Over at Cadred we've taken a look at the highs and lows of the MLG Spring Arena tournament, as written up by our resident US reporter Jeff Kim.
MLG Spring Arena 2012. It's the event that nobody knew about until 2 days before it happened when we saw the huge banner on TeamLiquid, and then the switch clicked in our minds "oh shit, I forgot about that!" As we younger gamers, the ones still in school, head into the final weeks of our classes before the summer, we halt our studies and attempt to watch this amazing event unfold.
Hampered this time by the presence of DreamHack in Stockholm, Sweden, there's not a doubt in my mind that the viewer numbers were more spread out this time and that no records will be broken, but that's just the personal side of things. Again, MLG fails to disappoint the viewers by cutting the fee to watch the weekend of premium content and Starcraft 2 by half, as a receptive Sundance DiGiovanni listens to the crowds that roared so much at him for trying something new. Guess what? It paid off.
To read the rest, if you're so inclined, click the following link:
Seems like a very biased review that puts MLG is a falsely positive light. I agree that the event was very well-run, but I would have liked a more objective review that talks more about Areas of Improvements and strengths and weaknesses instead of so much personal opinion by saying that the fans are unfair to MLG and that Sundance is a great guy (he is, I agree)
On April 23 2012 17:46 setmeal wrote: Seems like a very biased review that puts MLG is a falsely positive light. I agree that the event was very well-run, but I would have liked a more objective review that talks more about Areas of Improvements and strengths and weaknesses instead of so much personal opinion by saying that the fans are unfair to MLG and that Sundance is a great guy (he is, I agree)
Serious question - what improvements do you think could be made and what weaknesses do you think were evident?
On April 23 2012 17:38 Richard_Lewis wrote: Over at Cadred we've taken a look at the highs and lows of the MLG Spring Arena tournament, as written up by our resident US reporter Jeff Kim.
That's not a 'highs and lows' review, but a 'we love MLG and Sundance above everything he can do no wrong' review.
If you are reviewing the event itself, then there's no need to go around praising MLG for past decisions, good or bad, nor go after people for hating one small part of the tournament.
I didn't watch it so I can't comment on how good it was, but the text itself is clearly written by a fanboy, not someone pretending to be unbiased.
On April 23 2012 17:46 setmeal wrote: Seems like a very biased review that puts MLG is a falsely positive light. I agree that the event was very well-run, but I would have liked a more objective review that talks more about Areas of Improvements and strengths and weaknesses instead of so much personal opinion by saying that the fans are unfair to MLG and that Sundance is a great guy (he is, I agree)
Serious question - what improvements do you think could be made and what weaknesses do you think were evident?
Well I bought a ticket for the first Arena, but seeing the 720p free stream and production value of Dreamhack this weekend made me glad I didn't pay for this one and I probably won't for future ones either. The line-up for this arena also wasn't really different from what we can see every week in the GSL.
Wow, this is bad. By the looks of it the author is an actual contributor to the website, too. Good Lord, and he's a first year at university. Sadly, that explains a lot.
The worst part of the article is this paragraph here:
A bone to pick with you BLA BLA BLA ten sentences of stupid bullshit
Did you just randomly pick out an internet forum superstar when you were looking for a writer? This whining flies well on TL or Reddit because that's how people unfortunately discuss things on an anonymous internet forum, but for a website that calls itself premier esports coverage this is way under the line of passable quality.
This article is so bad, I originally thought I'd make a note of the rhetological fallacies in the article, but I just gave up after I realized there were so many.
There are some decent parts, yes. But I do not understand how you can look at this and decide to publish it on a website that tries to establish itself as "the premier esports coverage", and I hope that the author looks at this in five years time and cringes as hard as I did.
On April 23 2012 17:46 setmeal wrote: Seems like a very biased review that puts MLG is a falsely positive light. I agree that the event was very well-run, but I would have liked a more objective review that talks more about Areas of Improvements and strengths and weaknesses instead of so much personal opinion by saying that the fans are unfair to MLG and that Sundance is a great guy (he is, I agree)
Serious question - what improvements do you think could be made and what weaknesses do you think were evident?
The price. It should be free, especially after having watched Dreamhack this weekend.
On April 23 2012 17:46 setmeal wrote: Seems like a very biased review that puts MLG is a falsely positive light. I agree that the event was very well-run, but I would have liked a more objective review that talks more about Areas of Improvements and strengths and weaknesses instead of so much personal opinion by saying that the fans are unfair to MLG and that Sundance is a great guy (he is, I agree)
Serious question - what improvements do you think could be made and what weaknesses do you think were evident?
The price. It should be free, especially after having watched Dreamhack this weekend.
I'm definitely in the "no to pay per view" camp. I know the writer of this article isn't. However, hypothetically, if the option was no MLG or PPV MLG, would you feel there was enough out there without it?
If you are going to review an event in the future, I would like to give some small advice. Take it or leave it
- Don't start the review by declaring you knew it was amazing before it started ("we halt our studies and attempt to watch this amazing event unfold"), it's a clear indication that you were biased going into the event, not that the event was amazing.
- This segment: "MLG fails to disappoint the viewers by cutting the fee to watch the weekend of premium content and Starcraft 2 by half, as a receptive Sundance DiGiovanni listens" praises MLG, hails Sundance as receptive, etc, for the simple fact that they made a business decision to cut the price compared to the last time around. It's probably a good idea, but it's nothing to praise them for. It's a business decision, and says nothing about whether or not the event was worth it. This should have been further below in a paragraph discussing whether or not it was worth the pricetag. It seems out of place here.
- When you use half a paragraph to make a response to something on another site ("easily proved that they are the premier e-sports event in the world") - include a link. Some of us don't use the site. We don't know what it's about. You could be absolutely 100% right, or 100% wrong, and I wouldn't have an idea because you don't include a link to what you refer to. This paragraph is completely worthless for anyone that didn't continously read Reddit during the weekend. Do you want your review to only be for reddit users? If so, why not only post it there? Want it to be for everyone? Provide a link so we can check what you respond to, to see for ourselves whether or not you are fair.
- Death threats etc to Sundance based on feedback before the previous event ... may, possibly, have a place in a review of the first event, or a preview of this event, but not in a review of this event. It has nothing to do with this event specifically.
- Paragraph about 'extended series' ... ok so you love it, you hate people hating it, but - in this event - how did it work out? Were there any? Were they fun? Were there none? What happened? You don't mention it. Most reviews are not written exclusively for those that are die hard fans and watch everything, but for people that may have an interest themselves but for whatever reason only saw part of the event, or none of it. You only go about how you hate people hating it ... not what it had to do with this specific event, or how it worked out.
Now, and I am serious about this, the article is well written. It's nicely structured overall. The guy who write it is good at writing. Nice word choices, not too much repetition.
It's the content I don't think is right if you are going to review an event. A fair bit of the article seems misplaced, and the conclusion seems to be that before the event started, you knew it was going to be nothing short of amazing and little would convince you otherwise - and nothing did, so it was amazing.
A better way to do it would be to briefly mention everything negatively (same weekend as dreamhack, shitstorm about paying, extended series, etc etc etc) in one brief paragraph, and then do that brief 'so MLG had something to prove - that SC2 is worth a PPV model' (rephrased in a better way, obviously) question, before going into everything about the event, and conclude that it was nothing short of amazing (which, obviously, the author thinks).
What's done here is to straight out tell people in the introduction that he knew it would be nothing short of amazing, and nothing changed his mind ... so really, there was no point in reading everything.
On April 23 2012 18:26 aebriol wrote: If you are going to review an event in the future, I would like to give some small advice. Take it or leave it
- Don't start the review by declaring you knew it was amazing before it started ("we halt our studies and attempt to watch this amazing event unfold"), it's a clear indication that you were biased going into the event, not that the event was amazing.
- This segment: "MLG fails to disappoint the viewers by cutting the fee to watch the weekend of premium content and Starcraft 2 by half, as a receptive Sundance DiGiovanni listens" praises MLG, hails Sundance as receptive, etc, for the simple fact that they made a business decision to cut the price compared to the last time around. It's probably a good idea, but it's nothing to praise them for. It's a business decision, and says nothing about whether or not the event was worth it. This should have been further below in a paragraph discussing whether or not it was worth the pricetag. It seems out of place here.
- When you use half a paragraph to make a response to something on another site ("easily proved that they are the premier e-sports event in the world") - include a link. Some of us don't use the site. We don't know what it's about. You could be absolutely 100% right, or 100% wrong, and I wouldn't have an idea because you don't include a link to what you refer to. This paragraph is completely worthless for anyone that didn't continously read Reddit during the weekend. Do you want your review to only be for reddit users? If so, why not only post it there? Want it to be for everyone? Provide a link so we can check what you respond to, to see for ourselves whether or not you are fair.
- Death threats etc to Sundance based on feedback before the previous event ... may, possibly, have a place in a review of the first event, or a preview of this event, but not in a review of this event. It has nothing to do with this event specifically.
- Paragraph about 'extended series' ... ok so you love it, you hate people hating it, but - in this event - how did it work out? Were there any? Were they fun? Were there none? What happened? You don't mention it. Most reviews are not written exclusively for those that are die hard fans and watch everything, but for people that may have an interest themselves but for whatever reason only saw part of the event, or none of it. You only go about how you hate people hating it ... not what it had to do with this specific event, or how it worked out.
Now, and I am serious about this, the article is well written. It's nicely structured overall. The guy who write it is good at writing. Nice word choices, not too much repetition.
It's the content I don't think is right if you are going to review an event. A fair bit of the article seems misplaced, and the conclusion seems to be that before the event started, you knew it was going to be nothing short of amazing and little would convince you otherwise - and nothing did, so it was amazing.
A better way to do it would be to briefly mention everything negatively (same weekend as dreamhack, shitstorm about paying, extended series, etc etc etc) in one brief paragraph, and then do that brief 'so MLG had something to prove - that SC2 is worth a PPV model' (rephrased in a better way, obviously) question, before going into everything about the event, and conclude that it was nothing short of amazing (which, obviously, the author thinks).
What's done here is to straight out tell people in the introduction that he knew it would be nothing short of amazing, and nothing changed his mind ... so really, there was no point in reading everything.
I shall pass this on to the writer. Thanks for taking the time to be thorough.
that wasnt really a review, or a report, or anything of the sort. it seems to have barely been about the event itself in fact. it was basically an opinion peice about mlg as a whole, not any kind of reporting. i mean, there are zero details about the event itself, in fact, not having watched it, or even been paying attention to it... i know almost nothing more about the event after reading the article than i did before.
if you are going to review an event, you should probobly talk about the event, not about how great you think mlg is.
On April 23 2012 17:46 setmeal wrote: Seems like a very biased review that puts MLG is a falsely positive light. I agree that the event was very well-run, but I would have liked a more objective review that talks more about Areas of Improvements and strengths and weaknesses instead of so much personal opinion by saying that the fans are unfair to MLG and that Sundance is a great guy (he is, I agree)
Serious question - what improvements do you think could be made and what weaknesses do you think were evident?
Well I bought a ticket for the first Arena, but seeing the 720p free stream and production value of Dreamhack this weekend I made me glad I didn't pay for this one and I probably won't for future ones either. The line-up for this arena also wasn't really different from what we can see every week in the GSL.
I just want to take a moment to laugh a bit about your last sentence. Was not really different from what we can see every week in the GSL? So, you mean, it wasn't really different from watching the absolute best players in the world play, with a foreigner or two thrown in for some hype?
Yes, nobody wants that... :D :D MLG needs to have at least some bad players so that it is not the same as GSL. After all, we wouldn't want the quality of the games to be too high now would we!
Why would i buy an MLG pass over a GSL pass for these Arenas? The player field is nearly identical, except that they are all Jetlagged? The casters are not better?
My problem with this event is: I want to see only the best of the best? GSL! I want to see top Koreans duke it out with an international field? Dreamhack! (Free)
I just don't see the "niche" MLG is targeting here, especially when it's PPV... There is just nothing i can't get somewhere else.
+1 extra Question: Is there ANY reason why these MLG-Arenas are not held directly in Korea? You fly Players in, you fly Casters in, you have no audience... Woudln't it be easyer to just rent the GSL studio and do it from there?
Actually the 'article' is fine, you just need to replace "reporter" with "fanboy" in the OP of this thread. If you accept a couple of advices (beside aebriol's golden post) I'd say that you should limit your enthusiasm a little: as a reader, I'm not going to take you seriously if you talk all the time about how good of a guy Sundance is, how good MLG is and so on. Especially if you don't avoid sentences like "You're not entitled to watch the stream. If you don't like the format, watch DreamHack, a players' stream, or go ladder or something.", or any reader will think of your article more as a post on your blog. Or a post on Sundance's blog, since he is mentioned in 6 of the 8 major paragraphs!
About the tournament's weakness - if you can call them like that - I'd say the lack of a live public (Dreamhack docet) and the timings (don't place the tournament the same days another big one is run, if you can). Needless to be said a better timing could have provided another good foreigner in the group, so it's not only a matter of having to choose what stream to watch.
If we talk about the strong points I'd say the players lineup, despite the lack of Naniwa, Grubby and the finals.
On April 23 2012 18:50 Velr wrote: I would like to know one thing:
Why would i buy an MLG pass over a GSL pass for these Arenas? The player field is nearly identical, except that they are all Jetlagged? The casters are not better?
Well, the main argument would be stream quality. GSL streams are horrible, even with a HQ pass. MLG provides a very crisp 1080p stream and even the 480p stream look pretty good for those of us without much bandwidth.
There are also subjective matters. I like the compact weekend-format more than a long drawn out league. The times are better for me: MLG, while late at night, is in the weekend, while GSL always runs during working hours.
On April 23 2012 17:38 Richard_Lewis wrote: Over at Cadred we've taken a look at the highs and lows of the MLG Spring Arena tournament, as written up by our resident US reporter Jeff Kim.
MLG Spring Arena 2012. It's the event that nobody knew about until 2 days before it happened when we saw the huge banner on TeamLiquid, and then the switch clicked in our minds "oh shit, I forgot about that!" As we younger gamers, the ones still in school, head into the final weeks of our classes before the summer, we halt our studies and attempt to watch this amazing event unfold.
Hampered this time by the presence of DreamHack in Stockholm, Sweden, there's not a doubt in my mind that the viewer numbers were more spread out this time and that no records will be broken, but that's just the personal side of things. Again, MLG fails to disappoint the viewers by cutting the fee to watch the weekend of premium content and Starcraft 2 by half, as a receptive Sundance DiGiovanni listens to the crowds that roared so much at him for trying something new. Guess what? It paid off.
