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[WCS] NA/EU Formats Released

Forum Index > SC2 General
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opterown *
Profile Blog Joined August 2011
Australia54784 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-04-09 05:32:01
April 09 2013 00:07 GMT
#1
http://www.esfiworld.com/wcs-america-europe-formats-detailed-invited-players-to-be-announced-april-12th/

These details, as they have not been officially announced yet, are preliminary and may still be changed.



WCS America Premier League format (MLG)

This league is composed of two group stages leading into an eight-player, single-elimination playoff. The first group stage, consisting of 32 players, will be held entirely online. The 16 who advance from the first will take part in the second group stage, hosted at the MLG studio in New York near the end of May. The eight top placing players will qualify for the Regional Finals – again held at the MLG studios – on the weekend of June 1st. The top 5 from the Regional Finals will earn a spot in the Season 1 Finals. Similar to its European counterpart, WCS America is expected to hold a series of qualifier tournaments that will earn players spots into the Premier and Challenger divisions. This hasn’t been confirmed yet for WCS America, however.

The losing 16 players from the initial group stage will drop into the Challenger League – played entirely online – to give players a chance to requalify for the WCS Premier League’s following season.

For those players that advance to the in-studio rounds of play (group stage 2 and beyond), MLG will only be covering travel expenses for players living in the Americas. However, if a player first travels to any city in the United States, MLG will then pay for their flight to the MLG studio from that U.S. city.

Players must notify MLG their intent to participate in the America region by end of day on April 8th.



WCS Europe Premier League format (ESL)

Other than being managed by ESL, the WCS Europe format mirrors WCS America’s. A series of online qualifiers will be held from April 14th-17th where a number of spots for both the Premier and Challenger divisions will be up for grabs. Four tournaments will be held starting on April 14th, and up to 512 players can take part. ESL will also be announcing their lineup of invited Premier League players on April 12th.

The in-studio WCS Europe tournaments (group stage 2 and beyond) will be held at the ESL TV studios in Cologne, Germany. Flight and hotel will be provided at no cost to players who are traveling from within Europe.



Prize pools

As confirmed by Blizzard representative in a Q&A thread on Sunday, each regional final’s prize pool will be identical: $100,000. The prize purse breakdown WCS Europe is proposing to players can be seen below, although it was noted that it is not final yet.

1st place: $35,000
2nd place. $15,000
3rd/4th place: $8,000
5th place: $4,000
6th place: $3,500
7th place: $3,000
8th place: $2,500
9th-12th place: $1,450
13th-16th place: $1,000
17th-24th place: $500
25th-32nd place: $300



https://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/9447310/WCS_Season_1_Dates-4_8_2013


With WCS Korea competition already underway, we'd like to highlight some important dates and details for the fast-approaching WCS America and WCS Europe leagues.

Since there was no preceding season to qualify players for Season 1 of WCS America and WCS Europe, we’re going to do things a little differently from how they’ll be done in future seasons.

For this inaugural season of WCS America and WCS Europe, 24 players will be invited to compete in each region based on their performance in past StarCraft II tournaments. In addition, a round of special qualifiers will be held to determine 8 players who will join the invited 24 (more details soon). Once all 32 players are locked in, play will commence and run for a few weeks.

The rest of Season 1 will then play out via the same structure planned for future seasons. The top 8 players in each region will compete in their region's finals, which will be a weekend offline event. Once all three regional finals have concluded, the top performers from each region will battle in an epic global Season Finals at a live event hosted by one of the regions. To seed that event, the top 6 players from the host region will be joined by the top 5 players from each of the two other regions to engage in a fierce tournament in order to crown the best StarCraft II player in the world for that season.

Important dates for Season 1 in each region are listed below. Note that the qualification rounds for future seasons take place during the current season. So, in addition to the intense Season 1 competition described here, the qualifiers for Season 2 will be taking place. Stay tuned for further details.



April 4
Korea
League play begins

April 14
Europe
Special qualifiers begin

April 20
America
Special qualifiers begin

April 23
Europe
League play begins (round of 32)

April 28
America
League play begins (round of 32)

May 14*
Korea
Regional league finals begin (round of 8)

May 25
Europe
Regional league finals begin (round of 8)

May 31
America
Regional league finals begin (round of 8)
ModeratorRetired LR Bonjwa
TL+ Member
Shellshock
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States97276 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-04-09 00:09:22
April 09 2013 00:09 GMT
#2
So it's GSL but the top 16 stay up for sure instead of the top 8? pretty solid top prizes
Moderatorhttp://i.imgur.com/U4xwqmD.png
TL+ Member
blade55555
Profile Blog Joined March 2009
United States17423 Posts
April 09 2013 00:11 GMT
#3
Hm wonder how you get in for the 32 players and does this mean I need to contact them for example if I wanted to try playing?
When I think of something else, something will go here
Otolia
Profile Blog Joined July 2011
France5805 Posts
April 09 2013 00:11 GMT
#4
Yes this calls for a slow clap gif ...

