Lee "INnoVation" Shin-hyung has emerged victorious of the Team Liquid Greatest of all time contest and has been chosen as Starcraft 2 greatest player.
The South Korea native has been an unavoidable and dominating force in Starcraft ever since he stepped into the scene during the transition of Kespa from Brood War to Starcraft 2. Since then he has amassed a staggering 8 individual trophy in Korea, 4 foreign trophies, won 9 teamleague and earn over 700 000$ in prize money. The machine terran also score the highest win rate in both map and series against koreans of any top player as well as the third highest overall in the history of Starcraft with a 67% in map and 72,3%. in series. He also possesses the highest offline win rate of any top terran in all 3 match-ups across his career and only lost 3 of the 15 offline final he has been a part of, shining his brightest when it matters the most.
This result is a confirmation of Innovation status in the Starcraft world, but it was still unclear if his lack of dominating results in the last year would have tarnish his image.
Coming out second was none other than the young terran prince Maru, snapping at the heel of the Machine. The 22 years old 6 times Korean Starleague winner was clearly Innovation most worthy rival, but the prophecy of the 13 years old genius that would once dominate the game has not yet come to pass, his lack of weekender results holding him back at the end. Nevertheless, with no sign of him slowing down he is poised to give Innovation a run for his money in the coming years.
The King of Wings and once undisputed greatest in the history if the game, Mvp, closes an all terran podium. The old king legacy was considered worthy enough to beat Kespa pretender sOs-Zest and soO and earned him a very respectable 3rd place. KT and STK rivals soO and Zest took the final two spots of the top 5, giving us the best performing zerg and protoss.
With an 18th place current world champion Serral was comfortably deemed the best foreigner, but defeats against Classic and Rain left him outside of top echelon of our history, as the TeamLiquid community favored long time constancy and greatness over burst of domination, a tendency that stayed true in all along the tournament.
Overall Koreans unsurprisingly dominate the ranking, scoring 28 of the top 32 spots as only 2 players Stephano and Serral won in head to head comparison versus Korean player, giving sc2 a domination worthy of his older brother.
I would like to thanks all the people who have participate in the voting, discussion and banter and have stuck with me for this journey, I hope you all had as much fun as me!
You think this is close? Then think about how Fantasy and TY got about 4000 votes each for GSL vs the world and still came within one vote of each other.
Really cool to see all of these play out over time. Thanks a bunch for doing this Nakajin. It was a really cool idea and I enjoyed following the brackets and threads.
Thank you, Nakajin, for organizing this tournament, this was fun to participate! This tournament is the very reason I registered here after 6 years of visiting TL I suppose that INnoVation deserves the win
well deserved. i remember when playing vs zvt was going against a known evil and still losing even though you knew every single thing he was going to do. he's not as dominant now but deserves the accolades. and some one link him smelling those 2nd place flowers pls
On August 05 2019 04:34 DSK wrote: At the very least this proves Terran is the best race poggers.
Terran has the least overall winnings despite having the top 3 players of all time. Terran is not the best race. Maru, Inno, and Mvp were all just that damn good.
On August 05 2019 04:34 DSK wrote: At the very least this proves Terran is the best race poggers.
Terran has the least overall winnings despite having the top 3 players of all time. Terran is not the best race. Maru, Inno, and Mvp were all just that damn good.
If you mean any kind of tournament, I'm not sure. If you mean Majors, you are right; if we speak of Premier, Protoss have more than Terran that have more than Zerg.
On August 05 2019 04:34 DSK wrote: At the very least this proves Terran is the best race poggers.
Terran has the least overall winnings despite having the top 3 players of all time. Terran is not the best race. Maru, Inno, and Mvp were all just that damn good.
If you mean any kind of tournament, I'm not sure. If you mean Majors, you are right; if we speak of Premier, Protoss have more than Terran that have more than Zerg.