To read the rest, if you're so inclined, click the following link:
Nobody knew about it? Except those who watch SOTG/ITG or look at the TL calender.
Also just simply when compared to the last event this event was far worse. Sure the games/casting/lack of downtime were all good things, but 10 players kills an event. They cut the players to save money, but that doesn't allow for an amazing loser bracket run and also prevents people for rooting for their guy if he can't even participate.
One thing I noticed about this MLG Spring Arena event was that there were practically zero hiccups.
A lot of people had a lot of trouble accessing the streams (got a big page saying "Please go to majorleaguegaming.com/live to watch"). I had zero problems with the Winter Arena, but this time I had quite a few. The solution suggested was to go to twitch.tv, log out, and log back in again, then go back to the mlg viewer. This worked fine... on my PC. On my Laptop I just couldn't watch at all (unless I went to the individual twitch.tv stream pages and forgo the quite frankly glorious viewer that MLG have).
Pretty disappointed with that.
Also the event was boring. The games were cool, the storyline of DRG overcoming MKP was cool... but it just came off as boring overall.
On April 23 2012 17:46 setmeal wrote: Seems like a very biased review that puts MLG is a falsely positive light. I agree that the event was very well-run, but I would have liked a more objective review that talks more about Areas of Improvements and strengths and weaknesses instead of so much personal opinion by saying that the fans are unfair to MLG and that Sundance is a great guy (he is, I agree)
Serious question - what improvements do you think could be made and what weaknesses do you think were evident?
The price. It should be free, especially after having watched Dreamhack this weekend.
I'm definitely in the "no to pay per view" camp. I know the writer of this article isn't. However, hypothetically, if the option was no MLG or PPV MLG, would you feel there was enough out there without it?
There are plenty of big tournaments to go around, actually. GSL still tops all of them if you're interested in high-level play. There's IEM, Dreamhack, IPL, NASL, hopefully TSL 4 and Homestory cup. I personally wouldn't miss MLG much if it were to stop organizing SC2 tournaments.
I watched dreamhack on my 27" at home and you could really feel the atmosphere. The crowd enjoyed themselves, the players enjoyed themselves (especially Polt.. he doesn't look nearly as serious or uncomfortable as other Koreans tend to do at foreign tournaments),.. It was just an awesome event. Just look at the songs they used:
Pendulum - The Island Avicii - Levels Avicii - Bromance Royksopp - Eple Alesso & Sebastian Ingrosso - Calling (lose my mind) Nause - Made Of¨ Swedish House Mafia - Greyhound Justice - D.A.N.C.E Some Madeon tune. Faithless - Insomnia darude - sandstorm The Prodigy - Breathe
On April 23 2012 18:50 Velr wrote: I would like to know one thing:
Why would i buy an MLG pass over a GSL pass for these Arenas? The player field is nearly identical, except that they are all Jetlagged? The casters are not better?
My problem with this event is: I want to see only the best of the best? GSL! I want to see top Koreans duke it out with an international field? Dreamhack! (Free)
I just don't see the "niche" MLG is targeting here, especially when it's PPV... There is just nothing i can't get somewhere else.
+1 extra Question: Is there ANY reason why these MLG-Arenas are not held directly in Korea? You fly Players in, you fly Casters in, you have no audience... Woudln't it be easyer to just rent the GSL studio and do it from there?
I second that man, what was the real hook of MLG when it was literally a $10 3-day mini-GSL, I already have a 1year pass to the GSL. The extra casters and commentary seemed nice, if not too much, and DRG overcoming MKP was surely a sick final storyline, but I guarantee most people were tuned into Dreamhack.
On April 23 2012 17:46 setmeal wrote: Seems like a very biased review that puts MLG is a falsely positive light. I agree that the event was very well-run, but I would have liked a more objective review that talks more about Areas of Improvements and strengths and weaknesses instead of so much personal opinion by saying that the fans are unfair to MLG and that Sundance is a great guy (he is, I agree)
Serious question - what improvements do you think could be made and what weaknesses do you think were evident?
Well I bought a ticket for the first Arena, but seeing the 720p free stream and production value of Dreamhack this weekend I made me glad I didn't pay for this one and I probably won't for future ones either. The line-up for this arena also wasn't really different from what we can see every week in the GSL.
I just want to take a moment to laugh a bit about your last sentence. Was not really different from what we can see every week in the GSL? So, you mean, it wasn't really different from watching the absolute best players in the world play, with a foreigner or two thrown in for some hype?
Yes, nobody wants that... :D :D MLG needs to have at least some bad players so that it is not the same as GSL. After all, we wouldn't want the quality of the games to be too high now would we!
I'm saying the line-up isn't much different, but whats at stake is completely different. I am already paying like 20-30 bucks a month to watch these players play for something that actually matters (50k first prize or something?). From things like arena of legends we've already seen how much worse the quality of play is when there isn't much on the line. So I'm not gonna pay again 10-20 bucks to see these guys play games that don't really mean much, if I want to see Koreans fight Koreans the GSL is better in every way. The cool thing about Dreamhack was that we got to see players like Ret and Thorzain go toe-to-toe and beat some great Korean players which was really awesome and is not something we get to see every week.
Cons: -no Day[9] -lack of references regarding Sundance being related to Giovanni from Pokemon
So it was a near perfect event? It would have been perfect with Day9 and better sundance references. I think that grading is absolutely off the any reasonable charts. I don't think there hasn't been any event out there so far in the starcraft 2 scene that has been close to a near perfect score. A more reasonable number might have been somewhere around 65-70 since it was better than the average tournament.
Yeah I'm hopping on the 'bias article' band wagon, something i've done before. I mean theres no reason to write an article and have so many lines specifically dedicated to defending MLG and saying people aren't right to say Dreamhack was better. Just say how the tournament was, what they did right, what they did wrong and how they have improved/can improve. No need to fluff it up so much, its as if you are working for MLG itself, better to remain unbiased in your writing.
I didn't pay and won't pay unless it's something out of the ordinary. As said in previous posts, this was nothing that we can't see for free on a weekly basis from the GSL. Dreamhack was good enought to watch for free.
Considering Dreamhack being held the same WE and the 100% GSL line up of that MLG events what was exactly the point of this MLG Arena? I mean yes it's another nice tournament with good prize money for the players but from a viewer's point of view, I felt like this event had really no particular interest.
The only thing I may regret was not being able to listen to Grubby's analysis considering he is probably the best casting pro gamer, and his analysis are sharper than 90% of the casters we currently see in most events.
But regardless of that point, there was nothing in this MLG I can't see when I watch code S.
The DRG / MKP final was probably great but we've been seing some EPIC TvZ in so many tournaments lately (past 4 months) considering the DRG / MKP rivalry and the Stephano / Polt one that I don't think this one was that much of a big deal (or some of those 2 Zerg players against any code S Terran).
Don't get me wrong, I'm no hater, I bought a pass for the first MLG Arena this year and totally loved it, but this one just seemed pointless to me.
I didn't pay for MLG and watched Dreamhack this weekend. Even if MLG had been free I would have watched DH instead. I have the GSL if i want to watch a bunch of koreans play each other. Dreamhack probably got better numbers as well.
Wouldn't know if this stuff was true. Didn't watch any of it. Would have loved to, but not going to pay to stream a starcraft tournament. Especially since I work on weekends, so I'd only be able to see 25% or so of the matches, if that.
"MLG Spring Arena 2012. It's the event that nobody knew about until 2 days before it happened when we saw the huge banner on TeamLiquid." So if MLG hadn't paid TL for the banner and countdown then no one would have known it was going on? "as a receptive Sundance DiGiovanni listens to the crowds that roared so much at him for trying something new" are you SERIOUSLY trying to pass this off as an unbiased article when you're pretty much saying that everyone was an idiot for not liking what Sundance did and then we should all praise him for doing the decision of lowering a price for an inferior product to Winter Arena? LOL.
Biased article is biased. I like to think of the Starcraft community as a generally intelligent one. A community which appreciates critical and rational write-ups on events detailing the story lines of the players and the events with a large chunk of hype thrown in.
From start to finish while I was reading this article all I kept thinking was how much was this guy paid to write this stuff? I didn't get to watch MLG. I watched DreamHack instead. So I was hoping to read an article providing me with relevant information on how the tournament was. All I got for my efforts was a confused demeanour and an ominous suspicion of the author.
Thank you TL for completely ripping this article a new one, either MLG is paying for it or the reporter is brownnosing so badly because he's hoping for a job at MLG.
I watched both events on my dual monitor but unless they where taking a break Dreamhack would always be on my main screen with the sound of the roaring audience to accompany it. I usually don't enjoy TvT too much but Thorzain Polt was awesome, good storyline, personalities, Thorzains response after winning, I freaking loved it, while when I watched DRG MKP I just thought "Oh this shit again.", not that the games where that bad but seeing these exact same players I've seen so many times before is just tiresome, just like GSL but with players out of their comfort zone, even QXC said MKP was giving a bad performance.
Sundance should just admit his "PPV or kill esports" speech was just a massive lie and revert back to the old format, apart from some die hards that are dumb enough to believe him noone will continue buying his guilt tickets, the tournament was a dissapointment and as far as I'm concerned he's lost all credibility and sympathy.
On April 23 2012 17:46 setmeal wrote: Seems like a very biased review that puts MLG is a falsely positive light. I agree that the event was very well-run, but I would have liked a more objective review that talks more about Areas of Improvements and strengths and weaknesses instead of so much personal opinion by saying that the fans are unfair to MLG and that Sundance is a great guy (he is, I agree)
Serious question - what improvements do you think could be made and what weaknesses do you think were evident?
The multi-view stream was unusable for most of the weekend - repeatedly asked you to keep logging in, despite actually being logged in. (Suggestions to log out, log back in, and refresh were ineffectual. Not to mention clearing cache, restarting browser, etc...)
Quality was not as good as advertised, even with plenty of bandwidth to access 1080p from a location within New York City I could not watch it at that quality.
Of course the games were great, especially the 7-game final, but it kind of paled in comparison to DreamHack in my opinion. Watching DreamHack got me interested and "psyched up" but MLG felt pretty bland to me. Add this to the fact that MLG cost $10 and DreamHack was free, and the event was somewhat of a disappointment.
The biggest problem with this MLG was that it was in the same weekend as Dreamhack and Dreamhack had better everything even if we don't pull the issue of pay or free. So if they insisted to charge for viewing they should have found another weekend to do it.
On April 23 2012 23:29 Denzil wrote: There's a reason he cut it to 10$
you cannot justify 20$ for a 8 player tournament not even with the best players you can't justify it for winter arena either
Dreamhack outshone MLG hard this weekend and I think it's evident.
everything MLG did Dreamhack did better and dreamhack was free
Except you know, MLG delivered 3 evenings/nights of high level play while DH day one and the first half of day 2 were an absolute snoozefest. Lopsided match-ups intertwined with endless breaks. I watched a full weekend of high level SC2. You can't say the same if you only watched DH, which had a rather poor field of competitors (look its Polt again!). I enjoyed the DH finals and watched MKP vs DRG right after.
I also paid 15 USD for both arena 1 and arena 2, which works out at 11 euros and I consider it completely worth it. It's fine that you don't, but stop bitching about it.
(Not to mention that DRG's reaction when he won plus the 2v2 tournament made it worth paying for)
I don't like it at all. Bad reading , bad wrinting, unprofesional comentaries (just a personal preference i guess), and TOTALY biased. Unecessary constant praising towards Di Giovanni; plus unecessary comparison with Dreamhack trying to show MLG as superior when that is, as i said, totally pointless. This is just my opinion.
On April 24 2012 00:09 Scootaloo wrote: Sundance should just admit his "PPV or kill esports" speech was just a massive lie and revert back to the old format, apart from some die hards that are dumb enough to believe him noone will continue buying his guilt tickets, the tournament was a dissapointment and as far as I'm concerned he's lost all credibility and sympathy.
You're completely mixing 2 things that have nothing to do with each other.
The fact that this PPV MLG Spring Arena wasn't appreciated that much by the community was because: - DreamHack happened on the same WE with an equivalent level of play - The 8 players invited are basically all code S players most people can see compete in the GSL, where they are at their best - You had to pay to watch this event when for free you could get another equivalent event (in term of quality)
Now when Sundance said "PPV or kill esports" what fanboys failed to understand is that he is basically saying "Hey, we are part of big corporations like most company that organize eSports events, and these corporations are starting to ask for some returns on their investments".The amount of viewers on a free stream, or the amount of Downloaded VoDs isn't what is gonna pay for all their expenses in order to provide nice events for little fanboys to watch. At some point they need to start making decent profits if they want to keep existing. So when he says"PPV or kill esports" he's basically saying that if an organization like MLG doesn't start to make profits (not talking about billions of dollars here), it's basically gonna shut-down. And all little fanboys will only have their eyes to cry because there will be no more PPV or Free content since there will be no content at all.
How come eSports fans are the only one considering they DESERVE to have a free entertainment 100% of the time? It's a business like any other in case you haven't noticed. And this business needs to run like any other. And in order to run, it needs profit.
Did we watch the same tournaments mini wheats? MLG's players where all suffering from massive jetlag, the games where at a lower standard then you would see at a GSL, not to mention that the games where all matchups we'd seen thousands of times before, the only real storyline was MKP DRG, a storyline we already saw like 3 times before, and to be honest, both of those arrogant anti-social nerds just bore and annoy me at this point, no DRG, please don't show us you're happy, or we'll forget you're a robot.
Not to mention that you need a crowd for something like this, it just creates so much life and excitement and energizes the casters, even Tastosis looked half asleep most of the time.
On the other hand, I suppose it's good at least 1 person thinks this Spring arena wasn't a complete waste of time.
How could you give an event with absolutely no audience other than staff/press/players a near perfect score? No audience basically removes the entire reason why sports are so successful in the first place. People want to see the action in front of them and experience it with other like-minded individuals. That alone takes it out of the running of "best" event. It was a solid production from a technical standpoint(not talking about stream access) but, zero audience removes the hype and feeling of an important event entirely. At least when considering "best".
I watched both events and the contrast couldn't be more obvious. At Dreamhack you had Thorzain winning it in front a huge crowd in an arena and being celebrated like a Champion. At MLG Arena you had Artosis and Tasteless trying to hype up this win for DRG that was in an office while a handful of people clapped in the background. Yeah...
