Stream A Norway vs New Zealand South Korea vs Croatia Ukraine vs Russia Brazil vs Denmark France vs Vietnam USA vs UK Stream B Netherlands vs Czech Republic Taiwan vs Japan China vs Italy Poland vs Bulgaria Germany vs Switzerland Canada vs Portugal No Stream Sweden vs Spain Australia vs Romania Finland vs Chile Mexico vs Peru
Ukraine vs Russia for one qualifying spot is literally the worst possible thing for our community which immediately spoils such a wonderful tournament, but well... Nothing we can do here except of making this match as friendly as possible. Hope we'll see good games there!
last year it was double elim for the countries to qualify, this year the weaker nations will have less chance to perform, sad TT (well I'm just a bit salty that my country Vietnam has to meet the defending champion right from the start)
On December 20 2016 22:46 NinjaToss wrote: last year it was double elim for the countries to qualify, this year the weaker nations will have less chance to perform, sad TT (well I'm just a bit salty that my country Vietnam has to meet the defending champion right from the start)
Last year it was single elim 4 man brackets * 4 + 12 countries invited. I don't think this is harder for weaker countries.
On December 20 2016 22:46 NinjaToss wrote: last year it was double elim for the countries to qualify, this year the weaker nations will have less chance to perform, sad TT (well I'm just a bit salty that my country Vietnam has to meet the defending champion right from the start)
Last year it was single elim 4 man brackets * 4 + 12 countries invited. I don't think this is harder for weaker countries.
Unless you were facing Canada or Ukraine (or US or Brazil), then it totally was. You only need to win 1 match, but you have a much greater chance of facing a top team from last year. Here, because this has most of if not all of the teams from last year, it means that your chance of running into a good team from the start is greater than 50%
Here, I estimate that around 20 or so teams are good or above, whereas for the qualifier last year, about half were good or above. Brackets 3 and 4 were noticeably weaker than Brackets 1 or 2.
Still a bit salty that we have no solar/soO for korea. Imo it would be really cool to see forced zerg/terran/toss even though i can understand that some countries would have a hard time in that case
R.I.P Croatia, whoever you are France v. Vietnam, back to the 50s UK v. USA, well this is getting funny Ukraine v. Russia, guys try not to be too hard on each other TW v. Japan, speaking of historical grievances Spain v. Sweden, Catholic League v. Protestant League Germany vs Switzerland, but we can sell gold to them my Führer BTW Zest is not quite in form these days, Stats should be the Korean Protoss... wait where is the Korean Zerg?
EPT
Finland!
Poland !
Vietnam and 
Japan !
are facing those 
beasts Mr. Schlappi and Mr. de Koning? Well it's Christmas time, let the magic happen! 