Thanks Nakajin, it was fun The final vote as close as it should have been. Cograts Inno. Now Maru to win the next GSL or Blizzcon to definitely and unquestionably surpass him.
On August 05 2019 16:29 MarianoSC2 wrote: Thanks Nakajin, it was fun The final vote as close as it should have been. Cograts Inno. Now Maru to win the next GSL or Blizzcon to definitely and unquestionably surpass him.
Innovation is the greatest of ALL TIME. So it won't really matter what happens in the future... otherwise the title would be meaningless. Plus we don't know about SCII in 2020...
Anyways, well deserved #1 spot for Innovation, he truly is the GOAT in SCII.
@Edit:
And thanks to Najakin for all the work and the write-ups. Good job!
Loved the tournament Nakajin, thanks a ton for putting in so much effort it was really fun to do this and added one more enjoyable thing to do at TL. Loved you summary too, very objectively written.
Inno deserves the seat (even if its Maru in my mind), going to be interesting to see what happens in SC2 since the power balance seems to shifting quite rapidly at the moment. Hoping Inno can return to form too, he is really under performing this year.
With recent results in mind maybe Stats could have gone farther too!
On August 05 2019 16:29 MarianoSC2 wrote: Thanks Nakajin, it was fun The final vote as close as it should have been. Cograts Inno. Now Maru to win the next GSL or Blizzcon to definitely and unquestionably surpass him.
Innovation is the greatest of ALL TIME. So it won't really matter what happens in the future... otherwise the title would be meaningless. Plus we don't know about SCII in 2020...
Anyways, well deserved #1 spot for Innovation, he truly is the GOAT in SCII.
@Edit:
And thanks to Najakin for all the work and the write-ups. Good job!
It is more like GOAT from the beginning of time until today I guess
We'll see 2020/ 2021
- if Maru can usurp the throne - if Stats can break the Terran stranglehold of the top 3 - If Serral can brute force his way in the top 10 - if soO can place 2nd in yet another tournament
On August 05 2019 04:34 DSK wrote: At the very least this proves Terran is the best race poggers.
It proves Terran has had the most dominant players in Sc2 history.
It proves that out of the people that voted, most thought that these terrans have been the best out of all players available to be voted Personally would have put SoO as third, but the people have spoken.
On August 05 2019 04:34 DSK wrote: At the very least this proves Terran is the best race poggers.
It proves Terran has had the most dominant players in Sc2 history.
It proves that out of the people that voted, most thought that these terrans have been the best out of all players available to be voted Personally would have put SoO as third, but the people have spoken.
Votation aside, Terran titles are heavily polarized: a few have won many Premier tournaments(TaeJa, Inno, Mvp, MMA, Polt, Maru won at least seven each, while no Protoss exceeds that amount; only Life and Serral won more than four among Zerg).
Thanks for organizing this! Nice to see how the community perceives the greatest players of sc2. I actually missed a handful of the voting rounds but I am happy to see that things unfolded just the way I would have voted anyway ^^
On August 04 2019 11:46 Pangpootata wrote: Inno can win the SC2 greatest player vote, but can't win the GSL vs the World vote
Edit:
Notice the top 4 are 3 terrans and 1 zerg?
Just like how the bonjwas in BW were boxer, oov, Nada, savior
I remember the good old times when boxer and oov were dominating the competition. I regret to have skipped following bw during the Nada and savior eras and only returned afterwards. But even then it is obviously a blasphemy to mention the bw bonjwas and omit Flash, who won 5 out of 6 individual tournaments in a single year (never mind his proleague and WCG achievements), and Jaedong who reached 4/6 individual tournament finals in a single year while being a proleague monster; And let's not forget that he still won 5 star leagues + GOMTV win + WCG + getting a lifttime of ~73% wins in the "coinflip" matchup - zvz (and even "85.7% wins since December 2007 up to June 2009"). Talking about bonjwas and not mentioning Flash and Jeadong seems simply absurd.
