Cant believe theres so much hate in these threads while we're so blessed with a wonderful event, with wonderful games. Last warning, whine and insult the players or commentators? See you.
On August 02 2011 02:25 drcatellino wrote: I have to admit that, like many others, I closed the stream after Huk/Nani were out. I went for a walk to enjoy the summertime and came back for the last game of the finals to realize that it was still another korean TvT going on.
I like that there is Korean invites, of course, but I kinda missed the drama / foreigner clash / epicness of the last MLGs. No hallucinated vrays. No self-destroyed CC.
well the foreigners seriously need to step up for us to have these dramatic clashes.
Funny that so many people that have said that they find only watching Koreans duking it out is rather boring and the average response is pretty much, "you only wants noob to compete, you dont understand the game, retard!"
Not really, it is more a realisation of a rather sad truth. Watching Koreans smash foreigners is obviously not that much fun. Partly due to the fact that the guys that most people are cheering for are defeated over and over again.
Secondly watching a bunch Koreans go 5-0 doesn't really make for an exciting tournament. If I would have made some bets, and decided that I will always bet on the Koreans no matter which player it is and irrelevant of which foreigner he goes up against, I think I would have made the right bet in over 95% of the games. How do you find that exciting?
There is a reason why there are different divisions in sports, you don't watch Real Madrid playing against your local soccer team, and why is that? Cause it is freaking boring to watch and such a tournament would be disaster from both entertainment and the economic point of view.
So the sad truth are that we end up with two rather boring alternatives. We just stay with the current situation and hope that people will find it greatly entertaining to see the Koreans completly crush the foreigners over and over again, creating score boards like 58-4 to Korea. Why would anyone find that boring? And then I know that a lot of people on this forum thinks this is close to utter blasphemy but if I say that the average viewer of MLG doesn't care to much if MMA or MVP wins I think im right.
The second option is that we come to terms with that the Koreans are in another "division". So in order to get some interesting tournaments with many viewers we are forced to split into "division 1" Koreans and "division 2" foreign tournaments.
Both these option obviously suck, and unless the foreign scene can catch up with the Korean scene it is a serious threat to SC2 as a global esport (if you watched NASL you might actually have caught the “speech” where Gretorp express this fear as well). I mean if you belive that thousands and thousands of people are going to watch MLG over and over just to decided in which order the top 6-8 koreans are going to place themself you are fooling yourself.
This has never happened in any sport before and will not happen in SC2. I mean take soccer in America for instance. Soccer is the world largest sport by a land slide, therefor you can argue that there probably is no sport in the world which have the same level of perfection. Millions and millions of people from all over the world are competing and have being doing so for over a century. The level which the top teams of soccer performs today is probably on the verge of the theoretical limit of how good humans can perform in this game. Yet the average American is completely indifferent to soccer.
So what conclusions can we draw from this? That the actual skill level of the sport is close to irrelevant for how popular a sport is. The fact that Messi is one of the top athletics in known history does not matter, just as it wont matter how insanely good Nestea is, it wont make SC2 great in the rest of the world anyhow.
If you assume that: a) the Koreans will not take up spots determined by ranking points (e.g., MMA will not pay his own way back and enter the pools using his points rather than a KOR invite), this removes: MMA, MVP, Losira, MC, Boxer, Ganzi, Dongraegu b) NaNiwa and Huk will be in Korea
Tyler moves into the last seeded spot in the top 16. 12-16 are: Rain, Machine, Drewbie, and Tyler.
On August 02 2011 06:06 4ZakeN87 wrote: Funny that so many people that have said that they find only watching Koreans duking it out is rather boring and the average response is pretty much, "you only wants noob to compete, you dont understand the game, retard!"
Not really, it is more a realisation of a rather sad truth. Watching Koreans smash foreigners is obviously not that much fun. Partly due to the fact that the guys that most people are cheering for are defeated over and over again.
Secondly watching a bunch Koreans go 5-0 doesn't really make for an exciting tournament. If I would have made some bets, and decided that I will always bet on the Koreans no matter which player it is and irrelevant of which foreigner he goes up against, I think I would have made the right bet in over 95% of the games. How do you find that exciting?
There is a reason why there are different divisions in sports, you don't watch Real Madrid playing against your local soccer team, and why is that? Cause it is freaking boring to watch and such a tournament would be disaster from both entertainment and the economic point of view.
So the sad truth are that we end up with two rather boring alternatives. We just stay with the current situation and hope that people will find it greatly entertaining to see the Koreans completly crush the foreigners over and over again, creating score boards like 58-4 to Korea. Why would anyone find that boring? And then I know that a lot of people on this forum thinks this is close to utter blasphemy but if I say that the average viewer of MLG doesn't care to much if MMA or MVP wins I think im right.
