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On April 09 2013 03:01 sitromit wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2013 02:44 Plansix wrote:On April 09 2013 02:37 sitromit wrote:
A 60K cut to GSL prize pool basically seals the deal in making what was the most prestigious tournament in the world into a glorified qualifier for a tournament with weaker competition. It's really sad. And not given fact at all. Liquipedia lists the prize money at $160,000 for GSL. Blizzard is likely only speaking to their own funds. Liquipedia probably just took that number from season 1. I don't know how it's possible to interpret what Blizzard said any other way. What they're saying is pretty clear, all WCS tournaments will have equal prize pool and that's 100K for regional championship. Blizzard isn't saying "we'll give them each 100K, it's up to them to set the prize". GSL is WCS Korea, thus GSL's prize pool is 100K.
Yes, the number on Liquipedia is from before the Blizzard announcement.
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Oh yeah, so that whole Koreans steamrolling every region thing? Yeah, we decided not to prevent it with region residency requirements because it'd be to complicated. It's not like we've seen DOTA2 leagues do the same, or even, you know, your own goddamn WCS that you held last year.
What's complicated about expanded WCS Korea to contain all of Asia, WCS Europe to contain Europe and the Middle East and Africa, and WCS North America to contain the two Americas? Require region residency, and give an extra $50,000 to the Korea region for difficulty (hell, take it away from WCS Europe/NA if you're really tight on cash), and there you go.
Because that was so complicated.
I have honestly never been this pissed at Blizzard for this long, and I've definitely never let it effect my enthusiasm for watching SC2. I defended Diablo 3 for Christ's sake. But region lock alone is going to make the regions meaningless. I'm just going to watch an entire year of Blizzard endorsed Korean stomp, and that gets old quick.
I know the general consensus on TL is "best games possible," but that's NOT the general consensus for literally anywhere else. Especially, you know, those casuals you're going to have to draw in if you want money. WCS NA is going to flop once we realize there's no actual NA players in there left, and it's going to be the saddest thing this year.
Once again, a chance to create a NA/EU safe haven, with three $100,000 prize pool tourneys to keep the NA/EU scenes afloat, and tournament organizers go and fuck it up. It's like they're sitting around a table and seeing exactly how to taunt us this time around.
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On April 09 2013 03:07 Conti wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2013 03:01 sitromit wrote:On April 09 2013 02:44 Plansix wrote:On April 09 2013 02:37 sitromit wrote:
A 60K cut to GSL prize pool basically seals the deal in making what was the most prestigious tournament in the world into a glorified qualifier for a tournament with weaker competition. It's really sad. And not given fact at all. Liquipedia lists the prize money at $160,000 for GSL. Blizzard is likely only speaking to their own funds. Liquipedia probably just took that number from season 1. I don't know how it's possible to interpret what Blizzard said any other way. What they're saying is pretty clear, all WCS tournaments will have equal prize pool and that's 100K for regional championship. Blizzard isn't saying "we'll give them each 100K, it's up to them to set the prize". GSL is WCS Korea, thus GSL's prize pool is 100K. Yes, the number on Liquipedia is from before the Blizzard announcement.
To be a little more specific I went into the Liquipedia History of the page and the prize pool money information was first inputted March 1st and hasn't been touched since. It's safe to say that isn't current information and just based on previous information which of course is now outdated with all the changes.
Link of the comparison (Line 97-98)
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On April 09 2013 03:01 sitromit wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2013 02:44 Plansix wrote:On April 09 2013 02:37 sitromit wrote:
A 60K cut to GSL prize pool basically seals the deal in making what was the most prestigious tournament in the world into a glorified qualifier for a tournament with weaker competition. It's really sad. And not given fact at all. Liquipedia lists the prize money at $160,000 for GSL. Blizzard is likely only speaking to their own funds. Liquipedia probably just took that number from season 1. I don't know how it's possible to interpret what Blizzard said any other way. What they're saying is pretty clear, all WCS tournaments will have equal prize pool and that's 100K for regional championship. Blizzard isn't saying "we'll give them each 100K, it's up to them to set the prize". GSL is WCS Korea, thus GSL's prize pool is 100K.
I think both options are equally likely. I can see Blizzard wanting all prize money to be equal, but I can also see GSL offering addition funds in some other way, like a separate check to the winner of GSL. I mean, GSL had 160,000 before WSC and I'm pretty sure they can't just dump that into production or give it to Tasteless to invest in money markets. Maybe they dump it all into GSTL to further support the teams further.
