[BlizzCon 2016] WCS Global Finals - Page 67

On November 05 2016 04:43 The_Red_Viper wrote:
Here is how Blizzcon will go down (more or less), it is known:

We open with the talent and expert couch. Everybody is enthusiastic, talks a bit about the tournament, the players, the legacy of the game and other things to lighten the mood, set the tone and generate hype.
Our first match of the day is Tobias Sieber vs Mikołaj Ogonowski. Yes Mikołaj Ogonowski actually made it this far, if you are confused right now this has a reason, most people (rightfully so) expected his fellow countryman Artur Bloch to be in the quarterfinals instead. But the god of starcraft decided otherwise and Ogonowski beat Bloch in the deciding match of group D with the scoreline of 2:0.
What about Tobias Sieber? The german protoss dominated his group by beating both korean players (Baek Dong Jun and Byun Hyun Woo) 2:0 and advanced first because of it.
But the past isn't important anymore, who cares how you made it to the mainstage at blizzcon? Some people do it in a beautiful game like starcraft, where every unit counts, you outsmart your opponents, you execute strategies nobody at home would have thought possible before. Other players make it there through cardgames which are all about RNG, or mobas (oh sorry team brawlers) even less skill focused than league of legends. Some sources say there is even a new game, a new competition at this year's blizzcon. The 10/10 class based hero moba shooter game Overwatch makes its first appearance as well. If you followed the starcraft and esports scene for some time you might think right now: "Wait that is the game which was the reason David Moschetto lost last year against He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, right?" Lol nope he just sucked.
As i said, it isn't important how you got here, right now there is only Tobias Sieber vs Mikołaj Ogonowski. Both players are on their A game, nobody in the audience really can be sure which player actually has the edge. Still both first game eventually go the way of Tobias Sieber. The crowd goes wild, you can hear chants for both players and the commentators announce a small break.
The camera zooms in on Ogonowski, he stares at the screen while a single tear is running down his face. All of a sudden it switches to the Heroes of the Storm stream:




Wolf is right Ogonowski seems to have a mental block atm and someone else notices this too. Artur Bloch enters the booth and it seems clear that he is frustrated.




Artur: „Mikołaj there is more at risk than you simply losing a starcraft match, and remember that this is only the first step towards the blizzcon trophy. Our biggest enemy is not germany, it is south korea. Desperate times call for desperate measures!“
Mikołaj: „Wait you really wanna do this right now?“
Artur: „ I don't want to, but we have to. Let's do it for poland!“




Miktur: „And so it begins!“
The rest of the games the polish zerg wins quite easily, Tobias doesn't get what just happened and nobody else understands where this momentum shift came from either.
Miktur walks up on stage and Smix is ready to interview him.
Smix: „Congratulations Elazer, you just made it to the semifinals of blizzcon! I think it is fair to say that nobody really expected you to be here considering you were the 16th seed for this tournament! What are your thoughts now that you made it and proved you are a top contender for the title?“
Miktur: „I don't think he is a top contender, i should have been here instead!“
Smix: „Euh i think you misunderstood, what are your thoughts now that you won against showtime?“
Miktur: „As i said i should have been here and not Mikołaj!“ „Shut up Artur!“ „...“ „..!..“
The camera cuts away to the expert couch but you can still hear Smix say : „Are you ok?“
Apollo greets us with a big smile and tells us that there apparently are technical difficulties the team needs to fix. The live show should be back in about 20 minutes.
42 minutes later:
The show goes on and it is time for the PvZ of the day, Alex Sunderhaft vs Park Ryung Woo. The crowd is excited to see the american hope and you can hear it: „TSM TSM TSM“.
The first game starts and to the pleasure of everyone the casting archon is commentating it. Both look amazing with their new style.