+ Show Spoiler +
[image loading]


Very thought prize pool distribution, reasonable format. So far, so good.
Shellshock
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States97276 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-04-09 00:16:06
April 09 2013 00:15 GMT
#5
On April 09 2013 09:11 blade55555 wrote:
Hm wonder how you get in for the 32 players and does this mean I need to contact them for example if I wanted to try playing?

The day of the announcement I think I remember them saying there would be online qualifiers for GMs or something
but I could be wrong
Moderatorhttp://i.imgur.com/U4xwqmD.png
TL+ Member
Laryleprakon
Profile Joined May 2011
New Zealand9496 Posts
April 09 2013 00:15 GMT
#6
I hope MLG has a way to get an audience in there studio. There arena's always lacked a lot of hype with no crowd (even a small one helps heaps)

The prize pool still seems top heavy with the top 5 all qualifying for another tournament. GSL pays everyone in code A/S, it would be have been nice to go down to like top 48 imo.

Still awesome to see more news coming out.
Prplppleatr
Profile Joined May 2011
United States1518 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-04-09 00:17:10
April 09 2013 00:15 GMT
#7
Notify by april 8th eh (today)....so if this is true there likely is not going to be an open bracket for america since the players who would be notifying them to play would have already had to of know of this

go go popularity contests for invite to premier division
🥇 Prediction Contest - Mess with the best, die like the rest.
Solarsail
Profile Joined July 2012
United Kingdom538 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-04-09 00:16:52
April 09 2013 00:16 GMT
#8
Players must notify MLG their intent to participate in the America region by end of day on April 8th.


Incredibly short window there. If MLG-only-covering-flights-from-US info was only released to teams just now I don't see how a decision can be made so fast. I'd assume they got it earlier but the WCS threads recently suggest otherwise.

So a Korean participating would have to cover TWO international flights by themselves.
Everyone left over is a member of the OP race and you have to figure out which one of them is the least OP. - CosmicSpiral
m0ck
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
4194 Posts
April 09 2013 00:17 GMT
#9
Looks very solid, online play followed by two weekends of "lan". Good distribution of prizes. I'm really looking forward to it!

The GSL-format with a code A will be more challenging, I feel. It will be pretty obvious just how many fewer "pro gamers" reside in Europe and USA compared to SK.
opterown *
Profile Blog Joined August 2011
Australia54784 Posts
April 09 2013 00:17 GMT
#10
Adam Apicella ‏@MrAdamAp 2h
The NA and EU SC2 premiere leagues are pretty amazing pending final acceptances. Can't wait to announce them

They probably have a good idea already.

Any bets on which Koreans going where? haha
ModeratorRetired LR Bonjwa
TL+ Member
Tidus Mino
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United Kingdom1108 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-04-09 00:18:28
April 09 2013 00:17 GMT
#11
On April 09 2013 09:11 blade55555 wrote:
Hm wonder how you get in for the 32 players and does this mean I need to contact them for example if I wanted to try playing?


24 invites, 4 qualifiers top 2 from each qualifier gets Code S

Then they are still working out Code A, but my suggestion was a point based system for everyone that plays the 4 qualifiers and doesn't get top 2, then the top 32 players based on points, be awarded Code A, which they seemed to like, but will need to wait to find out the details for Code A.
Head of Production at FACEITTV, ex-WW & Mouz SC2 manager
blade55555
Profile Blog Joined March 2009
United States17423 Posts
April 09 2013 00:18 GMT
#12
On April 09 2013 09:15 Shellshock1122 wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 09 2013 09:11 blade55555 wrote:
Hm wonder how you get in for the 32 players and does this mean I need to contact them for example if I wanted to try playing?

The day of the announcement I think I remember them saying there would be online qualifiers for GMs or something
but I could be wrong


Well yeah I bet it's mainly invitational which sucks ass for a player like me. I dunno who I would contact from MLG or w/e to try and participate or if it doesn't even matter :/.
When I think of something else, something will go here
BasicBarcode
Profile Joined May 2011
United States56 Posts
April 09 2013 00:18 GMT
#13

Players must notify MLG their intent to participate in the America region by end of day on April 8th.