On April 24 2012 00:09 Scootaloo wrote: Sundance should just admit his "PPV or kill esports" speech was just a massive lie and revert back to the old format, apart from some die hards that are dumb enough to believe him noone will continue buying his guilt tickets, the tournament was a dissapointment and as far as I'm concerned he's lost all credibility and sympathy.
You're completely mixing 2 things that have nothing to do with each other.
The fact that this PPV MLG Spring Arena wasn't appreciated that much by the community was because: - DreamHack happened on the same WE with an equivalent level of play - The 8 players invited are basically all code S players most people can see compete in the GSL, where they are at their best - You had to pay to watch this event when for free you could get another equivalent event (in term of quality)
Now when Sundance said "PPV or kill esports" what fanboys failed to understand is that he is basically saying "Hey, we are part of big corporations like most company that organize eSports events, and these corporations are starting to ask for some returns on their investments".The amount of viewers on a free stream, or the amount of Downloaded VoDs isn't what is gonna pay for all their expenses in order to provide nice events for little fanboys to watch. At some point they need to start making decent profits if they want to keep existing. So when he says"PPV or kill esports" he's basically saying that if an organization like MLG doesn't start to make profits (not talking about billions of dollars here), it's basically gonna shut-down. And all little fanboys will only have their eyes to cry because there will be no more PPV or Free content since there will be no content at all.
How come eSports fans are the only one considering they DESERVE to have a free entertainment 100% of the time? It's a business like any other in case you haven't noticed. And this business needs to run like any other. And in order to run, it needs profit.
Not more complicated than that.
I believe Dreamhack and IPL prove this theory completely wrong, if you want massive profits you're not in the right business, and Sundance with his villa is most likely too greedy to understand this, IPL nor Dreamhack make massive profits, but Sundance does need to because either he's terrible at dealing with his investors i.e. promising things he shouldn't or is like I stated before just lying his ass off to get more money out of a pretty young target audience.
And we deserve free entertainment because we paid for the game and watch adds, if that combined with a ticket price is enough money to hold amazing tourneys like Dreamhack and IPL, why should MLG be any different? Because he wanted to make a permanent studio/new office?
I'm guessing because you paid money for MLG and therefore need to believe in Sundances reasoning because otherwise you esentially threw away 10 bucks.
On April 24 2012 00:09 Scootaloo wrote: Sundance should just admit his "PPV or kill esports" speech was just a massive lie and revert back to the old format, apart from some die hards that are dumb enough to believe him noone will continue buying his guilt tickets, the tournament was a dissapointment and as far as I'm concerned he's lost all credibility and sympathy.
You're completely mixing 2 things that have nothing to do with each other.
The fact that this PPV MLG Spring Arena wasn't appreciated that much by the community was because: - DreamHack happened on the same WE with an equivalent level of play - The 8 players invited are basically all code S players most people can see compete in the GSL, where they are at their best - You had to pay to watch this event when for free you could get another equivalent event (in term of quality)
Now when Sundance said "PPV or kill esports" what fanboys failed to understand is that he is basically saying "Hey, we are part of big corporations like most company that organize eSports events, and these corporations are starting to ask for some returns on their investments".The amount of viewers on a free stream, or the amount of Downloaded VoDs isn't what is gonna pay for all their expenses in order to provide nice events for little fanboys to watch. At some point they need to start making decent profits if they want to keep existing. So when he says"PPV or kill esports" he's basically saying that if an organization like MLG doesn't start to make profits (not talking about billions of dollars here), it's basically gonna shut-down. And all little fanboys will only have their eyes to cry because there will be no more PPV or Free content since there will be no content at all.
How come eSports fans are the only one considering they DESERVE to have a free entertainment 100% of the time? It's a business like any other in case you haven't noticed. And this business needs to run like any other. And in order to run, it needs profit.
Not more complicated than that.
The reason people are hating so much is because MLG is the only tournament applying this policy to its events. With the exception of Gomtv of course. But they have undoubtedly the highest calibre of players and thus can monetise their high quality product which is in high demand. Whereas MLG does not offer much more than many other foreigner events which are provided free of charge without any outcry from their CEO's saying they need more money.
To say that if MLG ceases to exist then the same fate awaits SC2 e-sports is a fallacy. When in fact, this would increase revenue for the other tournament organisers thus consolidating the scene into a more malleable entity. So I say bring on the downfall of MLG!
On April 24 2012 00:09 Scootaloo wrote: Sundance should just admit his "PPV or kill esports" speech was just a massive lie and revert back to the old format, apart from some die hards that are dumb enough to believe him noone will continue buying his guilt tickets, the tournament was a dissapointment and as far as I'm concerned he's lost all credibility and sympathy.
You're completely mixing 2 things that have nothing to do with each other.
The fact that this PPV MLG Spring Arena wasn't appreciated that much by the community was because: - DreamHack happened on the same WE with an equivalent level of play - The 8 players invited are basically all code S players most people can see compete in the GSL, where they are at their best - You had to pay to watch this event when for free you could get another equivalent event (in term of quality)
Now when Sundance said "PPV or kill esports" what fanboys failed to understand is that he is basically saying "Hey, we are part of big corporations like most company that organize eSports events, and these corporations are starting to ask for some returns on their investments".The amount of viewers on a free stream, or the amount of Downloaded VoDs isn't what is gonna pay for all their expenses in order to provide nice events for little fanboys to watch. At some point they need to start making decent profits if they want to keep existing. So when he says"PPV or kill esports" he's basically saying that if an organization like MLG doesn't start to make profits (not talking about billions of dollars here), it's basically gonna shut-down. And all little fanboys will only have their eyes to cry because there will be no more PPV or Free content since there will be no content at all.
How come eSports fans are the only one considering they DESERVE to have a free entertainment 100% of the time? It's a business like any other in case you haven't noticed. And this business needs to run like any other. And in order to run, it needs profit.
Not more complicated than that.
I believe Dreamhack and IPL prove this theory completely wrong, if you want massive profits you're not in the right business, and Sundance with his villa is most likely too greedy to understand this, IPL nor Dreamhack make massive profits, but Sundance does need to because either he's terrible at dealing with his investors i.e. promising things he shouldn't or is like I stated before just lying his ass off to get more money out of a pretty young target audience.
And we deserve free entertainment because we paid for the game and watch adds, if that combined with a ticket price is enough money to hold amazing tourneys like Dreamhack and IPL, why should MLG be any different? Because he wanted to make a permanent studio/new office?
I'm guessing because you paid money for MLG and therefore need to believe in Sundances reasoning because otherwise you esentially threw away 10 bucks.
On April 24 2012 00:04 Kiichol wrote: Biased article is biased. I like to think of the Starcraft community as a generally intelligent one. A community which appreciates critical and rational write-ups on events detailing the story lines of the players and the events with a large chunk of hype thrown in.
From start to finish while I was reading this article all I kept thinking was how much was this guy paid to write this stuff? I didn't get to watch MLG. I watched DreamHack instead. So I was hoping to read an article providing me with relevant information on how the tournament was. All I got for my efforts was a confused demeanor and an ominous suspicion of the author.
This sums is it up for me. DH was great and I loved it from the start to the end.
And about this whole concept of MLG arenas without crowd,press and other things...I would rather watch HomeStory cup any given day, and not to mention other tournaments who have this "life" in them. Hell, if we exclude GSL, HSC and DH are my favorite tournaments.
On April 24 2012 00:09 Scootaloo wrote: Sundance should just admit his "PPV or kill esports" speech was just a massive lie and revert back to the old format, apart from some die hards that are dumb enough to believe him noone will continue buying his guilt tickets, the tournament was a dissapointment and as far as I'm concerned he's lost all credibility and sympathy.
How come eSports fans are the only one considering they DESERVE to have a free entertainment 100% of the time? It's a business like any other in case you haven't noticed. And this business needs to run like any other. And in order to run, it needs profit.
People keep saying this but a significant part of the audience is willing to pay for quality SC2, just look at how many people subscribe to GSL. However, if you are already paying ~20$ every month for GS(T)L and you have the choice between 2 similar products but one is free and one you have to pay 10 or 20$ for then it's a pretty easy choice I think. It a matter of how good a product is compared to what else is out there besides if it's actually worth the money. I would also be a lot more inclined to support MLG by paying for gold/HQ/whatever if they actually had a LQ free stream.
On April 24 2012 00:39 Scootaloo wrote: Did we watch the same tournaments mini wheats? MLG's players where all suffering from massive jetlag, the games where at a lower standard then you would see at a GSL, not to mention that the games where all matchups we'd seen thousands of times before, the only real storyline was MKP DRG, a storyline we already saw like 3 times before, and to be honest, both of those arrogant anti-social nerds just bore and annoy me at this point, no DRG, please don't show us you're happy, or we'll forget you're a robot.
Not to mention that you need a crowd for something like this, it just creates so much life and excitement and energizes the casters, even Tastosis looked half asleep most of the time.
On the other hand, I suppose it's good at least 1 person thinks this Spring arena wasn't a complete waste of time.
I don't think you did :D
The games were fantastic. May have only had 8 players and no crowd, but they did a lot with a little. I strongly stand by if Thorzain had not been a boss and gone all the way, Dreamhack would have been totally forgettable. If I'm not mistaken, wasn't the progression of the tournament something like:
First round: 1 notable player and 2 unknowns
Second round: 1 notable player 1 unknown, and like 2 lesser known/lower-tiered EU pros
Third Round: Here's where it actually starts to look like a decent EU tournament with Koreans
Playoffs: Decent lineup, but still not that impressive. Nerchio vs Monster was great, Ret managed to upset Genius, and as already mentioned, Thorzain.
Even if you can call the Koreans(and huk -_-) jet lagged at the Arena, a round robin + playoffs of those 8 yielded games that were LEAGUES above Dreamhack in quality. Ask yourself, if it were Monster vs Polt in the finals, would you really have given a fuck? Would the crowd have exploded when Polt inevitably won?
Also, what's up with the "boring and anti-social nerds" comment. What were you expecting? I think MKP and DRG have more personality than most Koreans pros if anything. Seems like they actually make an effort to connect with their fans as well.
On April 24 2012 00:09 Scootaloo wrote: Sundance should just admit his "PPV or kill esports" speech was just a massive lie and revert back to the old format, apart from some die hards that are dumb enough to believe him noone will continue buying his guilt tickets, the tournament was a dissapointment and as far as I'm concerned he's lost all credibility and sympathy.
You're completely mixing 2 things that have nothing to do with each other.
The fact that this PPV MLG Spring Arena wasn't appreciated that much by the community was because: - DreamHack happened on the same WE with an equivalent level of play - The 8 players invited are basically all code S players most people can see compete in the GSL, where they are at their best - You had to pay to watch this event when for free you could get another equivalent event (in term of quality)
Now when Sundance said "PPV or kill esports" what fanboys failed to understand is that he is basically saying "Hey, we are part of big corporations like most company that organize eSports events, and these corporations are starting to ask for some returns on their investments".The amount of viewers on a free stream, or the amount of Downloaded VoDs isn't what is gonna pay for all their expenses in order to provide nice events for little fanboys to watch. At some point they need to start making decent profits if they want to keep existing. So when he says"PPV or kill esports" he's basically saying that if an organization like MLG doesn't start to make profits (not talking about billions of dollars here), it's basically gonna shut-down. And all little fanboys will only have their eyes to cry because there will be no more PPV or Free content since there will be no content at all.
How come eSports fans are the only one considering they DESERVE to have a free entertainment 100% of the time? It's a business like any other in case you haven't noticed. And this business needs to run like any other. And in order to run, it needs profit.
Not more complicated than that.
I believe Dreamhack and IPL prove this theory completely wrong, if you want massive profits you're not in the right business, and Sundance with his villa is most likely too greedy to understand this, IPL nor Dreamhack make massive profits, but Sundance does need to because either he's terrible at dealing with his investors i.e. promising things he shouldn't or is like I stated before just lying his ass off to get more money out of a pretty young target audience.
And we deserve free entertainment because we paid for the game and watch adds, if that combined with a ticket price is enough money to hold amazing tourneys like Dreamhack and IPL, why should MLG be any different? Because he wanted to make a permanent studio/new office?
I'm guessing because you paid money for MLG and therefore need to believe in Sundances reasoning because otherwise you esentially threw away 10 bucks.
I'm not talking about massive profits and I never did, if you read me carefully, you'll see I wrote "decent" which is a totally different thing. It is obvious eSports is not the kind of business you become rich with. Everyone knows that ... As far as the comparison with DH and IPL goes, I won't even acknowledge what you said considering these are totally different products that have nothing to do with MLG in terms of the way they operate all year long (one hosts a few major events in Europe and has no league to operate all year long, and the other one offers at the very best 2 major live events a year ...)
Now, talking about how "because you paid the game you deserve to have eSports for free" .... I'm just stunned. How does the fact of paying the game have ANYTHING to do with watching eSports? I play football (the real one with feet involved) and subscribed for a license in my club, should I ask free tickets for all FC Barcelona (or any other major team) games because of that?
I don't need to believe in Sundance reasoning when it perfectly makes sense from a business point of view. But nowadays people tend to see money as such a monster to get rid of, that they can't even connect with the economical reality of the world we live in. If you consider money to be that useless, give me yours, I'll PM you with my datas so that you can make the transfer ASAP. I'll be glad to free you from that burden ...
On April 24 2012 00:09 Scootaloo wrote: Sundance should just admit his "PPV or kill esports" speech was just a massive lie and revert back to the old format, apart from some die hards that are dumb enough to believe him noone will continue buying his guilt tickets, the tournament was a dissapointment and as far as I'm concerned he's lost all credibility and sympathy.
You're completely mixing 2 things that have nothing to do with each other.
The fact that this PPV MLG Spring Arena wasn't appreciated that much by the community was because: - DreamHack happened on the same WE with an equivalent level of play - The 8 players invited are basically all code S players most people can see compete in the GSL, where they are at their best - You had to pay to watch this event when for free you could get another equivalent event (in term of quality)
Now when Sundance said "PPV or kill esports" what fanboys failed to understand is that he is basically saying "Hey, we are part of big corporations like most company that organize eSports events, and these corporations are starting to ask for some returns on their investments".The amount of viewers on a free stream, or the amount of Downloaded VoDs isn't what is gonna pay for all their expenses in order to provide nice events for little fanboys to watch. At some point they need to start making decent profits if they want to keep existing. So when he says"PPV or kill esports" he's basically saying that if an organization like MLG doesn't start to make profits (not talking about billions of dollars here), it's basically gonna shut-down. And all little fanboys will only have their eyes to cry because there will be no more PPV or Free content since there will be no content at all.