Does Innovation know he’s received this illustrious honour btw?
Perhaps we shouldn’t tell him, us Inno appreciators want to see him out of his slump, perhaps this would kill his motivation in a ‘no worlds left to conquer’ sense
Am i the only one who thinks its wrong to have him in the running for GOAT? Hes been gone from the scene for so long I just dont care about him anymore. He played a primitive SC2. Sure, conquering the wild west requires its own set of skills, but mastering what we have now is more impressive.
On August 07 2019 08:46 Waxangel wrote: Not a surprise, not THAT controversial. I was more miffed with some of the lower round snubs like sOs or MMA.
sOs had those two really big prize wins but not much else. Probably has underachieved in GSL relative to his skill level. Only has 1 Silver (maybe some Ro4s?) and his probably the best player to have not won except for SoO, Taeja, and Solar if you don't count the SSL.
MMA hasn't been relevent since he won a WCS EU and had a silver in Blizzcon out of nowhere, losing to the Dark Lord. That was in 2013 and 2014, i think. He beat MVP but lost to MKP, he pioneered heavy drop play, and had great TvT. He's like the 10th to 15th best player in SC2 history. A lot of players have had longer and nicer careers.
ZZsleepyhead, while I do think MVP is loved a bit too much, what was he to do? He can't play an SC2 that he aged out of. He could only have beaten the people in front of him, which he did a lot of. Let's say he was born 3 years later, maybe he'd have been really good in HOTS before his injuries instead.
Classic I feel has had an underrated career if you look at his hardware, he's actually probably the 2nd most accomplished Protoss behind Stats. He has more and better wins than MC, Parting, sOs, Dear, hero, and I think a slightly superior career to Zest, since Zest is so mercurial, and has shared a lot of his greatness period with Dear, and then the LOTV Protoss.
On August 09 2019 16:11 zZzleepyhead wrote: Am i the only one who thinks its wrong to have him in the running for GOAT? Hes been gone from the scene for so long I just dont care about him anymore. He played a primitive SC2. Sure, conquering the wild west requires its own set of skills, but mastering what we have now is more impressive.
Classic shouldve made the list.
Blasphemy.
Nah but being serious being a strategy game especially I think fleshing out the game is a big part of greatness, arguably one a bit underrated in this poll even. Any top player by default will be better nowadays after years of development (and a faster expansion which emphasises mechanics even more), but not many planned series and overcame inferior mechanics like Mvp did frequently.
On August 07 2019 08:46 Waxangel wrote: Not a surprise, not THAT controversial. I was more miffed with some of the lower round snubs like sOs or MMA.
sOs had those two really big prize wins but not much else. Probably has underachieved in GSL relative to his skill level. Only has 1 Silver (maybe some Ro4s?) and his probably the best player to have not won except for SoO, Taeja, and Solar if you don't count the SSL.
MMA hasn't been relevent since he won a WCS EU and had a silver in Blizzcon out of nowhere, losing to the Dark Lord. That was in 2013 and 2014, i think. He beat MVP but lost to MKP, he pioneered heavy drop play, and had great TvT. He's like the 10th to 15th best player in SC2 history. A lot of players have had longer and nicer careers.
Eras are different—you don't devalue everything done in the past because everyone is better now.
I think baseball, soccer, basketball, etc have it right—players from 100 years ago (who would absolutely suck now) are revered for their achievements in that place in time.
Regarding sOs, he's the only player to win the most important annual tournament TWICE. Given how progamers themselves talk about BlizzCon, it's actually a bit crazy how fans (well, a specific TYPE of fan on TL) overvalue Code S in comparison.
EPT
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/lRRflgM.jpg)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/YBXWBTC.png)
INnoVation" Shin-hyung has emerged victorious of the Team Liquid Greatest of all time contest and has been chosen as Starcraft 2 greatest player.
sOs-
soO and earned him a very respectable 3rd place. KT and STK rivals 