Artosis: „Hello nerds around the world, it is time to cast some sc2!“
Tasteless: „Well said Arty, well said! This should be a good game, the american hope Neeb again-“
Artosis: „Neeblet against Dark Tasteless you are absolutely right, this is what nerd dreams are made of i can tell you that much.“
Tasteless: „Indeed, indeed.“ Neeb is known to have good PvZ and he is also the first foreign player to win in a korean tournament since basically forever.“
Artosis: „Oh yeah, since the bw days Tasteless“
Tasteless: „Broodwar, yes. Guys let me tell you one thing, bw was so hard you had to manually send your workers to mine. That's crazy when you think about it.“
Artosi: „Mhm“
Tasteless: „This adept attack Neeblet is doing right now would also take an incredible amount of apm and micro, but let's see what actually happens now!“
Artosis: „Dark is playing beautifully right now, amazing control!“
The game goes on for a few more minutes and Park Ryung Woo wins with a big push Alex Sunderhaft simply cannot hold. The next game starts soon after and Tastosis talk a little bit about the new HBO series „Westworld“ in the beginning. How crazy it would be to be in such a themepark and which progamers would be the best choice to make into robot hosts. Tasteless says jokingly „Well i mean Innovation basically is already a robot, isn't he, hahahaaha“ and Artosis agress with him laughing as well. At the end they both agree on NaDa though, because he has the body and the brain for it, they give a huge shoutout to the infamous thread on TL which is the resource for „many nerd's wet dream“.
This game Sunderhaft wins and the score is 1:1. There is no break this time either, they probably wanna be back on schedule after the first 42 minute break. The next game is a fast one because Park fails to defend Sunderhaft's speciality push, the same one he defended in the first game without much problem. Sunderhaft looks dominating this game, his micro on another level, no banelings really hit his adepts. The crowd cheers again: „Neeb Let Neeb Let Neeb Let“ and the livereport thread on TL also explodes with hits. Some famous sc2 personalities show their whole passion on twitter, here are two randomly selected tweets:





The fourth game starts and we are back with Tastosis. Both hype Alex Sunderhaft, saying he might be the best foreigner of all time and probably one of the best protoss players as well. The early game seems to be pretty standard and so the casting archon decides to talk about important things instead. The new pokemon editions apparently come out in the near future and tasteless thinks the design of the new creatures is fairly mediocre, artosis disagrees vehemently.
Artosis: „Look Tasteless, you have to consid-“
The screen goes black, twitch chat spams RIP, PICNIC and other silly memes. The LR thread still discusses if Artosis or Tasteless is right in the pokemon question. The stream stays down for another 15 minutes and when it is back the scoreline says 2:2. Apparently we missed the whole game and the korean zerg player somehow won it. We get to hear some excuses and they show us replays of the game. It looks like Park dominated this game quite easily. The next game will be the deciding one and everybody in the stadium and at home knows it. Who will prevail at the end?
The final game starts and no player is willing to take any risks. They both macro up playing as standard as standard gets. Every harassment opportunity gets shut down immediately by the other player and so we make it into the lategame with both competitors having huge ecenomies and access to pretty much their whole techtree as well. Artosis and Tasteless say that this game might be the best PvZ they have ever casted and everyone should tweet it out so nerds all over the world check it out. The observer opens the production tab and points out that Sunderhaft started to build carriers, 6 at a time. The people in the stadium start cheering „USA USA USA“ and it seems like the american protoss player is in PRIME position to win this final game. He pushes with his deathball of toss units and Park Ryung Woo is forced to defend his last expansions with a ton of corruptors, lurkers and hydralisks. His army gets smashed and it is clear that the korean zerg has to gg out any moment. The camera zooms in on Sunderhaft and he also knows that he is seconds away from defeating the huge tournament favorite. The screen goes black again.
The livereport thread on TL is sure, Sunderhaft had this game won and as soon as the stream comes back the scorelines would be 3:2 in favor of the american protoss player. Some discussion about region block and the wcs system being a huge success gets shut down by moderators and people wait knowing it can take a while. Half an hour passes.
We are back and both Sunderhaft and Park are on the stage.



Tastosis explain that there was a power outage and the replays are broken. The officials decided that there isn't enough time to play the game from start and we will soon get the announcement of the winner. Tastosis say that the last time this has happened as far as they can remember was the infamous msl final between Lee Jae Dong and Lee Young Ho. Back then the officials also had to decide which player had won a specific map and both Artosis and Tasteless agree that they chose the right player.
Artosis: „This time the decision is basically just as clear guys, no need to worry.“
Tasteless: „You are right Arty, Neeb euh Neeblet had a standing army and Dark had no realistic chance to win the game“
We again see the stage where both Park and Sunderhaft wait for the announcement.