The second option is that we come to terms with that the Koreans are in another "division". So in order to get some interesting tournaments with many viewers we are forced to split into "division 1" Koreans and "division 2" foreign tournaments.
Both these option obviously suck, and unless the foreign scene can catch up with the Korean scene it is a serious threat to SC2 as a global esport (if you watched NASL you might actually have caught the “speech” where Gretorp express this fear as well). I mean if you belive that thousands and thousands of people are going to watch MLG over and over just to decided in which order the top 6-8 koreans are going to place themself you are fooling yourself.
This has never happened in any sport before and will not happen in SC2. I mean take soccer in America for instance. Soccer is the world largest sport by a land slide, therefor you can argue that there probably is no sport in the world which have the same level of perfection. Millions and millions of people from all over the world are competing and have being doing so for over a century. The level which the top teams of soccer performs today is probably on the verge of the theoretical limit of how good humans can perform in this game. Yet the average American is completely indifferent to soccer.
So what conclusions can we draw from this? That the actual skill level of the sport is close to irrelevant for how popular a sport is. The fact that Messi is one of the top athletics in known history does not matter, just as it wont matter how insanely good Nestea is, it wont make SC2 great in the rest of the world anyhow.
Here's the thing...Maybe for you, watching Koreans smash foreigners isn't very fun but for anyone that cares about the actual quality of the matches, high level Koreans facing each other produce far more entertaining and better games than mediocre foreigners. A bunch of Koreans going 5-0 might not make for a very exciting tournament but when they start having to play each other out of the open pool or further in bracket play, then you start getting these extremely high level games that are not so one sided anymore. Besides...did you hear the MC chants at columbus? Or the fan reactions to Boxer, MMA, and MVP? The interest is there.
If you wanted to watch high level soccer, do you watch your local team or do you watch Real Madrid? And just because the average American is indifferent to soccer, soccer is still HUGE. While I hope this is not the case, maybe SC2 is slowly going to go the way of soccer where it's going to go a lot further in the rest of the world and kind of leave the US behind.
On August 02 2011 06:06 4ZakeN87 wrote: Funny that so many people that have said that they find only watching Koreans duking it out is rather boring and the average response is pretty much, "you only wants noob to compete, you dont understand the game, retard!"
Not really, it is more a realisation of a rather sad truth. Watching Koreans smash foreigners is obviously not that much fun. Partly due to the fact that the guys that most people are cheering for are defeated over and over again.
Secondly watching a bunch Koreans go 5-0 doesn't really make for an exciting tournament. If I would have made some bets, and decided that I will always bet on the Koreans no matter which player it is and irrelevant of which foreigner he goes up against, I think I would have made the right bet in over 95% of the games. How do you find that exciting?
There is a reason why there are different divisions in sports, you don't watch Real Madrid playing against your local soccer team, and why is that? Cause it is freaking boring to watch and such a tournament would be disaster from both entertainment and the economic point of view.
So the sad truth are that we end up with two rather boring alternatives. We just stay with the current situation and hope that people will find it greatly entertaining to see the Koreans completly crush the foreigners over and over again, creating score boards like 58-4 to Korea. Why would anyone find that boring? And then I know that a lot of people on this forum thinks this is close to utter blasphemy but if I say that the average viewer of MLG doesn't care to much if MMA or MVP wins I think im right.
The second option is that we come to terms with that the Koreans are in another "division". So in order to get some interesting tournaments with many viewers we are forced to split into "division 1" Koreans and "division 2" foreign tournaments.
Both these option obviously suck, and unless the foreign scene can catch up with the Korean scene it is a serious threat to SC2 as a global esport (if you watched NASL you might actually have caught the “speech” where Gretorp express this fear as well). I mean if you belive that thousands and thousands of people are going to watch MLG over and over just to decided in which order the top 6-8 koreans are going to place themself you are fooling yourself.
This has never happened in any sport before and will not happen in SC2. I mean take soccer in America for instance. Soccer is the world largest sport by a land slide, therefor you can argue that there probably is no sport in the world which have the same level of perfection. Millions and millions of people from all over the world are competing and have being doing so for over a century. The level which the top teams of soccer performs today is probably on the verge of the theoretical limit of how good humans can perform in this game. Yet the average American is completely indifferent to soccer.
So what conclusions can we draw from this? That the actual skill level of the sport is close to irrelevant for how popular a sport is. The fact that Messi is one of the top athletics in known history does not matter, just as it wont matter how insanely good Nestea is, it wont make SC2 great in the rest of the world anyhow.
It's actually pretty fair and probably correct to say that the reason that American soccer sucks is because of the lack of fan support, and the lack of support is due to a wide variety of cultural reasons. This is pretty much the same exact case for e-sports, but you also can't compare MLS not playing against Euro teams to this. It's simply too different and far less feasible.