How come eSports fans are the only one considering they DESERVE to have a free entertainment 100% of the time? It's a business like any other in case you haven't noticed. And this business needs to run like any other. And in order to run, it needs profit.
Not more complicated than that.
I believe Dreamhack and IPL prove this theory completely wrong, if you want massive profits you're not in the right business, and Sundance with his villa is most likely too greedy to understand this, IPL nor Dreamhack make massive profits, but Sundance does need to because either he's terrible at dealing with his investors i.e. promising things he shouldn't or is like I stated before just lying his ass off to get more money out of a pretty young target audience.
And we deserve free entertainment because we paid for the game and watch adds, if that combined with a ticket price is enough money to hold amazing tourneys like Dreamhack and IPL, why should MLG be any different? Because he wanted to make a permanent studio/new office?
I'm guessing because you paid money for MLG and therefore need to believe in Sundances reasoning because otherwise you esentially threw away 10 bucks.
IIRC IPL is in the red already
According to David Ting on the Executives 6 weeks ago this is not the case anymore, you're source is most likely outdated.
Miniwheats, wrong again, perhaps you just don't know that much players (you're American so it makes sense you don't know shit about the EU scene) but Dreamhack had a fantastic line up, perhaps they didn't have that many Koreana but they didn't either at the Dreamhack at the huge stadium that Hero won, yet for many people that is the most memorable and biggest tourney ever. And the crowd would have gone crazy for a lot of other people as well, Genius pulling in a toss win, Ret finally getting a really big win or even Polt, remember, this is not some shitty MLG or IPL with american audiences.
And the boring an antisocial comment was still pretty accurate, you can bitch about it being am unfair comparison but Thorzain looked an acted ecstatic, same with most Koreans in front of a big audience, the biggest thing MLG completely failed in.
And you say MLG was leagueas above Dreamhack in quality, bullshit, MLG players where all jetlagged, playing tons of buildor/coinflip craft, especially day 1 was atrocious.
I can't believe some of the posts in this thread. I didn't watch MLG Arena but Dreamhack was only interesting because of the finals. Sure, in terms of storyline Dreamhack was great, but storyline is mostly important to people that don't follow the scene closely and need some 'drama'. And calling MKP and DRG antisocial robots? Yeah, someone doesn't follow the korean scene at all..
On April 24 2012 00:04 Kiichol wrote: Biased article is biased. I like to think of the Starcraft community as a generally intelligent one. A community which appreciates critical and rational write-ups on events detailing the story lines of the players and the events with a large chunk of hype thrown in.
From start to finish while I was reading this article all I kept thinking was how much was this guy paid to write this stuff? I didn't get to watch MLG. I watched DreamHack instead. So I was hoping to read an article providing me with relevant information on how the tournament was. All I got for my efforts was a confused demeanor and an ominous suspicion of the author.
This sums is it up for me. DH was great and I loved it from the start to the end.
And about this whole concept of MLG arenas without crowd,press and other things...I would rather watch HomeStory cup any given day, and not to mention other tournaments who have this "life" in them. Hell, if we exclude GSL, HSC and DH are my favorite tournaments.
Completely agree. I see no reason to support MLG when they're providing a worse service than other organizations and tournament events are providing for free. I'm less interested in MLG events than ever because of the changes they've implemented. I truly hope their numbers are in decline and they'll realize they've done far more harm than good. I don't see how we can expand the scene when you put up walls for new comers.
On April 24 2012 01:40 Scootaloo wrote: Miniwheats, wrong again, perhaps you just don't know that much players (you're American so it makes sense you don't know shit about the EU scene) but Dreamhack had a fantastic line up, perhaps they didn't have that many Koreana but they didn't either at the Dreamhack at the huge stadium that Hero won, yet for many people that is the most memorable and biggest tourney ever. And the crowd would have gone crazy for a lot of other people as well, Genius pulling in a toss win, Ret finally getting a really big win or even Polt, remember, this is not some shitty MLG or IPL with american audiences.
And the boring an antisocial comment was still pretty accurate, you can bitch about it being am unfair comparison but Thorzain looked an acted ecstatic, same with most Koreans in front of a big audience, the biggest thing MLG completely failed in.
And you say MLG was leagueas above Dreamhack in quality, bullshit, MLG players where all jetlagged, playing tons of buildor/coinflip craft, especially day 1 was atrocious.
The statement "shitty MLG or IPL with American audiences" was incredibly unnecessary.. Remember that you as a European may be biased towards European events as much as American's may be biased towards their own events.
Also remember that this thread is not a "MLG vs DreamHack" debate.
I dont know what games you were watching, when you say that MLG games were leagues better than DH. Did you watch day 1 of MLG? I was shocked how bad most of the games were. Literally half of the games day 1 were 1 base vs 1 base..
Now, looking at the names of the players at the respective tournaments, I think we can all agree that MLG had a bit better players at the very top (MKP/DRG?), but the games were, imo, not really living up to the hype. As big of a fan of MKP I am, I cant help but think he played rather poorly in the finals. He made alot of mistakes that he usually dont make - being very impatient in some games. This is likely due to the fact they most of them were jetlagged, but I also feel like a couple of them didnt want to show strats that they planned for GSL matches coming up next week.
All in all I like the analysis crew and the casters at MLG. But the technical problems and the smaller number of players/no audience coupled with the fact that the last games are played at 3-5 in the morning here in Europe makes me wonder why anyone in my timezone would bother paying for events like these in the future, especially when its played on the same weekend as another major event.
Regarding numbers on how many viewers they had; Just looking at the LR threads here on TL is a clear indication that not that many watched the event. IIRC all threads had sub 100 pages of comments, which is comparable to 1 day of GSL code S round of 32 groups (4 players) when nothing spectacular is happening (no foreigners or superstars playing).
On April 23 2012 17:46 setmeal wrote: Seems like a very biased review that puts MLG is a falsely positive light. I agree that the event was very well-run, but I would have liked a more objective review that talks more about Areas of Improvements and strengths and weaknesses instead of so much personal opinion by saying that the fans are unfair to MLG and that Sundance is a great guy (he is, I agree)
Serious question - what improvements do you think could be made and what weaknesses do you think were evident?
The biggest weakness of the tournament was overlooked, the competitors. I payed for the previous PPV-MLG and was happy I did. This time I checked the player list and realised I didn't care who was winning and found no reason to watch. GSL is the tournament I watch see these guys duke it out amongst themselves, that part is already taken care of.
Starcraft is not the only sport to be dominated by a single country. IMO both IPL(considering IPL4) and MLG should take notes from other sports with the same "problem", and limit the number of competitors one nation gets in big international competitions(home country exempted). It's healthy for generating interest among the majority of the spectators, rather than catering to the same niche that GSL does.
I'm not talking about massive profits and I never did, if you read me carefully, you'll see I wrote "decent" which is a totally different thing. It is obvious eSports is not the kind of business you become rich with. Everyone knows that ... As far as the comparison with DH and IPL goes, I won't even acknowledge what you said considering these are totally different products that have nothing to do with MLG in terms of the way they operate all year long (one hosts a few major events in Europe and has no league to operate all year long, and the other one offers at the very best 2 major live events a year ...)
Now, talking about how "because you paid the game you deserve to have eSports for free" .... I'm just stunned. How does the fact of paying the game have ANYTHING to do with watching eSports? I play football (the real one with feet involved) and subscribed for a license in my club, should I ask free tickets for all FC Barcelona (or any other major team) games because of that?
I don't need to believe in Sundance reasoning when it perfectly makes sense from a business point of view. But nowadays people tend to see money as such a monster to get rid of, that they can't even connect with the economical reality of the world we live in. If you consider money to be that useless, give me yours, I'll PM you with my datas so that you can make the transfer ASAP. I'll be glad to free you from that burden ...
IPL and Dreamhack are the best comparisons there are, MLG does the same as Dreamhack but just more often, as conventions are more common in the US though this is quite understandable, and these massive events AFAIK have no problems paying themselves back. The reason you won't compare them is because as you know it effectively kills your argument, as it proves Sundance is doing something completely wrong, be it in organizing or his morals towards the fans.
Funny how you start of the post with saying I need to read your fanboyish drivel more carefully but then fail basic reading yourself, I said paying for the game AND the adds, which on the half a million pople watching scale that Dreamhack got gives you tons of add revenue, but according to Sundance that doesn't matter ofcourse, despite IPL and Deamhack creating a business on the concept.
And after that your reading skills fail you AGAIN, this is not about money being good or evil, how old are you for gods sake? This is about how much you focus on it and how much you're willing to displease your fans to get a couple extra bucks, this threshhold lies far lower with Sundance then David Ting for instance.
This is about selling out, caring more for the money then the product they deliver, if you're actually too stupid to understand such a concept please do tell, as appearantly you'll need to learn something about the world before you can have discussions like this.
If MLG really needs money as bad as sundance cries, would they shedule their PPV events on dates where other BIG tournaments are held? No... They wouldn't.. Yet:
MLG Winter --> Assembly (fuck, europe is watching that). MLG Spring --> Dreamhack Eizo (fuck, europe is watching that).
Seriously, either MLG is totally ignorant of other events, utterly stupid when it comes to business decisions OR does not need money that bad because i doubt any event in dire need of money would willfully "lose" such a big part of their consumers just because they can't check tourney dates of other BIG events...
What MLG does is comparable to sheduling the Olympic Games at the same time as the Football World Cup... By doing this MLG is hurting itself, the other events and HURTING ESPORTS!!!! ()
On April 24 2012 02:28 Velr wrote: What i wonder...
If MLG really needs money as bad as sundance cries, would they shedule their PPV events on dates where other BIG tournaments are held? No... They wouldn't.. Yet:
MLG Winter --> Assembly (fuck, europe is watching that). MLG Spring --> Dreamhack Eizo (fuck, europe is watching that).
Seriously, either MLG is totally ignorant of other events, utterly stupid when it comes to business decisions OR does not need money that bad because i doubt any event in dire need of money would willfully "lose" such a big part of their consumers just because they can't check tourney dates of other BIG events...
What MLG does is comparable to sheduling the Olympic Games at the same time as the Football World Cup... By doing this MLG is hurting itself, the other events and HURTING ESPORTS!!!! ()
I wouldn't say it hurts e-sports, just themselves. Regardless of my stance towards MLG, it wouldn't be THAT bad for them to fail (notice the word THAT, it would be bad, but it wouldn't be the end of the e-sports). I just feel some other tourney would replace them (polarfluke,z33k masters cup - i know these are bad examples, but you get the picture) and e-sports growth would hit a bump but it would still continue to grow...
Starcraft is not the only sport to be dominated by a single country. IMO both IPL(considering IPL4) and MLG should take notes from other sports with the same "problem", and limit the number of competitors one nation gets in big international competitions(home country exempted
Realy like this idea and a good idea to have a look at other sports. Mlg goes for the top dogs since thats what most players like to see they think. Reading forums like tl might indeed give them the impression that people only or mostly care to see the korean top players since thats the opinnion mostly expressed on these forums. That it not neccesarely the opinnion of the majority of the vieuwers though.
With a tournament of 16, 4 or 3 players max from 1 country. With a tournament of 8 2 players tops. Its nice to see the top players play now and then but after a while it gets all the same (at least for me) would realy like to see more players i can identify with and support. They dont neccesarely have to be the top of the world, as long as they rank 1 or 2 or 3 of their country or some famous streamer they are interesting to watch for me.
I'm not talking about massive profits and I never did, if you read me carefully, you'll see I wrote "decent" which is a totally different thing. It is obvious eSports is not the kind of business you become rich with. Everyone knows that ... As far as the comparison with DH and IPL goes, I won't even acknowledge what you said considering these are totally different products that have nothing to do with MLG in terms of the way they operate all year long (one hosts a few major events in Europe and has no league to operate all year long, and the other one offers at the very best 2 major live events a year ...)
Now, talking about how "because you paid the game you deserve to have eSports for free" .... I'm just stunned. How does the fact of paying the game have ANYTHING to do with watching eSports? I play football (the real one with feet involved) and subscribed for a license in my club, should I ask free tickets for all FC Barcelona (or any other major team) games because of that?
I don't need to believe in Sundance reasoning when it perfectly makes sense from a business point of view. But nowadays people tend to see money as such a monster to get rid of, that they can't even connect with the economical reality of the world we live in. If you consider money to be that useless, give me yours, I'll PM you with my datas so that you can make the transfer ASAP. I'll be glad to free you from that burden ...
IPL and Dreamhack are the best comparisons there are, MLG does the same as Dreamhack but just more often, as conventions are more common in the US though this is quite understandable, and these massive events AFAIK have no problems paying themselves back. The reason you won't compare them is because as you know it effectively kills your argument, as it proves Sundance is doing something completely wrong, be it in organizing or his morals towards the fans.
Funny how you start of the post with saying I need to read your fanboyish drivel more carefully but then fail basic reading yourself, I said paying for the game AND the adds, which on the half a million pople watching scale that Dreamhack got gives you tons of add revenue, but according to Sundance that doesn't matter ofcourse, despite IPL and Deamhack creating a business on the concept.
And after that your reading skills fail you AGAIN, this is not about money being good or evil, how old are you for gods sake? This is about how much you focus on it and how much you're willing to displease your fans to get a couple extra bucks, this threshhold lies far lower with Sundance then David Ting for instance.
This is about selling out, caring more for the money then the product they deliver, if you're actually too stupid to understand such a concept please do tell, as appearantly you'll need to learn something about the world before you can have discussions like this.
By using the phrase "selling out" in reference to the actions of a business, you weaken any argument had. Businesses are in the practice of making money in order to continue operating. All of their goals center around that and anythign else is secondary. The response from fans is important, but only to see if they are willing to buy what the business is offering.
Also, the black and white argument of right and wrong does not really apply to the PPV events. Sundance is not doing anything wrong, beyond offering a product that people have the option to buy and enjoy. Morals do not really fit into this as well, as he is not attempting to cure sick orphans with the profits or hurting anyone by hosting the PPV events.
Finally, I would avoid insulting people in your arguments or questioning their ability to read. I know it seems like it makes your argument stronger, but it does not.
