[NASL] Players (final) - Page 166

On March 30 2011 05:35 GP wrote:

Jesus christ people need to stop hating on Cruncher. I can't say I'm a fan of his style, but he completely shat on Pain User and Sjow, two world class Terrans and has consistently posted great results recently. His style is really abusive, for example he took complete advantage of Sjow's late scouting weakness, but wins are wins and it seems to seem Cruncher is here to stay and not just a passing fad (like Masq and Silver).

On March 30 2011 05:38 KingPaddy wrote:

Where do you see any Cruncher-hating in the posts you quoted?

On March 30 2011 05:30 Minigun wrote:
Well thanks for the info xeris, guess I will need to practice a bit more.

Gl to those in, will be a fun turny to watch for sure.

On March 30 2011 05:10 Xeris wrote:
Enjoy~~

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North American Star League – The Players

We hope that this will shed some light to the community about our application and selection process. On February 1st I contacted as many teams as I could and allowed them to begin preparing. These are the people/teams that fell under the category of “direct approach.” When we opened the application process, I contacted those teams again to allow them to officially submit their players. Anyone whose team manager was not directly contacted was part of the “public application” pool.

Because we were running at a fairly tight deadline, we had to close the application period at March 16th – we were not able to consider all the “public applications” received after this time. This applies to players such as DIMAGA, Kas, and LaLuSh, for example. Now, to clarify: the “application” is not just the video. The application is complete when the contract has been signed. The process for a public application was for them to send their application video along with manager contact information to apply@nasl.tv . After receiving their info, I would then send the contracts out to be signed. LaLuSh, DIMAGA, and Kas did not follow this application process.

Why does this bureaucracy matter?

We have deadlines. The contracts needed to be received before we could officially count any player in the league, and we needed time to do that. We needed to confirm every one of the 50 players before our website launched, to prepare content, and before the league starts, to ensure that it runs smoothly. Furthermore, because we need to run a broadcast schedule five days a week every week, we had quite a bit of concern over players who were unable to quickly follow these guidelines.

Now that that’s out of the way…

We had a grand total of 104 applications. We immediately eliminated 30 applicants who either: a) didn’t have a video with their application, or b) posted a video on youtube without actually applying. This left us with 74 players on our board. Next, we separated the 74 players by region: Asia, Europe, and North America. After separating the players by region, we went down the list and selected players who: a) were considered “top” players and b) were fan favorites, starting in North America (KiWiKaKi, SeleCT, and IdrA for example), followed by Europe (MorroW, White-Ra, and TLO for example), and Asia (July, MC, and Boxer for example). After this first round we had: 9 North Americans, 8 Europeans, and 6 Koreans.

Before the second round, we went backwards through the list, eliminating the lowest skilled/fame in a group of amazing players: (Cezanne, KenZy, Antimage for example). Then we went back through the regions to select the “second tier” list of admitted players, again based on results and popularity. Players in this list included (some examples: KawaiiRice, Axslav, Haypro, HasuObs, and Ace). This left us with 42 total invites, and 8 remaining spots for the third round of selection.
At this point, we had a two day debate about the remaining players, in which we went to the poll and the application videos to help make our selections. Players who made the final cut included MoMaN and Dde for example. This left us with the North American Star League’s 50 players.

How did we group the players?

The first thing we did is separate teammates – we put all teammates in different groups. The next thing we did was to look at fun and exciting rivals and try to pair them: I.E. IdrA vs Tyler, Zenio… and Grubby vs Moon. After this, we attempted to create an equal balance between races and regions. Two Koreans were placed in each group, and each group has a balance of 4-3-3 (races). We also used our selection process to help the grouping, separating those selected in the first round in different groups, etc.

Overall, we chose 3-4 players (Artosis, Grubby, MoMaN) who were designated as “fan favorites” and 3-4 players (ViBe, CrunCher, DarkforcE) who may be considered “underdogs.” The rest of the players were chosen based on their results and skill level.

Why we picked them

Stalife: Stalife took 2nd place in the EG Masters Cup, multiple ESL Go4SC2 victories (including 1st in the Monthly final), and over $3,500 in prizes won, Stalife has shown to be one of the most underrated players in NA.

ViBe: Nearly qualified for the TSL and had an impressive showing at MLG Dallas 2010, proving that he is one of those up and comers we want to see in this event.