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On April 09 2013 02:01 NonY wrote:
If the GSL and OSL have more prize money to give, then they can host tournaments in Seoul, just like MLG and ESL will continue to host major non-WCS tournaments in NA and EU. It's their decision to tie up so much of their resources in GSTL and Proleague. Having the most prestigious team leagues is a big reason why they have an infrastructure that produces so many more higher quality players in the first place. Asking for Blizzard to just give them more money for individual leagues is ridiculous.
edit: Also, posting on reddit and not battle.net or tl.net? I can understand Blizzard's desire to have their big Q&A on /r/AMA in order to reach new people, but for these small informative updates, post on TL and b.net.
I really dont think GSL/OSL give a damn about prize pools as long as blizzard is paying them. The issue is more about players and the viewers losing part of GSL/OSL magic.
The magic being composed of two things
First, since "playing computer games for living" is still a thing to awe at, at least in the west, the number of dollars tha tplayers win matter to more people compared to sports where most viewers have no clue about money involved.
Secondly, since the numbers are so public and advertised - the number changes the perception of importance - the more numbers, the more important tourney.
Now blizzard went ahead and lowered the pricepool for GSL, and made bunch of weekend tourneys that have bigger price pools and therefore should be more significant so GSL lost both in the "wow he will make so much money" and the perceived importance area.
But there was nothing to replace that - since those weekend tourneys that will have less quality of play, both due to regional imbalances and the fact that its a weekend tournament and wont stress the full starcraft skillset, that includes preparing for every opponent, and creating specific strategies for specific players.
And now if GSL or OSL would want to recreate the effect of having the best possible starcraft in the world, they would have to create a new league - and there is no timeslot to do that anymore.
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If Blizzard really wants Korean in the NA and EU WCS, how about adding a separate online qualifiers for Korean fighting for a limited amount of entry spots? That way we can at least control the amount of Koreans flowing into those tournaments.
I'm all for seeing the greatest game possible, but seeing tons of Code B Koreans flooding the NA and EU WCS will get kinda lame.
edit: Then again, if they're really going for the GSL up/down model.... the balance will be upset sooner or later anyway.
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It is pretty obvious why this was "rushed".
1) They had to get all parties in agreement (biggest hurdle)
2) If they waited longer, GSL would have already started, nullifying season 1 and pushing it back to summer.
3) If #2, there would have only been 2 seasons this year, which means not every region would get to host a championship.
4) Because of up/downs, you need to have multiple seasons to give people time to move up and down the "code" ladder, and thus get points.
IE, they had to make the decision they did when they did so they could get 3 seasons in this year or the entire year would have been moot. The fact that they are still getting details ironed out is a minor wrinkle compared to having a very short year with only 2 seasons that wouldn't have been fair to anyone at all, nor as entertaining for the fans.
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I find it nice and all that they want to play most games online but isnt it going to be a problem is some areas? It should be fine in Europe but what if a brazilian or chilean player actually qualifies? He ll have to fly all the way to the USA?
Other than that; I prefered the previous version with regional lock but well, let s wait and see
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I see a few posts about adding more money to the prize pool for korean region and I think that is absurd. So what if it's "harder" to compete in korea. Is that everyone else's fault because GSL stacked the prize pool to the point that any of the western tournaments are just a mere stepping stone to go back to korea? If the koreans stopped trying to concentrate everything in their "region" then maybe it wouldn't be "harder" to qualify.
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I dont like the fact that NA has the same prize pool as KR. It doesnt make sense that worse players have the same reward. Atleast I know mah boi Poltimus will win in the end!
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I wanted to write a blog post going more in depth, and maybe I will. However just as a brief snip it, I took huge issue with the lack of a residency requirement for the WCS.
Without a residency requirement it's fully possible to have the WCS NA and WCS EU representatives be based in Korea which to me takes away validity of the tournament and really serves no greater purpose for the future success of esports in NA and EU.
The only complexity involved with a true region lock, would be having to vet players residency under some sort of guidelines for the blizzard and league staffs. Something like you must of lived in a region for at least X years, months, days or whatever to compete in a region. At least forcing players and teams to commit their resources to a particular region in order to compete in that region.
Not having a residency requirement seems extremely biased towards the continued success of the KR region and not the continued success of the NA and EU regions. As the only region you are forced to live in to compete due to the nature and structure of the tournaments is the KR region.
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Nothing new beyond a few specifications on prize pools, but we've known about the tournament structuring for a while now. I wish Blizzard could give more transparency or information on the situation rather than rehashing the same stuff.
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On April 08 2013 15:35 juicyjames wrote:
Are the prize pools the same between the leagues?
Yes. All of the regional leagues will have identical prize pools and point distribution.