Honestly I'm starting to wonder if Sundance isn't just some random entrepreneur trying to find a niche to cash in on, he doesn't sound like a gamer, doesn't look like one and only acts like one when he's doing his childish "I get it" routine. Not to mention that his unreasonable love for Halo just screams console tard.
On April 24 2012 02:42 Scootaloo wrote: Honestly I'm starting to wonder if Sundance isn't just some random entrepreneur trying to find a niche to cash in on, he doesn't sound like a gamer, doesn't look like one and only acts like one when he's doing his childish "I get it" routine. Not to mention that his unreasonable love for Halo just screams console tard.
I guess he's the one killing esports.
Dont need to be a gamer to run a business. Granted, some perspective could help him out in some areas. Also mucho ad hominem, whats up with that?
Plansix, go etiquette someone else, if someone tries to insult my reading comprehension but then fails at it himself I have every right to call him out on it.
The rest of your argument is just mindless extreme capitalism copypasta, if your argument seriously is that companies can not be held liable for trying immoral means to get more income appearantly BP was not wrong for disregarding safety protocol, or pharmaceuticals companies testing their new poisons on impoverished Africans.
If Sundance is abusing peoples love for Esports to force them to pay money for a sub par product, they will eventually get demoralized and stop buying his crap or anything Esports related, hurting Esports for his own profit, perhaps hurting Esports is not as bad as killing millions of sea creatures, but it does, just like with BP, mean they are morally reprehensible.
On April 24 2012 01:40 Scootaloo wrote: Miniwheats, wrong again, perhaps you just don't know that much players (you're American so it makes sense you don't know shit about the EU scene) but Dreamhack had a fantastic line up, perhaps they didn't have that many Koreana but they didn't either at the Dreamhack at the huge stadium that Hero won, yet for many people that is the most memorable and biggest tourney ever. And the crowd would have gone crazy for a lot of other people as well, Genius pulling in a toss win, Ret finally getting a really big win or even Polt, remember, this is not some shitty MLG or IPL with american audiences.
And the boring an antisocial comment was still pretty accurate, you can bitch about it being am unfair comparison but Thorzain looked an acted ecstatic, same with most Koreans in front of a big audience, the biggest thing MLG completely failed in.
And you say MLG was leagueas above Dreamhack in quality, bullshit, MLG players where all jetlagged, playing tons of buildor/coinflip craft, especially day 1 was atrocious.
User was warned for this post
Oh sorry, didn't realize you were an idiot.
No I think I do have an idea. In fact I probably know of more notable EU pros than American ones, because...herp derp they're better. They have consistently performed better on average and therefore I've had more opportunities to take notice of them. Perhaps you watch every small craft cup and know who players such as:
soedinho, tailss, kurble, otso, Patjuh, Wonnaplay, sofie, etc are but I don't. Those people I'm calling unknowns and lesser known might have at most a paragraph on liquipedia if anything at all.
It's also funny you say Dreamhack Winter (the one herO won) was the most memorable and big, yet you don't even name it specifically. Not to mention it didn't take two rounds for the groups to start to actually look good like with this one -_-.
As for "shitty American audiences", err I seem to remember MLG Columbus and Anaheim receiving similar acclaim. Anaheim this year is also expected to be huge.
We can argue the the game quality all day. Fine, whatever, the Koreans were jet lagged I'll humor you. Irregardless what I watched were far better games of Starcraft at the arena from my perception. I'm strongly having my doubts that you did based on your last comment.
On April 24 2012 02:42 Scootaloo wrote: Honestly I'm starting to wonder if Sundance isn't just some random entrepreneur trying to find a niche to cash in on, he doesn't sound like a gamer, doesn't look like one and only acts like one when he's doing his childish "I get it" routine. Not to mention that his unreasonable love for Halo just screams console tard.
On April 24 2012 02:58 Scootaloo wrote: Plansix, go etiquette someone else, if someone tries to insult my reading comprehension but then fails at it himself I have every right to call him out on it.
The rest of your argument is just mindless extreme capitalism copypasta, if your argument seriously is that companies can not be held liable for trying immoral means to get more income appearantly BP was not wrong for disregarding safety protocol, or pharmaceuticals companies testing their new poisons on impoverished Africans.
If Sundance is abusing peoples love for Esports to force them to pay money for a sub par product, they will eventually get demoralized and stop buying his crap or anything Esports related, hurting Esports for his own profit, perhaps hurting Esports is not as bad as killing millions of sea creatures, but it does, just like with BP, mean they are morally reprehensible.
Ok, so by compairing MLG to BP, it has become clear that no argument you make in the future will be rational or based in reality. Also, "copypasta" is not a word and you should avoid insulting other people when you are trying to make a point.
On April 24 2012 02:58 Scootaloo wrote: Plansix, go etiquette someone else, if someone tries to insult my reading comprehension but then fails at it himself I have every right to call him out on it.
The rest of your argument is just mindless extreme capitalism copypasta, if your argument seriously is that companies can not be held liable for trying immoral means to get more income appearantly BP was not wrong for disregarding safety protocol, or pharmaceuticals companies testing their new poisons on impoverished Africans.
If Sundance is abusing peoples love for Esports to force them to pay money for a sub par product, they will eventually get demoralized and stop buying his crap or anything Esports related, hurting Esports for his own profit, perhaps hurting Esports is not as bad as killing millions of sea creatures, but it does, just like with BP, mean they are morally reprehensible.
Ok, so by compairing MLG to BP, it has become clear that no argument you make in the future will be rational or based in reality. Also, "copypasta" is not a word and you should avoid insulting other people when you are trying to make a point.
You should try to actually face arguments instead of trying to be condescending. The metaphor might be extreme but if you can't see the connection or validity of the argument I have no idea where you got those fancy worda from, but it ain't a book.
And I already told you to quit the whining about grammer, it's not making you look intelligent, just nitpicky and incapable of discussion.
On April 24 2012 01:40 Scootaloo wrote: Miniwheats, wrong again, perhaps you just don't know that much players (you're American so it makes sense you don't know shit about the EU scene) but Dreamhack had a fantastic line up, perhaps they didn't have that many Koreana but they didn't either at the Dreamhack at the huge stadium that Hero won, yet for many people that is the most memorable and biggest tourney ever. And the crowd would have gone crazy for a lot of other people as well, Genius pulling in a toss win, Ret finally getting a really big win or even Polt, remember, this is not some shitty MLG or IPL with american audiences.
And the boring an antisocial comment was still pretty accurate, you can bitch about it being am unfair comparison but Thorzain looked an acted ecstatic, same with most Koreans in front of a big audience, the biggest thing MLG completely failed in.
And you say MLG was leagueas above Dreamhack in quality, bullshit, MLG players where all jetlagged, playing tons of buildor/coinflip craft, especially day 1 was atrocious.
User was warned for this post
Oh sorry, didn't realize you were an idiot.
No I think I do have an idea. In fact I probably know of more notable EU pros than American ones, because...herp derp they're better. They have consistently performed better on average and therefore I've had more opportunities to take notice of them. Perhaps you watch every small craft cup and know who players such as:
soedinho, tailss, kurble, otso, Patjuh, Wonnaplay, sofie, etc are but I don't. Those people I'm calling unknowns and lesser known might have at most a paragraph on liquipedia if anything at all.
It's also funny you say Dreamhack Winter (the one herO won) was the most memorable and big, yet you don't even name it specifically. Not to mention it didn't take two rounds for the groups to start to actually look good like with this one -_-.
As for "shitty American audiences", err I seem to remember MLG Columbus and Anaheim receiving similar acclaim. Anaheim this year is also expected to be huge.
We can argue the the game quality all day. Fine, whatever, the Koreans were jet lagged I'll humor you. Irregardless what I watched were far better games of Starcraft at the arena from my perception. I'm strongly having my doubts that you did based on your last comment.
Hey if you're talking about most of the tournament being unknowns it's pretty logical to assume you're just not an avid watcher of Euro tourneys, perhaps because I missed the first half of day 1 but I didn't see a single person I hadn't seen before.
And about me not knowing the official DHW name, does it seriously matter? I don't remember the taglines for the MLG or GSL's either, as far as I'm concerned they're pretty irrelevant compared to the games and the show itself.
And about the audiences, I watched most of the non PPV MLG events and there always seemed to be less people and likely as a resuly a less loud and vibrant crowd, and the crowd at the last IPL was just a nightmare, hence my assumption that they're bad.
And trust me, I did watch the MLG arena, I didn't pay for it but I most certainly watched it. (If you want more details, pm me, not looking for a ban)
On April 24 2012 01:40 Scootaloo wrote: Miniwheats, wrong again, perhaps you just don't know that much players (you're American so it makes sense you don't know shit about the EU scene) but Dreamhack had a fantastic line up, perhaps they didn't have that many Koreana but they didn't either at the Dreamhack at the huge stadium that Hero won, yet for many people that is the most memorable and biggest tourney ever. And the crowd would have gone crazy for a lot of other people as well, Genius pulling in a toss win, Ret finally getting a really big win or even Polt, remember, this is not some shitty MLG or IPL with american audiences.
And the boring an antisocial comment was still pretty accurate, you can bitch about it being am unfair comparison but Thorzain looked an acted ecstatic, same with most Koreans in front of a big audience, the biggest thing MLG completely failed in.
And you say MLG was leagueas above Dreamhack in quality, bullshit, MLG players where all jetlagged, playing tons of buildor/coinflip craft, especially day 1 was atrocious.
User was warned for this post
Oh sorry, didn't realize you were an idiot.
No I think I do have an idea. In fact I probably know of more notable EU pros than American ones, because...herp derp they're better. They have consistently performed better on average and therefore I've had more opportunities to take notice of them. Perhaps you watch every small craft cup and know who players such as:
soedinho, tailss, kurble, otso, Patjuh, Wonnaplay, sofie, etc are but I don't. Those people I'm calling unknowns and lesser known might have at most a paragraph on liquipedia if anything at all.
It's also funny you say Dreamhack Winter (the one herO won) was the most memorable and big, yet you don't even name it specifically. Not to mention it didn't take two rounds for the groups to start to actually look good like with this one -_-.
As for "shitty American audiences", err I seem to remember MLG Columbus and Anaheim receiving similar acclaim. Anaheim this year is also expected to be huge.
We can argue the the game quality all day. Fine, whatever, the Koreans were jet lagged I'll humor you. Irregardless what I watched were far better games of Starcraft at the arena from my perception. I'm strongly having my doubts that you did based on your last comment.
Hey if you're talking about most of the tournament being unknowns it's pretty logical to assume you're just not an avid watcher of Euro tourneys, perhaps because I missed the first half of day 1 but I didn't see a single person I hadn't seen before.
And about me not knowing the official DHW name, does it seriously matter? I don't remember the taglines for the MLG or GSL's either, as far as I'm concerned they're pretty irrelevant compared to the games and the show itself.
And about the audiences, I watched most of the non PPV MLG events and there always seemed to be less people and likely as a resuly a less loud and vibrant crowd, and the crowd at the last IPL was just a nightmare, hence my assumption that they're bad.
And trust me, I did watch the MLG arena, I didn't pay for it but I most certainly watched it. (If you want more details, pm me, not looking for a ban)
The crowd at IPL4 wasn't that bad after the first day. I was there and didn't notice anything wrong, other than a lot of people left after the first bo5 during Squirtle vs Alive because it was so late on a sunday night.
To me personally it doesnt even matter that much how good MLG is quality wise, I just hope the PPV model wont ever become a standard. For me as a rather casual viewer it would basically lead to not watching any events anymore, if most of them would cost 5 or 10 dollars, and I imagine others would feel the same way. I just can't see it helping the whole E-Sports-scene in the long run, as it will be even less accessible to people "on the outside".
If you don't follow the hivemind, you are wrong. God forbid someone who paid $10 to watch the Spring Arena says it was worth his money and that the tournament was good. Please! I also cough up $10 only to watch HuK play but ended up watching the whole thing and in the end I felt it was very much worth it. The finals and end result pretty much justified my $10. If you didn't, well sorry for you. Don't give them your money next time or think harder about it. Oh I forgot to mention that I watched DreamHack as well and thought that was good to. Impossible to think two tournaments were good you say? I think not.
The costs are different too in US and EU. In most US convention centers, you'll have a shitty internet, at least unsuited for gaming, even for IPL in Vegas. So organizers have to rent a big connection, which is very expensive (low tens of thousands I'd guess, remember the satellite truck, rumored to cost 100k iirc ?). If you organize a lan in EU, you just rent 2 standards ADSL lines from a local provider for 15€ a piece and you got 1000MB up/down (I'm exaggerating but you got the point). If you're in Sweden it's even better, they have Korean like internet. Then there are the convention centers themselves, which cost a lot, while DH has its own place in the very center of Europe (mostly), accessible from all EU countries by train/plane for a 100€ ticket. (the accessibility is beyond the point I know, the point is they don't have to rent a new place for every lan)
So I'd guess Dreamhack can be profitable just by selling on site tickets, while MLG can't.
On April 24 2012 01:40 Scootaloo wrote: Miniwheats, wrong again, perhaps you just don't know that much players (you're American so it makes sense you don't know shit about the EU scene) but Dreamhack had a fantastic line up, perhaps they didn't have that many Koreana but they didn't either at the Dreamhack at the huge stadium that Hero won, yet for many people that is the most memorable and biggest tourney ever. And the crowd would have gone crazy for a lot of other people as well, Genius pulling in a toss win, Ret finally getting a really big win or even Polt, remember, this is not some shitty MLG or IPL with american audiences.
And the boring an antisocial comment was still pretty accurate, you can bitch about it being am unfair comparison but Thorzain looked an acted ecstatic, same with most Koreans in front of a big audience, the biggest thing MLG completely failed in.
And you say MLG was leagueas above Dreamhack in quality, bullshit, MLG players where all jetlagged, playing tons of buildor/coinflip craft, especially day 1 was atrocious.
User was warned for this post
Oh sorry, didn't realize you were an idiot.
No I think I do have an idea. In fact I probably know of more notable EU pros than American ones, because...herp derp they're better. They have consistently performed better on average and therefore I've had more opportunities to take notice of them. Perhaps you watch every small craft cup and know who players such as:
soedinho, tailss, kurble, otso, Patjuh, Wonnaplay, sofie, etc are but I don't. Those people I'm calling unknowns and lesser known might have at most a paragraph on liquipedia if anything at all.
It's also funny you say Dreamhack Winter (the one herO won) was the most memorable and big, yet you don't even name it specifically. Not to mention it didn't take two rounds for the groups to start to actually look good like with this one -_-.
