[MLG] Winter Season featuring Heart of the Swarm - Page 25

On February 02 2013 09:53 MLG_Adam wrote:
To quote my boss…

“I get it”

I really do. I understand exactly why everyone is mad that there is zero open components to our Dallas competition. I can tell you with 100% sincerity that every single person at MLG (all 30ish of us) agree whole heartedly. We started out as an underdog in this space 10 years ago with the aim of making video games an aspirational, competitive “sport”. That trait as a company culture is still what drives us today and serves as the back bone of what we strive to do from a tournament offering.

So how did we get to the situation at hand with Dallas SC2? For starters, when we picked 3/15-3/17 as our first date of 2013 and went about sourcing venues, HOTS’ release date was not announced. The activity you see planned out now for Dallas was similar to our original plan for WOL that we had started dreaming up in 2012. However, the key difference was we had planned to have nearly all of the spots awarded via open competition within each region. When HOTS was announced for the same weekend as our event we immediately consulted Blizzard and we mutually decided that large open competition on beta servers might not lead to the best customer experience. So we improvised as best as we could to create the structure that we have now. We did an internal ranking of players taking into account every single global event in 2012 and meted out regional invites based on that hierarchy. While some of you might not like the new structure, it will still harbor many of the very best SC2 players based on 2012 global performance and we couldn’t be more excited about seeing it unfold.

I’d also like to point out some key items that we strove to fix based on community feedback, and just general milestones:

• “MLG books over other events” Early in 2012 we reached out to other organizations to ensure that any event we were planning to book was not in conflict with any other global tournaments.
• “MLG and GSL don’t like each other” While this entire situation was boiling publicly, behind the scenes we have always been on good terms with GSL. When I set about creating our 2012 structure, I reached out Mr. Chae and with his help we worked with directly with the ESF to include them in our qualification.
• “MLG and KESPA don’t want anyone else involved” KESPA will continue to be our partner and ally within this space. As we expanded out our league relationships, we were able to not only maintain our great KESPA relationship, but strengthen it through increased communication.
• “MLG’s production needs to step up” We agree. With 200+ open participants and TBD group results, creating a stellar broadcast was a hectic endeavor. Our goal for 2013 was to slow down and do more by doing less. What does that mean? It means I don’t want a great series to happen on the floor and no one outside of those in the room knows it even happened. Players deserve to be treated like stars and if in attendance to have their matches broadcast. So we set about exploring a structure that allowed us to prepare an incredible live event production and broadcast SHOW weeks in advance not the day of the tournament.
• “MLG looks like a trade show” Agree again. Expect our first complete event overhaul since 2006. Hell, since 2003 as the current iteration is the same basic floor plan that we have used since the beginning. Everything will be elevated this year.
• “Double elimination is not a great fan experience” We want every match to mean something and for our structure to be EXTREMELY easy to follow. Winner advances, loser goes home.
• Other items to note:

o $75,000 in prize money with 16 players earning money
o Every single qualified player will have a flight and hotel paid by MLG
o Enhanced broadcast experience. We’re not done announcing AMAZING broadcast perks for our events

So in conclusion, and to reiterate our previous comments on the situation: this format is being used ONLY for Dallas. We are not done announcing details for the 2013 season and I am very confident that many of the concerns will be squelched once they come to light. I know many people are not happy with us right now, and I know others are taking shots while we appear to be down, but I ask you to bear with us and understand that this is a very unique situation. We have ALWAYS had an open component to our season, and we will strive to do so in the future. Dallas will be an amazing kick off to Heart of the Swarm and I promise we will put on an amazing tournament and show.

Thank you for your support. This is our 10th year operating tournaments, and we could not have done it without our fans.

On February 01 2013 15:51 jmbthirteen wrote:

not really. we are getting legit HotS tournament play starting in 4 days. As someone who has been playing HotS for a few months now and isn't nearly as interested in WoL anymore, I'm rather excited. I'll miss the open bracket, but I can live without it for this one event. I get to watch Flash, Thorzain, Life, Stephano, Rain, and other gosu players in HotS.

Shit happens, you gotta deal with it. And thats what MLG is doing. You can act like a child and pout, kick and scream about it. Or you can be an adult, look at the big picture and realize, hey this is the first HotS tournament! And Flash is playing in it.

On February 02 2013 22:17 TigerKarl wrote:
I support your decision to have no open bracket for this one time for avoiding to get into the danger of having huge issues. Look at what problems Blizzard had with the start of Diablo 3, who knows how stable the servers will be so soon after the launch of HOTS. The less players, the less possible problems and all of us viewers want a professionally produced tournament. So having to choose between WoL+Open Bracket or HOTS without Open bracket is not difficult as probably 90% of people would rather see HOTS at that point.

On February 02 2013 22:19 hellokittySC2 wrote:

what kind of *huge issues* are you going to have? pro gamers will still win and get through like the previous OPEN brackets, i don't understand what kind of professionalism is there.

On February 02 2013 19:15 tshi wrote:

hahahaha yeah right

I'm amused sometimes at how many people come out of the woodwork to get in some kind general snide remark whenever something negative happens to organizations. The whole kicking people while they're down thing is really annoying to read.

On February 03 2013 00:19 Glurkenspurk wrote:



Are you really this dumb? It's not kicking a little innocent person while they're down. MLG is a huge organization. They don't need little people on forums defending them. If we have complaints we have the right to say them.