The prize pool breakdown for the remaining part of 2013 is as follows:
Each Regional WCS League - $100,000
Each Global Season Finals - $150,000
WCS Global Finals at BlizzCon - $250,000
Biggest mistake in this entire thing right here, blew the one chance of making the region split a fair deal.
Very disappointed tbh
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I don't find much incentive for a KR player to Stay there, Which sucks because players could leave to Another region, decreasing the level of the KR tournament. I think the KR tournament should have some kind of incentive, maybe some extra Money or something.
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not adding residency requirements because it's "too complicated"?
if you want koreans in all regions to encourage competition and high level play, that's fine. but say that.
if you cant be bothered to say south americans play in north america and russians play in europe and that people with citizenship can play in their home region regardless of residence, and that's why everything is open, that's just fucking stupid.
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On April 09 2013 06:50 IdrA wrote:
not adding residency requirements because it's "too complicated"?
if you want koreans in all regions to encourage competition and high level play, that's fine. but say that.
if you cant be bothered to say south americans play in north america and russians play in europe and that people with citizenship can play in their home region regardless of residence, and that's why everything is open, that's just fucking stupid.
But won't just doing ALL offline events, deter any Koreans think of joining the NA or EU regions?
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Probably not; they will probably get paid trips to attend the offline events
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On April 09 2013 07:08 Elairec wrote:
Probably not; they will probably get paid trips to attend the offline events
I think so because of the region lock you have to dedicate a whole year to a league . You basically have to relocate to NA or EU. We know this most NA/EU players from playing in Korea. Just do it like the GSL with weekly games.
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The important things to note with Korea losing out on prize money is these things:
1. Last year, Korea had 5 GSLs and 2 OSLs (1 of the OSL was BW to be fair). Each with a lot of prize money.
2. Because of #1, there are more progamers (or ones who are trying to be a progamer) in South Korea than any other country. You have all the Korean players (and there's a lot to list) plus the relatively unknowns like the B-teamers.
3. All of a sudden, there is less money for all those Korean players (we'll see though; if Blizzard "forces" GSL and OSL to have less prize money to make all 3 seem equal, then that'd be silly IMO).
4. What this means is that the Korean players who invested a lot into the game gets shafted unless they switched.
5. Remember that players do not get a salary and have to earn based off of tournament earnings.
6. Also to the argument "this just means Koreans have to work a bit harder". Working harder doesn't help. I'll make an analogy. Lets say there are 100 progamers. The prize money used be able to reward the top 10% players and allow them to have progamer as a career (in this case, 10 people). Now, all of a sudden, the prize money only rewards the top 1% player (the difference is just an exaggeration to explain the situation better). This means only 1 player can earn money.
Regardless of how "hard" Koreans work, only 1 (out of the 100 players) can earn a living off of it. In this situation "working harder" is pointless unless you're the top 5 trying to compete for the #1 spot. It's an issue of supply and demand, and this means (because the demand is much higher than the supply, regardless of anything done), then either the Koreans will compete in other regions (again, you can compete until Ro16 online) or they will retire.
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I mean, we had a topic about this last year already about SC2 in Korea (about how it was so top heavy). I was glad when OSL started doing SC2 tournaments because it meant more tournaments in Korea.
Also about the whole <insert sport here where you cheer for your home team> vs StarCraft 2 debate in the previous pages.
The major difference between American Football (for example) and StarCraft 2 is that StarCraft 2 is primarily viewed by the players of the game itself (the only rare exception is South Korea during the BW era).
With American Footman, I most of the viewers of American Football don't even play the game regularly.
When you watch StarCraft 2 being played, you watch it (usually) for the game being played (because you play the game too or you want to see some awesome stuff happening in the game). Seeing someone from your home country (or wherever you're from) do good I say is a "bonus" and not the primary reason for watching SC2 (compared to American Football for most, for example).
Also the whole "Koreans have no personality" is a myth. Sure it might have been the case during the KeSPA era (with the exception of a few players) but nowadays not anymore. Here is some examples by someone.
I'm surprised people say this.
I guess Forgg asking Zoe for a good luck kiss, Zenio Throwing a rude gesture at Idra, Taeja speaking Spanish to a large audience, Keen gunning down all his team mates in a victory dance and MCs murloc suit just dont count ay?
Despite the entire post, I am glad Blizzard has taken steps to advance SC2 overall. However, I just dislike the fact that they have to shaft GSL and Korea just because they want to make things look "equal". (Though we don't know the whole story - We do know it was announced there was going to be 4 GSLs this year. Were GOMTV forced to do 3 GSLs by Blizzard when they wanted to do 4, or did they already plan on doing 3 GSLs instead of 4?)
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when NA&US detail announced? now already''tomorrow night''
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EPT