This is the part that really concerns me out of all of this. Even though I imagine most American players will play here that is a very short time to get ready. Do we have any information on if any proteams got this information?
ffadicted
Profile Joined January 2011
United States3545 Posts
April 09 2013 00:20 GMT
#14
IMO the price pool and format is fine for europe, but it's an absolute disgrace that the prize pool and point distribution for GSL is the same. They're essentially ruining the prestige behind GSL (which will remain the hardest tournament to win, let's not kid ourselves, the seasonal finals will the the "Club World Cup" equivalent to GSL's "Champions League", aka kind of a fun but not serious league) just so that they can make foreigners happy to see their favorite but extremely less skilled players win games.

I don't see any insentive for koreans to stay in korea tbh. None whatsoever. And CERTAINLY no incentive for foreigners to ever go there to practice and get better and close the gap between skill level.

I'm very disappointed at WCS. Extremely disappointed.
SooYoung-Noona!
Daogin
Profile Blog Joined April 2011
Canada2308 Posts
April 09 2013 00:20 GMT
#15
Wow 20k difference from first and 2nd
Leenoctopus <3, master of foreign events.
Laryleprakon
Profile Joined May 2011
New Zealand9496 Posts
April 09 2013 00:21 GMT
#16
On April 09 2013 09:17 opterown wrote:
Show nested quote +
Adam Apicella ‏@MrAdamAp 2h
The NA and EU SC2 premiere leagues are pretty amazing pending final acceptances. Can't wait to announce them

They probably have a good idea already.

Any bets on which Koreans going where? haha


It will be interesting to see how they seed Koreans into NA/EU divisions. Kaldor tweeted last night that a lot of Koreans were going to play NA if I remember correctly.
BasicBarcode
Profile Joined May 2011
United States56 Posts
April 09 2013 00:21 GMT
#17
On April 09 2013 09:20 ffadicted wrote:
IMO the price pool and format is fine for europe, but it's an absolute disgrace that the prize pool and point distribution for GSL is the same. They're essentially ruining the prestige behind GSL (which will remain the hardest tournament to win, let's not kid ourselves, the seasonal finals will the the "Club World Cup" equivalent to GSL's "Champions League", aka kind of a fun but not serious league) just so that they can make foreigners happy to see their favorite but extremely less skilled players win games.

I don't see any insentive for koreans to stay in korea tbh. None whatsoever. And CERTAINLY no incentive for foreigners to ever go there to practice and get better and close the gap between skill level.

I'm very disappointed at WCS. Extremely disappointed.


Do we have any information that GSL isn't funding a larger prizepool with all their sponsorships?
Tidus Mino
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United Kingdom1108 Posts
April 09 2013 00:21 GMT
#18
On April 09 2013 09:21 Laryleprakon wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 09 2013 09:17 opterown wrote:
Adam Apicella ‏@MrAdamAp 2h
The NA and EU SC2 premiere leagues are pretty amazing pending final acceptances. Can't wait to announce them

They probably have a good idea already.

Any bets on which Koreans going where? haha


It will be interesting to see how they seed Koreans into NA/EU divisions. Kaldor tweeted last night that a lot of Koreans were going to play NA if I remember correctly.


afaik EU has 4 invited Koreans, then a couple more trying to qualify
Head of Production at FACEITTV, ex-WW & Mouz SC2 manager
pmp10
Profile Joined April 2012
3396 Posts
April 09 2013 00:21 GMT
#19
Wait a minute.
Dose this mean that Koreans not playing in GSL already had to commit to a region?
opterown *
Profile Blog Joined August 2011
Australia54784 Posts
Last Edited: 2013-04-09 00:25:36
April 09 2013 00:25 GMT
#20
On April 09 2013 09:21 Tidus Mino wrote:
Show nested quote +
On April 09 2013 09:21 Laryleprakon wrote:
On April 09 2013 09:17 opterown wrote:
Adam Apicella ‏@MrAdamAp 2h
The NA and EU SC2 premiere leagues are pretty amazing pending final acceptances. Can't wait to announce them

They probably have a good idea already.

Any bets on which Koreans going where? haha


It will be interesting to see how they seed Koreans into NA/EU divisions. Kaldor tweeted last night that a lot of Koreans were going to play NA if I remember correctly.


afaik EU has 4 invited Koreans, then a couple more trying to qualify

oh that's pretty decent! four out 32, with a few more qualifiers is not that korean dominated at all

On April 09 2013 09:21 pmp10 wrote:
Wait a minute.
Dose this mean that Koreans not playing in GSL already had to commit to a region?

i expect so, the KR qualifiers are tomorrow haha
ModeratorRetired LR Bonjwa
TL+ Member
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