EPT
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This weekend, Blizzard is hosting it's annual World Wide Invitational in Paris. Over the span of 2 days we will be able to experience the latest build of SC2, watch progamers duke it out with top foreigners and hide in a dark corner when the massive crowd of dressed-up World Of Warcrafters starts doing fictive battles.
Evidently, a part of your precious TeamLiquid staff will be attending this event in Paris, providing you coverage of both what happens in the event, as of what happens late at night when certain foreign players try to drink away their losses to Koreans. We will post videos, interviews and general expressions about SC2.
Now on to the matches! At the World Wide Invitational we will see 4 high level foreigners compete with 4 Korean progamers to be crowned king of this event. All the games will be played on Saturday, with the exception of the finals, which will be played on Sunday. The only thing greater than the player line up is the commentator line up: Tasteless and the manliest voice in progaming: Manlyfesto.
After being invited, the players learned who their opponent was and got 5 maps of which they could thumb down one. The five maps were Andromeda, Colosseum, Blue Storm, Wuthering Heights and Othello. We, however, do not know yet what maps were picked for each match, so I'll try to do the match previews mapindependantly.
EDIT: Apparently Blizzard changed the matchups: Link to new matchups
I'm not sure if the site is wrong, cause we had information directly from Blizzard/the players. Sit tight while we sort this out.
+ Show Spoiler [OLD MATCHUPS] +
sAviOr vs 
DreivenSomebody better buy this guy a barbecue dinner before the match, cause he's gonna need all the energy he can get. Eventhough sAviOr was demoted to the CJ B-team, he's still strong as hell. Also, Dreiven didn't get enough time to practice the maps, due to being subbed in at the last moment. Foreigners often describe Dreiven's PvZ as "solid but not versatile", and that's going to be playing in sAviOr's favour, as Andromeda doesn't play out like other maps in PvZ.
Poland didn't stop Hitler. Now let's see if they can stop Matler.
Sea[Shield] vs 
MondragonWell, isn't that unfortunate. Mondragon gets to play his worst matchup against one of the most solid Terrans on the scene. And the maps are hard for ZvT too. When I addressed Mondragon about this match, he didn't feel confident. That doesn't mean he gave up, though. Mondragon has been practicing these new maps for the past week. Maybe he can show us a nice innovative strategy and take a game, but it's very unlikely.
IdrA vs StorkIdrA plays a very economy-based TvP. And that's just unfortunate. Macro is one of the terrains it's almost impossible to beat a seasoned progamer like Stork in. On the other hand, IdrA says his TvP is his best matchup in Korea. I think IdrA can win a game, depending on what map it is on. Let's not forget, however, that Stork only came to Paris for one reason: taking that silver medal, and he wont let IdrA stop him.
Kal vs F91I actually think that if a foreigner wins his Ro8 games, it'll be F91. Why? Unlike the other foreigners, F91 plays a very agressive style. Rumours are that the Chinese Communist Party forced F91 to get rid of any economy-based builds, and forced him to do some sort of all-in each game.
F91 likes to play it risky, and that may reward him. However, Kal is a Korean and will probably expect cheese from a lesser opponent. Expect safe play vs aggressive play, and a pretty close game.
All in all, our foreigners didn't get very lucky with the line up. We can, however, never know how it will play out. Expect on-site player interviews and game impressions from the BWWI coverage team. Videostream will be managed by ESLTV.
Rumours
Certain rumours have made its way to me. Here's a few of them:
- When Stork is drunk, he likes to wear his Dinosaur dress up suit. He has packed that dress up suit to BWWI.
- Whoever buys the TL staff the most drinks *might* get a custom TL icon.
- PuertoRican was hired by Blizzard to get rid of the event's tradition to have a serious lack of black male attendees.
- For the first time in his life, Moltke is packing condoms in his luggage too.
- Tasteless gave oral sex to a microphone once.
The TL meet
Manifesto7 set up a TL meet to happen on Saturday night. It will feature around 60 TL'ers in a bar that is known for having more alcoholic drinks than soda. Among the attendees will be Manifesto7, Chill, Kennigit, Taiche, Mondragon and hopefully a few Korean progamers.
All in all, we're trying to get you as close to the action as you can get. See you on Saturday!