That said, all this is a moot point. The fact is that if you separate Koreans from foreign tournaments, the foreign scene will die. It will go the way of the BW foreign scene pretty quickly, and there's no other way about it. The foreign scene just isn't good enough and it cannot catch up to the Korean scene without integrating itself into and getting its ass kicked by the Korean scene repeatedly. You can't get as good as them without practicing with people who are as good as them. Foreign fans need to either suck it up or prepare to watch the foreign scene become trash compared to the Asian scene like it was back in the BW days.
On August 02 2011 06:06 4ZakeN87 wrote: Funny that so many people that have said that they find only watching Koreans duking it out is rather boring and the average response is pretty much, "you only wants noob to compete, you dont understand the game, retard!"
Not really, it is more a realisation of a rather sad truth. Watching Koreans smash foreigners is obviously not that much fun. Partly due to the fact that the guys that most people are cheering for are defeated over and over again.
Secondly watching a bunch Koreans go 5-0 doesn't really make for an exciting tournament. If I would have made some bets, and decided that I will always bet on the Koreans no matter which player it is and irrelevant of which foreigner he goes up against, I think I would have made the right bet in over 95% of the games. How do you find that exciting?
There is a reason why there are different divisions in sports, you don't watch Real Madrid playing against your local soccer team, and why is that? Cause it is freaking boring to watch and such a tournament would be disaster from both entertainment and the economic point of view.
So the sad truth are that we end up with two rather boring alternatives. We just stay with the current situation and hope that people will find it greatly entertaining to see the Koreans completly crush the foreigners over and over again, creating score boards like 58-4 to Korea. Why would anyone find that boring? And then I know that a lot of people on this forum thinks this is close to utter blasphemy but if I say that the average viewer of MLG doesn't care to much if MMA or MVP wins I think im right.
The second option is that we come to terms with that the Koreans are in another "division". So in order to get some interesting tournaments with many viewers we are forced to split into "division 1" Koreans and "division 2" foreign tournaments.
Both these option obviously suck, and unless the foreign scene can catch up with the Korean scene it is a serious threat to SC2 as a global esport (if you watched NASL you might actually have caught the “speech” where Gretorp express this fear as well). I mean if you belive that thousands and thousands of people are going to watch MLG over and over just to decided in which order the top 6-8 koreans are going to place themself you are fooling yourself.
This has never happened in any sport before and will not happen in SC2. I mean take soccer in America for instance. Soccer is the world largest sport by a land slide, therefor you can argue that there probably is no sport in the world which have the same level of perfection. Millions and millions of people from all over the world are competing and have being doing so for over a century. The level which the top teams of soccer performs today is probably on the verge of the theoretical limit of how good humans can perform in this game. Yet the average American is completely indifferent to soccer.
So what conclusions can we draw from this? That the actual skill level of the sport is close to irrelevant for how popular a sport is. The fact that Messi is one of the top athletics in known history does not matter, just as it wont matter how insanely good Nestea is, it wont make SC2 great in the rest of the world anyhow.
It's actually pretty fair and probably correct to say that the reason that American soccer sucks is because of the lack of fan support, and the lack of support is due to a wide variety of cultural reasons. This is pretty much the same exact case for e-sports, but you also can't compare MLS not playing against Euro teams to this. It's simply too different and far less feasible.
That said, all this is a moot point. The fact is that if you separate Koreans from foreign tournaments, the foreign scene will die. It will go the way of the BW foreign scene pretty quickly, and there's no other way about it. The foreign scene just isn't good enough and it cannot catch up to the Korean scene without integrating itself into and getting its ass kicked by the Korean scene repeatedly. You can't get as good as them without practicing with people who are as good as them. Foreign fans need to either suck it up or prepare to watch the foreign scene become trash compared to the Asian scene like it was back in the BW days.
I agree with you, I just hope that the Korean ass kicking will indeed result in that the foreign scene gets better, everyone is happy and HuK saves the day
On August 02 2011 06:06 4ZakeN87 wrote: This has never happened in any sport before and will not happen in SC2. I mean take soccer in America for instance. Soccer is the world largest sport by a land slide, therefor you can argue that there probably is no sport in the world which have the same level of perfection. Millions and millions of people from all over the world are competing and have being doing so for over a century. The level which the top teams of soccer performs today is probably on the verge of the theoretical limit of how good humans can perform in this game. Yet the average American is completely indifferent to soccer.
Lots of very bad and selective analogies in this post.
How about this, the English Premier League is the most viewed league in the world, is bigger than religion in the UK and yet, the vast majority of players aren't English, but no one really cares because the play is high quality. You don't get many people suggesting we kick the foreigners out and just have English/British players in exchange for a far lower standard of play because that's retarded.
The whole foreigner support thing is pretty dumb to begin with. I can understand Swedes supporting Naniwa, Americans supporting Huk and the Dutch supporting Ret but you get people on here from Brazil absolutely determined to see anyone from Germany beat anyone from South Korea, it's bizzare.