As for "shitty American audiences", err I seem to remember MLG Columbus and Anaheim receiving similar acclaim. Anaheim this year is also expected to be huge.
We can argue the the game quality all day. Fine, whatever, the Koreans were jet lagged I'll humor you. Irregardless what I watched were far better games of Starcraft at the arena from my perception. I'm strongly having my doubts that you did based on your last comment.
Hey if you're talking about most of the tournament being unknowns it's pretty logical to assume you're just not an avid watcher of Euro tourneys, perhaps because I missed the first half of day 1 but I didn't see a single person I hadn't seen before.
And about me not knowing the official DHW name, does it seriously matter? I don't remember the taglines for the MLG or GSL's either, as far as I'm concerned they're pretty irrelevant compared to the games and the show itself.
And about the audiences, I watched most of the non PPV MLG events and there always seemed to be less people and likely as a resuly a less loud and vibrant crowd, and the crowd at the last IPL was just a nightmare, hence my assumption that they're bad.
And trust me, I did watch the MLG arena, I didn't pay for it but I most certainly watched it. (If you want more details, pm me, not looking for a ban)
IPL can't be compared to MLG or any other tournament out right now. They hold the events at niche places, and because of that, they get smaller crowds. Now for the MLG's, go back and watch MLG Columbus, Anaheim, and Providence. To me, the audiences in those were the best any tournament has had (except for Blizzcon). It seems to me that you are heavily EU biased, which poses a huge problem when you argue against US tournament.
On April 24 2012 02:58 Scootaloo wrote: Plansix, go etiquette someone else, if someone tries to insult my reading comprehension but then fails at it himself I have every right to call him out on it.
The rest of your argument is just mindless extreme capitalism copypasta, if your argument seriously is that companies can not be held liable for trying immoral means to get more income appearantly BP was not wrong for disregarding safety protocol, or pharmaceuticals companies testing their new poisons on impoverished Africans.
If Sundance is abusing peoples love for Esports to force them to pay money for a sub par product, they will eventually get demoralized and stop buying his crap or anything Esports related, hurting Esports for his own profit, perhaps hurting Esports is not as bad as killing millions of sea creatures, but it does, just like with BP, mean they are morally reprehensible.
Ok, so by compairing MLG to BP, it has become clear that no argument you make in the future will be rational or based in reality. Also, "copypasta" is not a word and you should avoid insulting other people when you are trying to make a point.
You should try to actually face arguments instead of trying to be condescending. The metaphor might be extreme but if you can't see the connection or validity of the argument I have no idea where you got those fancy worda from, but it ain't a book.
And I already told you to quit the whining about grammer, it's not making you look intelligent, just nitpicky and incapable of discussion.
It is unclear what you are trying to say or what to argue against. You seem to think that PPV events should not exist and Sundance/MLG wrong and morally bankrupt for attempting to run them. You then make the argument that MLG has some sort of liability to the Esports community similar to that of BP and the environmental community. Although a metaphor, it is an extreme one that is so far away from what we are talking about it that it cannot be taken seriously. You cannot really compare hundreds of millions of dollars in damage to an event that may force a bunch of college students scrape together $10-$20 for a weekend of entertainment. Attempting to use this to link MLG’s actions to some sort of moral responsibility to its fans is weak and almost insulting. No one was hurt by MLG and trying to link them to someone as irresponsible is BP is both unfair and a sign of someone who has little left to argue.
All this arguing about how MLG is "EVIL" for doing PPV events is hilarious.
MLG is NOT evil for doing any of this, they are not forcing you to buy anything, if you don't want to pay for this content don't do it. Like everyone seems to be saying just go watch GSL since "It's better anyway".
MLG is trying to do separate events by self funding it with the money from the PPV, if they can't get the money from somewhere other than investors then they really won't be making these. So they need to rely on the people who watch this stuff to fund it, they also need to make a profit from this (OMG SOMEONE DARES TO MAKE MONEY OFF OF E-SPORTS!! GASP) I'm pretty sure whatever money they make from the big events a lot of it goes to the investors who gave the money in the first place, so I'm all behind them doing their own events and bring more content.
I really don't see why the outcry from people and this hate towards MLG for doing a completely optional PPV event when GOM sold out long ago by seeding 2 undeserving players (Idra & Sen) and by doing so cheapening how hard it was to get to Code S. Doing that JUST to get more ticket buyers for the Idra fan boys, now if that doesn't piss you off I don't see how this is anywhere near as bad or "worse". I stopped watching and paying for GSL right there and then, have not bought a ticket since last year's blizzard cup, I'm much happier to pay for MLG events which have a lot more content in a very awesome weekend with a lot of the players I like. Now granted I haven't paid for the PPV ones cuz I'm broke but I have a gold membership and I'm very happy to do so MLG is always my most anticipated event every time it comes around.
If you're entitled little brat who thinks "OMG THEY ARE MAKING MILLIONS OFF OF OUR E-SPORTS" they are not, get off your high horse and stop being an idiot. MLG is just trying to offer more content of the same things we love and making profit off of it, they cant just rely on investors money forever and you should all know that.
Spring arena was a colossal waste of $10 for me. Really not worth it at all, i got frequent problems with the stream and the production value, although having 1080p this time round, was not an improvement.
Ok, so by compairing MLG to BP, it has become clear that no argument you make in the future will be rational or based in reality. Also, "copypasta" is not a word and you should avoid insulting other people when you are trying to make a point.
"Copypasta is internet slang for any block of text that gets copied and pasted over and over again, typically disseminated by individuals through online discussion ..." May not be a word, but it is internet slang which is used an exponential amount. Lol is not a word, but do you see people saying "lol isnt a word, stop using it"
Watched the last Arena, this time skipped and watched dreamhack. The stream quality doesn't compare (I watch it on a 52" screen), MLG looks so much better than dreamhack, and even GSL, though I have yet to have the 1080p work without lag (using a business class internet connection).
But in the end, Dreamhack had a huge live audience and way bigger player pool and was just more fun to watch for that. The major MLG events are still great, but these arenas just aren't as good as a major live event, especially as very little is on the line for the Arenas.
And to the person above me, 'lol' is a word in the Oxford dictionary. Copypasta is not.
While MLG was definitely well done, but that write up was awful. It was condescending, biased, and grammatically atrocious throughout, and I hope that this author receives no praise for this all around embarrassing excuse for a composition of english words.
On April 24 2012 01:40 Scootaloo wrote: Miniwheats, wrong again, perhaps you just don't know that much players (you're American so it makes sense you don't know shit about the EU scene) but Dreamhack had a fantastic line up, perhaps they didn't have that many Koreana but they didn't either at the Dreamhack at the huge stadium that Hero won, yet for many people that is the most memorable and biggest tourney ever. And the crowd would have gone crazy for a lot of other people as well, Genius pulling in a toss win, Ret finally getting a really big win or even Polt, remember, this is not some shitty MLG or IPL with american audiences.
And the boring an antisocial comment was still pretty accurate, you can bitch about it being am unfair comparison but Thorzain looked an acted ecstatic, same with most Koreans in front of a big audience, the biggest thing MLG completely failed in.
And you say MLG was leagueas above Dreamhack in quality, bullshit, MLG players where all jetlagged, playing tons of buildor/coinflip craft, especially day 1 was atrocious.
User was warned for this post
Oh sorry, didn't realize you were an idiot.
No I think I do have an idea. In fact I probably know of more notable EU pros than American ones, because...herp derp they're better. They have consistently performed better on average and therefore I've had more opportunities to take notice of them. Perhaps you watch every small craft cup and know who players such as:
soedinho, tailss, kurble, otso, Patjuh, Wonnaplay, sofie, etc are but I don't. Those people I'm calling unknowns and lesser known might have at most a paragraph on liquipedia if anything at all.
It's also funny you say Dreamhack Winter (the one herO won) was the most memorable and big, yet you don't even name it specifically. Not to mention it didn't take two rounds for the groups to start to actually look good like with this one -_-.
As for "shitty American audiences", err I seem to remember MLG Columbus and Anaheim receiving similar acclaim. Anaheim this year is also expected to be huge.
We can argue the the game quality all day. Fine, whatever, the Koreans were jet lagged I'll humor you. Irregardless what I watched were far better games of Starcraft at the arena from my perception. I'm strongly having my doubts that you did based on your last comment.
Hey if you're talking about most of the tournament being unknowns it's pretty logical to assume you're just not an avid watcher of Euro tourneys, perhaps because I missed the first half of day 1 but I didn't see a single person I hadn't seen before.
And about me not knowing the official DHW name, does it seriously matter? I don't remember the taglines for the MLG or GSL's either, as far as I'm concerned they're pretty irrelevant compared to the games and the show itself.
And about the audiences, I watched most of the non PPV MLG events and there always seemed to be less people and likely as a resuly a less loud and vibrant crowd, and the crowd at the last IPL was just a nightmare, hence my assumption that they're bad.
And trust me, I did watch the MLG arena, I didn't pay for it but I most certainly watched it. (If you want more details, pm me, not looking for a ban)
IPL can't be compared to MLG or any other tournament out right now. They hold the events at niche places, and because of that, they get smaller crowds. Now for the MLG's, go back and watch MLG Columbus, Anaheim, and Providence. To me, the audiences in those were the best any tournament has had (except for Blizzcon). It seems to me that you are heavily EU biased, which poses a huge problem when you argue against US tournament.
Sure they can. IPL is a major player in the professional SC2 and LoL scene, and you simply cannot ignore it. IPL 3 and IPL 4 were massive events, both in terms of viewership and prizepool. Even IPL 2, which was an online tournament, had a prize pool of 50K, which is incredible for an online tournament. Yes IPL does hold its events at casinos, but the crowd at IPL 4 was by no means small.
was the Arena a true competition/tournament ? Not sure about that..
I thought the piece was well written.. as a blog or opinion piece for sure. Jeff can write.. no doubt about that.. as far as the amount of content he puts out and it is nice that someone is trying to get it out there. I praise him for what he does provide the community..but as I have told him personally.. these sorts of articles come off as being 'fanboyish'.. and too one sided. The good thing is.. he takes criticism pretty well and is always interested in how to improve.
I think the MLG Arena shows are a great idea.. but I could give them 10 improvements and ideas on how to make them better.
I did not tune into this one because the field of players was meh for me. I am the type of viewer/user that MLG should be shooting for and there just was not that much drama or excitement (no matter how much others tried to fabricate it)..
The finals of Dreamhack and the excitement and story line were spot on.
Don't get me wrong.. like I said.. the MLG Arena's are a very cool thing.. they just need a lot of tweaking and honestly.. they could produce a much better product with a lot less $$ put into it.
I did not tune into this one because the field of players was meh for me.
Well I'm the complete opposite. The MLG player lineup was 10x more interesting for me and the DH player lineup was one of the most pitiful player lineup I can recall for a major tournament. DH didn't interest me one bit and I only watched parts of it on and off. I had the polt/thorzain finals on mute, but was not interested in it enough other than to flip back now and then to check the supply, while I concentrated on the MLG games.
The Dreamhack lineup was actually worse than Assembly Winter. Which was worse than MLG Arena. So yeah, Dreamhack's lineup was several steps below MLG's.
I did not tune into this one because the field of players was meh for me.
Well I'm the complete opposite. The MLG player lineup was 10x more interesting for me and the DH player lineup was one of the most pitiful player lineup I can recall for a major tournament. DH didn't interest me one bit and I only watched parts of it on and off. I had the polt/thorzain finals on mute, but was not interested in it enough other than to flip back now and then to check the supply, while I concentrated on the MLG games.
The players were top skill.. no doubt and most know that I am a huge fan of viOLet.. but many of you also know that I have zero time to 'play' SC2. I watch a lot of it.. but not for all of the same reasons most of you do. As an organizer of events and a fan of viOLet, I did have an interest in it. BUT.. as a 'sports' fan and someone that is always looking for ways to build esports.. I consider myself the perfect user/viewer demographic that needs to be reached by MLG and other organizations. I am NOT a hardcore SC2 fan.. I still have trouble figuring out whats going on.. but I do understand the community and I am heavily involved in it. Events that catch my attention, that have a a good story line (preferably not fabricated) and that offer excitement, drama and hopefully a bit of trash talking.. interest me. SC2 could certainly use a lot more of the Dreamhack ending.
Did anyone actually read this before it got published?
It's a steaming pile of condescending, defensive, poorly written bull... you understand where I'm going. All while at the same time naively portraying Sundance and MLG as the second coming of Jesus.
Don't get me wrong, MLG Spring Arena was good but the piece looks like infantile propaganda instead of a review.
Like i said before, the analysis desk and the addition of Grubby were great, but something else was missing. MLG brought some of the best players but we still had a lot of bad games.
I still dont think JP should be casting. Tell him to do interviews or host the event. Will i stop to watch MLG because of him? no, of course not, but i just don get it.
People might disagree, but Tasteless constant overhype during the finals kinda ruined it.
Protoss players underperfoming or getting outplayed sure influenced in my discontent. Overall, the event lacked of something i cant describe.
On April 24 2012 01:40 Scootaloo wrote: Miniwheats, wrong again, perhaps you just don't know that much players (you're American so it makes sense you don't know shit about the EU scene) but Dreamhack had a fantastic line up, perhaps they didn't have that many Koreana but they didn't either at the Dreamhack at the huge stadium that Hero won, yet for many people that is the most memorable and biggest tourney ever. And the crowd would have gone crazy for a lot of other people as well, Genius pulling in a toss win, Ret finally getting a really big win or even Polt, remember, this is not some shitty MLG or IPL with american audiences.
And the boring an antisocial comment was still pretty accurate, you can bitch about it being am unfair comparison but Thorzain looked an acted ecstatic, same with most Koreans in front of a big audience, the biggest thing MLG completely failed in.
And you say MLG was leagueas above Dreamhack in quality, bullshit, MLG players where all jetlagged, playing tons of buildor/coinflip craft, especially day 1 was atrocious.
User was warned for this post
Oh sorry, didn't realize you were an idiot.
No I think I do have an idea. In fact I probably know of more notable EU pros than American ones, because...herp derp they're better. They have consistently performed better on average and therefore I've had more opportunities to take notice of them. Perhaps you watch every small craft cup and know who players such as:
soedinho, tailss, kurble, otso, Patjuh, Wonnaplay, sofie, etc are but I don't. Those people I'm calling unknowns and lesser known might have at most a paragraph on liquipedia if anything at all.