CrunCher: He validated our pick by defeating IdrA in the TSL, but his qualification was impressive as well, taking down top players in an official setting.

Dde: Similar to ViBe, Dde is another player whose results in online cups consistently puts him in the top3 and leads us to believe that he has the potential to surprise many people in the North American Star League.

Grubby: One of the most legendary RTS players of all time – he’s shown some good games at the
Assembly LAN and the FXOpen Invitational. He is one person that we’re sure everyone would love to see succeed.

MoMaN: He’s played pretty well in online cups, and we were really as impressed with his application video, which was one of the most popular we received. He was an easy “fan favorite” choice for us.

Artosis: Artosis posted some good results in the beta stages when he was active, qualifying for the first GSL. Now that he will be active again, we believe he can surprise many people, and of course was one of our fan choices!

Why we didn’t pick them

DeMusliM: He was wearing a cast in his application video, standing outside of a hospital saying that he just had another procedure done, we can't really choose a player who hasn't played in months and have him work his way back into shape in the actual league.

Kas: Despite being late, he actually applied correctly. However, Ukraine does not have a VISA waiver program with the US, and we only wanted players who have demonstrated travel to the US before – having a “high risk” player is something we didn’t want (I.E. we don’t want a situation where visa problems would stop a player like Kas from showing up to the finals).

*Note: players such as White-Ra have demonstrated on numerous occasions that he can travel to the US without problem, and we officially verified that BRAT_OK has a B1 VISA that allows him to travel to the US.

NightEnD: Same reason as Kas. He assured us that he could get a VISA, but we only accepted players who actually have a copy of a VISA that they could show us.

Minigun: This was a difficult pick, however, due to our attempt to balance by race and region, we only had room for one more Protoss. We essentially made a judgment call between two very very good players; and chose Cruncher over Minigun.

FruitDealer: Incomplete application forced us to remove him from consideration

Who didn’t apply

DIMAGA: Application video past the deadline, neither him or his manager contacted me, so they were never sent contracts.

Jinro: Did not sign contract, probably to focus on GSL

HuK: Did not sign contract, probably to focus on GSL

IM: Nobody from team IM applied

Prime: Only asked about applying after the application process was over

Final Remarks

Unfortunately, in a tournament with 50 players, it is impossible to create a list that will satisfy everyone. We tried our best to make the most objective list we could. Remember, we have 16 spots next season that will be up for grabs. We encourage everyone to sign up for the Open Tournament and Seasonal Qualifier – especially those that we unfortunately couldn’t select to be in the league this season.

We hope that you all will enjoy the league and know that this process was lengthy and no decision was made hastily or without a great deal of thought.

On March 30 2011 05:38 Almtom wrote:
Lol how the fuck could they not invite Thorzain probably best Terran in Europe and he completely RAPED fruitdealer. I mean I would rather have him than Idra who never ever performs well and just whine and give the viewers complete bs excuses to why he sucks so much.......

TERRIBLE CHOICES NASL I mean they just invite their friends not the best and most exciting players........

On March 30 2011 05:40 chonkyfire wrote:



that's class everyone, take note

On March 30 2011 05:34 Jakkerr wrote:
...
Can a lot of you please stop whining about the decisions that the NASL staff made?
They are trying to set up a league with 50 of the best players in the world and you people actually dare to complain about who they do and don't pick?
It's their first time and they aren't as professional as GSL (yet).
People will allways complain about invites simple as that, if they would have picked other names people would have complained about those too.
Please lets just be happy they make a league like this and we can watch it for free

On March 30 2011 05:41 LooseMoose wrote:



Agreed. Minigun, you're a class act, bud.

On March 30 2011 05:42 Robonord wrote:


Thanks for the spoilers.

On March 30 2011 05:37 Xeris wrote:


I already told you NightEnD, that the reason we didn't select you is because you didn't already have one, and there are concerns about countries that don't have a visa waiver program. Just because Romania is in the EU does not mean they have a visa waiver program. Romania doesn't; they might soon, but as of right now they don't.

I talked to you specifically about this and explained why. You were on the backup list of players, but we didn't end up needing any backups.

On March 30 2011 05:42 RogerChillingworth wrote:
iNcontroL is a great player