The crowd is silent, this surely has to be a mistake right? But no the official states that it was a very hard decision to make but at the end it seemed clear that Park Ryung Woo was in the better position to take the game. Nobody can fathom how this decision was made but it is too late now, it is official. Sunderhaft runs crying backstage and Park also doesn't seem to be very happy. The fans start booing and Apollo has to move on with the show. What an end to an amazing series!
Behind the stage:
Sunderhaft is ok again even though he still cannot understand how this could happen, the official who announced the decision live on stage approaches him and says: „Don't worry your time will still come.“ He touches his face and strips it away.





People are still shocked what just happened but the next match of the day is about to begin. The TvT korean elitists around the world were waiting for: Jun Tae Yang the prodigy terran who started playing professional starcraft at the age of twelve vs Byun Hyun Woo the current GSL champion.
The expert talent on the couch is talking about some incredible stats like the TvT streak Jun Tae Yang is on with 27-0 in bo3+ matches or Byun's winrate being even 4% higher. Some of them try to do the math but as everybody knows this isn't something you should try live on air so they soon drop that idea. Before the match starts we still get to see more stats about that duell, how many calories both players have eaten since last blizzcon, how many hours of OW the 10/10 game both terrans have played in total, what their favorite anime of the season is and other useful statistics you can use to argue in LR threads like:




Enough with the stats though, it is time to see some high level starcraft. The games start and the players don't disappoint. This match will go full 5 games, so much is already clear after the first game just entered midgame. Lots of micro play, lots of multitasking and even lots of dropping siege tanks before the the enemy. Wow. The first game Jun wins through better positioning and a little bit of luck. Both players already seem to be exhausted but that is not too surprising, this is a match on equal footing and everybody in the starcraft community knows that terran is the hardest race and this fact is true since broodwar, which is also why most bonjwas were terran.
The next two games are split 1-1 which makes the scoreline 2-1 in favor of Jun Tae Yang. Byun seems to have the momentum though after he defeated the KT terran on the last map after a 90 minute game which could be desribed at chess for millennials. There is a short break and finally the two players have time to relax a bit and enjoy the atmosphere in the arena. It is great, people are cheering and showing off their signs carefully made for this event.



Byun and Jun both look at the audience and both notice that their favorite people in the world are here to cheer for them. For Byun it is more though, he remembers the times in the past where he tried to get the attention of Lee Shin Hyung without much success. „Senpai notice me“ again and again. He also remembers the hard times when some foreign scrub on TL made an april fools post, announcing that PRIME had the support of Sbenu (at the time a big deal in the korean scene). Then ofc the matchfixing scandal happened and Prime had to disband. All these obstacles Byun overcame though and finally he was crowned the best sc2 player in the world after defeating some noname protoss player in the GSL final. But was it all worth it? Byun wasn't so sure anymore. Lee Shin Hyung finally was open about his love, wasn't that more important? Wasn't that the purpose if life? To be happy with the decisions you choose to make?
The fourth game starts and after merely a few seconds Byun ggs and the victory screen shows Jun Tae Yang as the winner of the match. People are confused again but this time Byun gives the answers, he runs out of the booth jumps down the stage and approaches the SKT terran waiting for him. They both hug, kiss and leave the stadium together.
A few hours later this picture appears on social media:



The expert couch is speechless and only Total Buiscuit finds some warm words complimenting Byun's choice to go for love instead of money and integrity, „something not everybody in this scene understands.“
Now the final match of the evening is about to start, the all korean PvP of two KT players: Joo Sung Wook who looked out of shape for the last few months vs Kim Dae Yeob who always seems to be underrated by everybody. It is decider of which protoss player still has the chance to win the title this year, the pressure is huge and both players are aware of it.
Apollo talks a bit about the korean scene this year, how much fun he had to watch it and how awesome it still will continue to be next year. „There are people in this community who want to be negative just to be negative, Zest vs Stats will show us how promising the korean scene is and how the skill level increased even though some TL writers seem to think otherwise“
A video is played which shows us the best moments of both players this year, including the following shots:





Now it is time to start the games though and both players try to cannon rush each other! The game is decided by a silly mistake of Joo, something he maybe would not have made two years ago, who knows. The next games are standard games with oracle harass, adepts, disruptor ping pong, adepts, blink stalkers, adepts and not a single zealot is made. Kim Dae Yeob loses in the end 2:3 and the day is over. Amazing games, amazing storylines and emotions you won't get in any other esports scene. This is why we love the starcraft scene!

#IMadeThis