It's also funny you say Dreamhack Winter (the one herO won) was the most memorable and big, yet you don't even name it specifically. Not to mention it didn't take two rounds for the groups to start to actually look good like with this one -_-.
As for "shitty American audiences", err I seem to remember MLG Columbus and Anaheim receiving similar acclaim. Anaheim this year is also expected to be huge.
We can argue the the game quality all day. Fine, whatever, the Koreans were jet lagged I'll humor you. Irregardless what I watched were far better games of Starcraft at the arena from my perception. I'm strongly having my doubts that you did based on your last comment.
Hey if you're talking about most of the tournament being unknowns it's pretty logical to assume you're just not an avid watcher of Euro tourneys, perhaps because I missed the first half of day 1 but I didn't see a single person I hadn't seen before.
And about me not knowing the official DHW name, does it seriously matter? I don't remember the taglines for the MLG or GSL's either, as far as I'm concerned they're pretty irrelevant compared to the games and the show itself.
And about the audiences, I watched most of the non PPV MLG events and there always seemed to be less people and likely as a resuly a less loud and vibrant crowd, and the crowd at the last IPL was just a nightmare, hence my assumption that they're bad.
And trust me, I did watch the MLG arena, I didn't pay for it but I most certainly watched it. (If you want more details, pm me, not looking for a ban)
IPL can't be compared to MLG or any other tournament out right now. They hold the events at niche places, and because of that, they get smaller crowds. Now for the MLG's, go back and watch MLG Columbus, Anaheim, and Providence. To me, the audiences in those were the best any tournament has had (except for Blizzcon). It seems to me that you are heavily EU biased, which poses a huge problem when you argue against US tournament.
Sure they can. IPL is a major player in the professional SC2 and LoL scene, and you simply cannot ignore it. IPL 3 and IPL 4 were massive events, both in terms of viewership and prizepool. Even IPL 2, which was an online tournament, had a prize pool of 50K, which is incredible for an online tournament. Yes IPL does hold its events at casinos, but the crowd at IPL 4 was by no means small.
Context is your friend, so use it. And I didn't say they were small but smaller.
I'm not trying to be condescending but this is clearly written by someone who's pretty young, I would guess high school age. And that's totally fine, my advice to you in that case is to keep practicing and learning. Once you get some training in journalism, English, creative writing, etc. you'll be able develop a better writing style.
I don't want to say that the author lacks a decent writing voice, or vocabulary, or argument coherence or anything really, because that's not the problem. The problem is that the author lacks experience and therefore lacks all of those things. Once you get further into your education, your vocabulary will expand and your work will get better in general. Just try to keep learning, ask for help, and keep practicing.
On April 24 2012 02:28 Velr wrote: What i wonder...
If MLG really needs money as bad as sundance cries, would they shedule their PPV events on dates where other BIG tournaments are held? No... They wouldn't.. Yet:
MLG Winter --> Assembly (fuck, europe is watching that). MLG Spring --> Dreamhack Eizo (fuck, europe is watching that).
Seriously, either MLG is totally ignorant of other events, utterly stupid when it comes to business decisions OR does not need money that bad because i doubt any event in dire need of money would willfully "lose" such a big part of their consumers just because they can't check tourney dates of other BIG events...
What MLG does is comparable to sheduling the Olympic Games at the same time as the Football World Cup... By doing this MLG is hurting itself, the other events and HURTING ESPORTS!!!! ()
I'm pretty sure theyre doing this on purpose in order to show potential investors that their new strategy is working and that organizing sc2 events are financially sustainable (i.e. making the events PPV and holding them at the same time as other major events to see if they can compete with them). Sundance isn't stupid, he knew that this MLG Spring Arena wouldn't get nearly as many viewers as Dreamhack would get, especially since it was just a small tournament with no live audience. All he had to do was get 5k odd people to each pay 10 bucks and he'd be a happy man.
I personally completely disagree with this approach. Sure it's a good business model to be working with, but as a fan i'm completely appalled at what MLG is turning into. Some points that I want to highlight as well: 1) It was basically a mini GSL except not in Korea 2) there was no live audience, killed any potential atmosphere that the event might have had 3) Dreamhack was on at the same time and MLG's timing is probably suited only to North Americans. Europeans and Asians all much prefer Dreamhack's timing. For me the event would've gone from like 3 am to 10 in the morning. For the Europeans it would have been from around 10-11 at night till 5am in the morning..
Ok, let's set some things straight. MLG was NOT an American event. It was a Korean event in the wrong country. There was ONE foreigner and he got dispatched rather easily. If you want a Korean event, watch the GSL.
Secondly, Dreamhack is more exciting to me because of the fan base and the loud crowd. Any event does better when you watch it if there are cheering fans everywhere, as opposed to going to something with a small crowd.
Next, comparing MLG to BP is a horrendously bad comparison in more ways than I care to think about. Making money is the primary goal of any business, this is the basic fact of economics. BP was not making money with that oil spill, or their bad job taking care of it. MLG may have lost viewers but it was easily made up by the fact that plenty of people still watched, and they made 10 dollars from every person that did.
That being said, DH was still better than MLG, their playing field was more interesting, larger, and there were many more people watching. If MLG wants to do a PPV type thing, they need to do it for the Championships, not their little Arena shows. They can make more money for their big tourneys with PPV for that than they can for this. DH's production cost was likely lower than MLG as someone pointed out, with the superiorly available Internet. Also, having their own building helps. They don't need to PPV, so they choose not to. MLG might need to more than DH does.
MLG Arena is not a real tourament. It's just 8 players messing around for a small amount of money. There's no glory, no sense of accomplishment in winning MLG Arena. No one is going to remember DRG winning MLG Spring Arena, but many people will remember Thorzain for winning Dreamhack. If MLG didn't pay for everyone's expenses, no one would show up.
On April 24 2012 09:10 ninjamyst wrote: No one is going to remember DRG winning MLG Spring Arena, but many people will remember Thorzain for winning Dreamhack.
That's a damn shame, because what DRG did was harder than winning Dreamhack.
MLG was kind of a joke, it took 3 days to decide a winner of a 8 man event. Why? These players would have been better off going to DH and playing for some real money. MLG needs to stop scheduling events the same weekend as other big events its not helping esports or the players.
On April 24 2012 09:10 ninjamyst wrote: No one is going to remember DRG winning MLG Spring Arena, but many people will remember Thorzain for winning Dreamhack.
I have to disagree with this OP. This was a tiny 8 man event that was dragged out 3 days to justify people paying 10 dollars for. In addition, the OP claims no one was disappointed. I've heard more negative feedback than positive. I've was quite disappointed myself in MLG. Not in the format. Not because it was only 8 people. Before I lay it down, please keep in mind that i paid for winter arena and that i also paid for this one as well. Winter Arena was plagued with many issues when trying to view it. Having to constantly refresh and log in, screens going black, it was a serious inconvenience to paying customers trying to watch this event hassle free. I decided you know what, this is their first ppv event I'll show them a little grace since this is the first time they've had a pay wall. I was so sure they would work through these issues to perfect the deliverance of this event over the internet for the next. I made the purchase for Spring Arena.
BOY WAS I WRONG!.
Not only did they not fix the existing issues, but they got worse! No matter which browser i used(IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari), the audio would cut out every 30 seconds. There was constant refresh issues. Constant log in problems. At times, the audio wasn't even synced properly(up to 1 minute delay in audio from video which is completely unacceptable). I tested all other streaming services I used as well. No problems on my end. What a disappointment
I've decided to stop supporting MLG completely. They can't seem to deliver a clean watchable product, and yet these guys are supposed to be considered professional. Completely amateur in my eyes.
MLG's response to this? A refund and a possible discount on the next event. I Loled hard when their admin said this to me. It baffles me that they would offer me a discount thinking I would want to continue to hand money to them for a sub-par product. They wasted my time and money = disappointment.
Perhaps the Reviewer should have included all the issues in the review instead of spreading misinformation. Perhaps this is just a review to PROMOTE MLG? I'm not so sure. One thing I do know, I will no longer be supporting MLG.
Edit: Since the OP shared a review of this event, I felt it was only fair to share mine. Cheers!
On April 24 2012 09:10 ninjamyst wrote: MLG Arena is not a real tourament. It's just 8 players messing around for a small amount of money. There's no glory, no sense of accomplishment in winning MLG Arena. No one is going to remember DRG winning MLG Spring Arena, but many people will remember Thorzain for winning Dreamhack. If MLG didn't pay for everyone's expenses, no one would show up.
Sure there is. Not to mention....*whispers* they're fighting for seeds into the pools for the "real" tournament at Anaheim (which is projected to be HUGE) in addition to the small amount of money (5k is nothing to scoff at for first imo). With a pool seed they're more likely to win and get more stage time and more glory. So yeah...I'd call it a real tournament with meaning.
Also, ofc people are going to remember Thorzain winning. Foreigners winning major tournaments is getting very scarce these days. 90% of the rest of the tournament was pretty forgettable.
There aren't very many esports articles that I dislike, but this is one of them. It seemed to me that the author was much more focused on scolding the community and glorifying Sundance, instead of actually reviewing Spring Arena. 3 out of 10 paragraphs were actually about the event. 7/10 paragraphs were incredibly biased opinion that had nothing to do with Spring Arena.
Even that wouldn't be so bad if the article didn't come across as sooooo incredibly preach-y. If you must review something with incredible bias, then please just admit it at the very beginning of the article. That way I won't waste my time reading it, and you won't get a negative response like the one I'm writing right now
On April 24 2012 09:10 ninjamyst wrote: MLG Arena is not a real tourament. It's just 8 players messing around for a small amount of money. There's no glory, no sense of accomplishment in winning MLG Arena. No one is going to remember DRG winning MLG Spring Arena, but many people will remember Thorzain for winning Dreamhack. If MLG didn't pay for everyone's expenses, no one would show up.
Sure there is. Not to mention....*whispers* they're fighting for seeds into the pools for the "real" tournament at Anaheim (which is projected to be HUGE) in addition to the small amount of money (5k is nothing to scoff at for first imo). With a pool seed they're more likely to win and get more stage time and more glory. So yeah...I'd call it a real tournament with meaning.
sooo...it's a qualifier...a PPV qualifier for the free main event...lol
Personally I skipped Dreamhack and watched MLG Arena and it was totally worth it. For those saying that the Arena doesn't matter, it is for seeding for MLG Anaheim which is pretty damn important
Also, MLG Arena had the top players, so automatically more interesting in my book.
Fantastic player list. There were only 8 players, but they were all high-quality pros and every match had the potential to be interesting
The round-robin format meant we got to see a full set of games out of every player. Being a foreigner and a Protoss player, I enjoy watching Huk play. The round-robin format meant that I got to watch each of Huk's games (21 games all up) in the round robin, whereas he would have been eliminated after just two matches in a standard double-elim format.
The 2v2s were great. Cheesy, bad mannered, and hilarious.
Good to high quality casters on all streams. I think having two streams with good casters is better than having four streams with mediocre casters.
Adebisi did a great jobs with observing. Was constantly pointing out things with the camera, was always at the right places on the minimap, pointing out things like vision. It was top notch.
True POV player cams for *every* match. (In Winter Arena 1 it was an observer set to the same player cam, but this time it showed the player's mouse, selections, etc)
Matches generally ran on time, very little downtime. Having the round robin games as three games every time (rather than a best of three) meant that almost every match went for a full hour. Only the PVP matches ended up being shorter and having 30 minutes or so downtime before the next scheduled match
Fantastic use of analysts, particular on Day 2 and 3. After each match on the main stream the casters passed over to Sheth, qxc and Axslav for comments. Their knowledge about why certain things worked or didn't work were a lot more in depth than the type of stuff you get from most casters.
For me, perfect streaming at 720p. Crisp image, no audio problems. (My net connection isn't fast enough for 1080p, so I won't comment on that)
Fast uploading of VODs, including the player cam VODs
Cons:
A lot of people were having problems accessing the stream from the MLG website. The fix for most people was to sign out and into twitch.tv again, but it was something that came up constantly in the chat. MLG/Twitch need to sort this out between themselves to prevent it happening next tournament.
The player POV streams did not have any sound. Also with MLG's player, you couldn't have the sound of the casters playing while watching the POV stream in fullscreen without opening up a second window.
There was sometimes a small delay between the main stream with the casting and the player POV cams. Meant sometimes they were playing ahead of what was being cast.
There were some mediocre matches, particularly on Day 1. Jetlag involved? The Parting vs MKP games (which there was a big hype for the rematch after GSTL) were in particular short and disappointing.
On Day 1, they sometimes passed to people like Tasteless or Rob for analysis after the games. This is something that works fantastic with people like Sheth, qxc and Axslav, and not so fantastic with non-pro players. Tasteless and Rob in this situation basically just said 'wow, that was an exciting game' and then asked questions to the actual pro-player sitting next to them. There was less of this on Day 2 and 3, fortunately.
The secondary gameplay stream had a crappy webcam for the casters. Looked really unprofessional compared to the main stream.
Because the round robin system is ranked by overall matches > H2H matches > H2H games > overall games, it meant that tiebreakers were very common but took sitting down and calculating to figure out. The score screens showed the overall match rankings, but there were times with 1 clear winner (MKP), 1 clear loser (Huk) and everyone else tied, with no indication of their standing in the tie because no one had figured it out yet. Even after the final match there was about 20 minutes of downtime while they confirmed who won the tie between Heart, DRG and Parting. I had an Excel sheet to figure out the H2H tiebreakers and was using that to maintain the Liquipedia article after each match, so I don't see why they couldn't have been doing the same and updating their score screen.
There were times when they were using Liquipedia as the source of their rankings (e.g. 'we've just found out that Parting is actually in fourth place, thanks to the people at Liquipedia'). But due to the unintuitive nature of the tiebreakers and the fact that anyone can edit Liquipedia, there were times when people changed something in a way that was actually incorrect, it was taken as a fact, and then the casters repeated on stream. There was a time when someone had marked Parting as eliminated on the article, and shortly afterwards they said on stream 'We can confirm that Parting has been eliminated' when this was actually false -- if Ganzi had lost his final game then it would have been four-way tiebreaker between Ganzi, Heart, DRG and Parting with Parting advancing, whereas if Ganzi had won then it would have been a three-way tiebreaker between Heart, DRG and Parting with Parting losing. And then of course people would hear on stream that "Parting has been eliminated", and they would then go over to the Liquipedia article and change it back to match what they'd heard after we'd already fixed it. If MLG had been figuring this stuff out for themselves as they went they would have known it came down to the final game, and if the casters knew that then Ganzi's final game (the last of the round robin) would have had a lot more tension and excitement.
