?
There are qualifiers every sunday for the next 8 weeks, no details have been given yet though.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/4871777/
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It is nice that they are stepping up in the e-sport department as a developer.
Still, mr Rotelli, holding the national finals in Naples got to be the worst decision of this century, seriously do they expect any attendance at all from this?
As a premise, I live by the south, but still, Naples is the worst city in the entire country, stained by high criminality rate, garbage dumping problems, poverty and illegal immigrants, with an overall technological advancement deficit compared to the rest of Italy, let alone Europe. (Terrible internet connections, yeah).
Not really the best place to hold an esports event, innit? Milan,Rome or even Florence would've been MUCH much better.
Funny thing is, Cloud is being forced to go there, even though he expressed multiple times to "dislike" (to put it kindly) southern Italy, being from Miland and all.
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What a nice interview! Very interesting to hear about the new plans for the world championship
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Pretty cool this. I will watch the free stream! Well I won't watch everything like I used to do. But I will pick the games I like or excited for.
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With some of the national qualifiers being run through online events, will there be any improvements to Battle.net to allow large tournaments to be run more easily? (Whether it's similar to Warcraft 3's automated tournament system or other methods).
Ilja Rotelli: We’re obviously always looking into this kind of functionality, but we don’t have specific plans to announce right now.
"We're looking into it" is Blizzard speak of "Not gonna happen". So sad.
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Canada5565 Posts
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i REALLY wonder who will win guys.
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but what about the country's who are not listed there what will the palyers do from other countrys from europe????
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sounds cool
this is actually an awesome idea
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Sadly, no chance for Philippine players like me to join.
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I really hope this turns out to be really worthy world championship!
Sounds great so far!
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This is really horribly done please blizzard just support other tournaments that are doing a great job, dont see a point in this.
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Its quite exciting seeing esports growing so much this year! Even though im only a fan and avid player for sc2 I feel its really awesome to be a part of something that is having as much growth as esports is
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i really hope every country as a chance to get in
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edit: neeeevermind
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EPT