On August 02 2011 06:06 4ZakeN87 wrote: This has never happened in any sport before and will not happen in SC2. I mean take soccer in America for instance. Soccer is the world largest sport by a land slide, therefor you can argue that there probably is no sport in the world which have the same level of perfection. Millions and millions of people from all over the world are competing and have being doing so for over a century. The level which the top teams of soccer performs today is probably on the verge of the theoretical limit of how good humans can perform in this game. Yet the average American is completely indifferent to soccer.
Lots of very bad and selective analogies in this post.
How about this, the English Premier League is the most viewed league in the world, is bigger than religion in the UK and yet, the vast majority of players aren't English, but no one really cares because the play is high quality. You don't get many people suggesting we kick the foreigners out and just have English/British players in exchange for a far lower standard of play because that's retarded.
The whole foreigner support thing is pretty dumb to begin with. I can understand Swedes supporting Naniwa, Americans supporting Huk and the Dutch supporting Ret but you get people on here from Brazil absolutely determined to see anyone from Germany beat anyone from South Korea, it's bizzare.
Lol yea, I completely agree. I find it kind of interesting that a lot of it is basically "Whoever wins or dominates is OK unless it's Koreans."
On August 02 2011 09:56 cheggelund wrote: I don't care that much where the players are from, but I do care if they can communicate with the fans, have a personality, AND provide good games.
So with that in mind I really find players like MC, Ra, Idra, Boxer, and Tyler a lot of fun to watch.
--Chegg
Boxer can communicate with the fans? He spoke as much english as every other korean at mlg did except DRG lol
I don't get why so many people are judging others because of where they are from. To me, it's just watching better players dominating the tournament. Why is it people think just because they are a different race, they are naturally better at this game? That kind of thinking is pretty ridiculous if you ask me. The reason they are better is not because they are Korean, it's because they put in more hours into practice. Look at MVP's wrists in any of the MLG pictures of him, he practiced so hard before coming to MLG his wrists suffered serious injury, how many other players at MLG also have a clear wrist injury problem from practicing so hard? All this stereotyping is pretty ridiculous.
Saying that the nationality of the players shouldn't matter and we should rather watch perfectly played games over those of foreigners is like saying we should all only want to watch Yankees and Red Sox baseball games here in the USA because they're the best teams. What makes people lose interest when non-Koreans are knocked out is not that we don't want to see high quality games (we do) or a great player win (they should). It's because our "home team", more or less, has been knocked out.
It has nothing to do with racism, understanding of the game, or anything else like that, it's simply that like any sport, people follow it more when they have an available rooting interest. Everyone loves an underdog.
On August 02 2011 09:56 cheggelund wrote: I don't care that much where the players are from, but I do care if they can communicate with the fans, have a personality, AND provide good games.
So with that in mind I really find players like MC, Ra, Idra, Boxer, and Tyler a lot of fun to watch.
--Chegg
Boxer can communicate with the fans? He spoke as much english as every other korean at mlg did except DRG lol
Check out the recent gif's on Boxer's fan club thread. Communication doesn't necessarily mean English, and he has communicated in English via his gf in addition to hired translators.
On August 02 2011 10:29 TGalore wrote: Saying that the nationality of the players shouldn't matter and we should rather watch perfectly played games over those of foreigners is like saying we should all only want to watch Yankees and Red Sox baseball games here in the USA because they're the best teams. What makes people lose interest when non-Koreans are knocked out is not that we don't want to see high quality games (we do) or a great player win (they should). It's because our "home team", more or less, has been knocked out.
It has nothing to do with racism, understanding of the game, or anything else like that, it's simply that like any sport, people follow it more when they have an available rooting interest. Everyone loves an underdog.
Everybody loves an underdog but everybody also understands that most of the time, they are going to lose. More often than not, they will lose hard. Plenty of people outside of NYC watch the Yankees and plenty of people outside NE watch the Sox. Does the entire country stop watching football at the superbowl because only 2 teams from 2 specific areas play that game? And I would like to point you to the fan reactions towards Boxer, MC, MMA, MVP, etc even in the US. They were more than welcome at MLG and even more so in Europe for their tournies there.
On August 02 2011 02:25 drcatellino wrote: I have to admit that, like many others, I closed the stream after Huk/Nani were out. I went for a walk to enjoy the summertime and came back for the last game of the finals to realize that it was still another korean TvT going on.
I like that there is Korean invites, of course, but I kinda missed the drama / foreigner clash / epicness of the last MLGs. No hallucinated vrays. No self-destroyed CC.
I sure hope you didn't miss that BoxeR vs. Rain game. Sometimes you just gotta "shut off" the preconceived bias/inclination after all your favorites are out, so you can still be emotionally invested in Korean games. You won't be disappointed, good sir.