Lacklustre atmosphere at the end. I understand why they want a small tournament with no crowd for these, but there wasn't as much emotion when DRG won compared to a major MLG championship or other tournament. And then the broadcast just kind of... stopped. :-/
Lack of enthusiasm elsewhere. Usually there are heaps of people to chat to about the tournament and stuff, but a lot of people I know weren't watching it because of the price factor and the fact that DreamHack was on the same weekend. Personally I think it was well worth the value (hell, the $10 admission fee for the 3 days was cheaper than the $12 takeout I had on the Saturday night when I was watching it), but the lack of community aspect meant something felt missing.
Dreamhack wasn't actually that good. The level of competition was pretty damn disappointing, especially when you realize how fucking stacked the Spring Arena 1 was.
On April 24 2012 11:37 ReachTheSky wrote:MLG's response to this? A refund and a possible discount on the next event. I Loled hard when their admin said this to me. It baffles me that they would offer me a discount thinking I would want to continue to hand money to them for a sub-par product. They wasted my time and money = disappointment.
I understand that you're mad and hate MLG and blah blah, but I hardly consider a refund of your money to be 'laughable'.. and then you complain that you wasted money?
Just say you hate MLG and be done with it. I see that they at least tried to compensate you for your troubles, and you won't even give them credit for that.
---
On topic: The 'review' in the OP is definitely biased.
This MLG arena was worth $10 to me, even though it wasn't the most spectacular tournament I've ever seen. But not every tournament has to be that.
On April 24 2012 11:37 ReachTheSky wrote:MLG's response to this? A refund and a possible discount on the next event. I Loled hard when their admin said this to me. It baffles me that they would offer me a discount thinking I would want to continue to hand money to them for a sub-par product. They wasted my time and money = disappointment.
I understand that you're mad and hate MLG and blah blah, but I hardly consider a refund of your money to be 'laughable'.. and then you complain that you wasted money?
He even explains it in the sentence you quoted.. At least pretend to read. Or if you try to flame someone, at least dont quote the parts of the sentence, that would make your statement look stupid.
Let me help you. Not the refund is laughable. Its whats NEXT to the refund. And i actually think its funny as well.
Fantastic player list. There were only 8 players, but they were all high-quality pros and every match had the potential to be interesting
The round-robin format meant we got to see a full set of games out of every player. Being a foreigner and a Protoss player, I enjoy watching Huk play. The round-robin format meant that I got to watch each of Huk's games (21 games all up) in the round robin, whereas he would have been eliminated after just two matches in a standard double-elim format.
The 2v2s were great. Cheesy, bad mannered, and hilarious.
Good to high quality casters on all streams. I think having two streams with good casters is better than having four streams with mediocre casters.
Adebisi did a great jobs with observing. Was constantly pointing out things with the camera, was always at the right places on the minimap, pointing out things like vision. It was top notch.
True POV player cams for *every* match. (In Winter Arena 1 it was an observer set to the same player cam, but this time it showed the player's mouse, selections, etc)
Matches generally ran on time, very little downtime. Having the round robin games as three games every time (rather than a best of three) meant that almost every match went for a full hour. Only the PVP matches ended up being shorter and having 30 minutes or so downtime before the next scheduled match
Fantastic use of analysts, particular on Day 2 and 3. After each match on the main stream the casters passed over to Sheth, qxc and Axslav for comments. Their knowledge about why certain things worked or didn't work were a lot more in depth than the type of stuff you get from most casters.
For me, perfect streaming at 720p. Crisp image, no audio problems. (My net connection isn't fast enough for 1080p, so I won't comment on that)
Fast uploading of VODs, including the player cam VODs
Cons:
A lot of people were having problems accessing the stream from the MLG website. The fix for most people was to sign out and into twitch.tv again, but it was something that came up constantly in the chat. MLG/Twitch need to sort this out between themselves to prevent it happening next tournament.
The player POV streams did not have any sound. Also with MLG's player, you couldn't have the sound of the casters playing while watching the POV stream in fullscreen without opening up a second window.
There was sometimes a small delay between the main stream with the casting and the player POV cams. Meant sometimes they were playing ahead of what was being cast.
There were some mediocre matches, particularly on Day 1. Jetlag involved? The Parting vs MKP games (which there was a big hype for the rematch after GSTL) were in particular short and disappointing.
On Day 1, they sometimes passed to people like Tasteless or Rob for analysis after the games. This is something that works fantastic with people like Sheth, qxc and Axslav, and not so fantastic with non-pro players. Tasteless and Rob in this situation basically just said 'wow, that was an exciting game' and then asked questions to the actual pro-player sitting next to them. There was less of this on Day 2 and 3, fortunately.
The secondary gameplay stream had a crappy webcam for the casters. Looked really unprofessional compared to the main stream.
Because the round robin system is ranked by overall matches > H2H matches > H2H games > overall games, it meant that tiebreakers were very common but took sitting down and calculating to figure out. The score screens showed the overall match rankings, but there were times with 1 clear winner (MKP), 1 clear loser (Huk) and everyone else tied, with no indication of their standing in the tie because no one had figured it out yet. Even after the final match there was about 20 minutes of downtime while they confirmed who won the tie between Heart, DRG and Parting. I had an Excel sheet to figure out the H2H tiebreakers and was using that to maintain the Liquipedia article after each match, so I don't see why they couldn't have been doing the same and updating their score screen.
There were times when they were using Liquipedia as the source of their rankings (e.g. 'we've just found out that Parting is actually in fourth place, thanks to the people at Liquipedia'). But due to the unintuitive nature of the tiebreakers and the fact that anyone can edit Liquipedia, there were times when people changed something in a way that was actually incorrect, it was taken as a fact, and then the casters repeated on stream. There was a time when someone had marked Parting as eliminated on the article, and shortly afterwards they said on stream 'We can confirm that Parting has been eliminated' when this was actually false -- if Ganzi had lost his final game then it would have been four-way tiebreaker between Ganzi, Heart, DRG and Parting with Parting advancing, whereas if Ganzi had won then it would have been a three-way tiebreaker between Heart, DRG and Parting with Parting losing. And then of course people would hear on stream that "Parting has been eliminated", and they would then go over to the Liquipedia article and change it back to match what they'd heard after we'd already fixed it. If MLG had been figuring this stuff out for themselves as they went they would have known it came down to the final game, and if the casters knew that then Ganzi's final game (the last of the round robin) would have had a lot more tension and excitement.
Lacklustre atmosphere at the end. I understand why they want a small tournament with no crowd for these, but there wasn't as much emotion when DRG won compared to a major MLG championship or other tournament. And then the broadcast just kind of... stopped. :-/
Lack of enthusiasm elsewhere. Usually there are heaps of people to chat to about the tournament and stuff, but a lot of people I know weren't watching it because of the price factor and the fact that DreamHack was on the same weekend.
Personally I think it was well worth the value (hell, the $10 admission fee for the 3 days was cheaper than the $12 takeout I had on the Saturday night when I was watching it), but the lack of community aspect meant something felt missing
.
Amazing feedback, I hit enter on what I thought were your closing remarks. Did you forward this to MLG? I am sure they would love to read this(no jokes this was well done feedback).
On April 24 2012 09:10 ninjamyst wrote: No one is going to remember DRG winning MLG Spring Arena, but many people will remember Thorzain for winning Dreamhack.
Or maybe its because Thorzain isnt Korean...
Can you imagine if Polt had won Dreamhack and Genius had gotten second place? It would be forgotten in a day. People only care about foreigners and this is just more of the same. Foreigner does well - EZ money for the event organizer. Fans are so predictable its sickening.
On April 24 2012 09:10 ninjamyst wrote: No one is going to remember DRG winning MLG Spring Arena, but many people will remember Thorzain for winning Dreamhack.
Or maybe its because Thorzain isnt Korean...
Can you imagine if Polt had won Dreamhack and Genius had gotten second place? It would be forgotten in a day. People only care about foreigners and this is just more of the same. Foreigner does well - EZ money for the event organizer. Fans are so predictable its sickening.
If you'd prefer, fans who like storylines can not watch any E-Sports. People like all sorts of different aspects of E-Sports - Liquid'Nony has made a series of good posts today around this idea. It's not any of our places to chide / deride / insult others for enjoying certain parts that we do not. I'm sorry you are "sickened" that people have disparate tastes.
On topic for MLG - FPView was very nice. I agree with the abrupt ending of the broadcast which was unfortunate.
On extra topic, this article was not readable for me after a few paragraphs for the many reasons highlighted in this thread. A review and a historical overlook are two different fields that should be separated.
I have a hard time paying the 10 dollars for MLG arena when its on the same weekend as another major event that is free.
I feel like MLG needs to schedule their stuff a little better so it stops overlapping on major events. Winter Arena was during Dreamhack as well I believe.
That aside, just from the preview, it seems like it is well worth it, but it can't overlap on other major events =\ VODs get reposted for free too, so unless I just need to watch it right then and now, I can easily wait, SC2 tournaments aren't all that high on my "must have now" list.
On April 24 2012 11:37 ReachTheSky wrote:MLG's response to this? A refund and a possible discount on the next event. I Loled hard when their admin said this to me. It baffles me that they would offer me a discount thinking I would want to continue to hand money to them for a sub-par product. They wasted my time and money = disappointment.
I understand that you're mad and hate MLG and blah blah, but I hardly consider a refund of your money to be 'laughable'.. and then you complain that you wasted money?
He even explains it in the sentence you quoted.. At least pretend to read. Or if you try to flame someone, at least dont quote the parts of the sentence, that would make your statement look stupid.
Let me help you. Not the refund is laughable. Its whats NEXT to the refund. And i actually think its funny as well.
You think I didn't read the response well enough to get his point? The response degenerated into simple flaming over technical difficulties. He even admits it with an edit:
On April 24 2012 11:37 ReachTheSky wrote: Edit: Since the OP shared a review of this event, I felt it was only fair to share mine. Cheers!
I disagree that the discount is funny. Though he has no intention of taking the discount, it's still something in an attempt to make up for lost time, and you are both making light of that. If he was offered a free Arena 2 instead of a discount, would he still be laughing at the MLG admin?
Customer support is never easy, and sometimes, the customer has completely unreasonable expectations on what would make up for a subpar experience. Couple that with the "vocal minority" anti-MLG opinion, and you have people that sound like they are mindlessly flaming.
Let me make this clear--I did have minor problems with the MLG stream as well, and it wasn't perfect. I still feel like it was worth the money to me.
On April 24 2012 11:37 ReachTheSky wrote:MLG's response to this? A refund and a possible discount on the next event. I Loled hard when their admin said this to me. It baffles me that they would offer me a discount thinking I would want to continue to hand money to them for a sub-par product. They wasted my time and money = disappointment.
I understand that you're mad and hate MLG and blah blah, but I hardly consider a refund of your money to be 'laughable'.. and then you complain that you wasted money?
He even explains it in the sentence you quoted.. At least pretend to read. Or if you try to flame someone, at least dont quote the parts of the sentence, that would make your statement look stupid.
Let me help you. Not the refund is laughable. Its whats NEXT to the refund. And i actually think its funny as well.
You think I didn't read the response well enough to get his point? The response degenerated into simple flaming over technical difficulties. He even admits it with an edit:
On April 24 2012 11:37 ReachTheSky wrote: Edit: Since the OP shared a review of this event, I felt it was only fair to share mine. Cheers!
I disagree that the discount is funny. Though he has no intention of taking the discount, it's still something in an attempt to make up for lost time, and you are both making light of that. If he was offered a free Arena 2 instead of a discount, would he still be laughing at the MLG admin?
Customer support is never easy, and sometimes, the customer has completely unreasonable expectations on what would make up for a subpar experience. Couple that with the "vocal minority" anti-MLG opinion, and you have people that sound like they are mindlessly flaming.
Let me make this clear--I did have minor problems with the MLG stream as well, and it wasn't perfect. I still feel like it was worth the money to me.
The discount is laughable because of my experience. Two purchases in a row. To offer this thinking i would come back after my experiences, for me, is quite laughable. There is a fine line in customer loyalty. I do know what its like to work in customer service since I've managed a food establishment for years. Their offer was laughable. If i was in their shoes, i would have offered the next one for free, like you suggested. That would have been the best way of saying sorry we have disappointed you twice. Its all good though. I won't be supporting them again until I see a track of events where there aren't a ton of issues like the ones in my review. I was always for MLG. Hell, I have gone to a live event once and subscribed twice. Do I hate MLG now? No. Do I think they have a ton of room for improvement in customer service and their product? They certainly do.
How to create a successful tournament - Atmosphere created by audience and casters Player quality Match quality (Optional) - Crowd favourite/underdog winning the entire thing
DH > MLG for this one because of atmosphere. Yes, DRG coming back and showing emotions is a great story, but if there's no chanting, no support, no atmosphere, it's just like winning a ladder game online while streaming (albeit a very important ladder game)
A bone to pick with those of you, aside from the competitors themselves, that give MLG shit about the "extended series" format. Guess what? You're not entitled to watch the stream. If you don't like the format, watch DreamHack, a players' stream, or go ladder or something. I couldn't care less what a group of people think about the format of the tournament and I see no reason why MLG has gotten so much trash talk over it.
Honestly, people, be thankful for what you all get out of e-sports and SUPPORT the damn organizations that are trying to make it entertaining to watch, don't bad-mouth them for something that annoys you a tad
Is the guy that wrote this really that retarded? I am not entitled to watch the stream that I PAYED FOR? Dreamhack could say "fuck off" to anyone who complains because IT'S FREE. MLG has to listen to the customers.
A bone to pick with those of you, aside from the competitors themselves, that give MLG shit about the "extended series" format. Guess what? You're not entitled to watch the stream. If you don't like the format, watch DreamHack, a players' stream, or go ladder or something. I couldn't care less what a group of people think about the format of the tournament and I see no reason why MLG has gotten so much trash talk over it.
Honestly, people, be thankful for what you all get out of e-sports and SUPPORT the damn organizations that are trying to make it entertaining to watch, don't bad-mouth them for something that annoys you a tad
Is the guy that wrote this really that retarded? I am not entitled to watch the stream that I PAYED FOR? Dreamhack could say "fuck off" to anyone who complains because IT'S FREE. MLG has to listen to the customers.
EPT
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