WCS AM Season 2 to be run by NASL and Blizzard - Page 7

On June 19 2013 02:10 TotalBiscuit wrote:
Crossposting this from Reddit

So here's my personal opinion on this based on what I know of the situation of the last few months.

This is a good thing for an awful lot of reasons, but I think what most people aren't going to grasp is how good it is for MLG. The preconception is that WCS is a bag of money on a plate to any organization that gets it and holy shit is that completely inaccurate. WCS is a massive resource drain on any organization that hosts it. Blizzard do not in fact give you all the money you could ever need to run the event and MLG was put in a ridiculously difficult position to recoup costs because they had to host at an EU-unfriendly time. So you lock out your biggest audience by default and are then expected to recoup via sponsorship and ad revenue? What? The amount of money MLG had to spend with no possibility of return to run WCS was outrageous. More to the point, if you think MLG actually fought to get WCS you're WAAAAAYYY off. It was very much the other way around. Blizzard strategy involved having MLG do the event, Blizzard pushed for it. MLG was reluctant to take the event as they wanted to focus on what they're good at, their regular live Pro Circuit tournaments. They were pressured by Blizzard to take on WCS. NASL was shut out in the process.

As much hate as MLG gets, they didn't actually make that many mistakes outside of the dreadful qualifiers, they were simply put in a tough spot and had the misfortune of not being ESL. ESL has far more experience running this kind of regular online content and they happen to have a bit more of a laid-back image which lets them pull stuff like Carmac in a bee-suit, White-ra as a bartender, a live final in an abandoned sauna etc. Not only that but foreigners were actually able to compete to a reasonable degree there and the storylines came from that, as opposed to the stomping that occurred in the RO32 in WCS America. MLG got saddled with the consequences of Blizzards decision not to region-lock in the worst possible way and for some reason were blamed for it. Some people might think Blizzard kicked MLG out. I'm sure that's a nice narrative for the hivemind but nope, try the other way around.

You wanna know why MLG announced Anaheim so late, why the format is the way it is and why the prizepool isn't as large? WCS. WCS was the damn albatross around the neck of MLG. They weren't given an opportunity, they were given a burden. WCS wreaked havoc on the American scene, derailing NASL and negatively impacting MLGs actual events which have been the cornerstone of the US competitive scene since Starcraft 2 launched. Now it seems like some of those wrongs will finally be righted.

NASL is in a better position to produce the kind of format that WCS demands. They have more experience, 2 casting teams, the production crew and the facilities to do that daily content. It's what NASL are. NASL live finals are hardly the best things in the world, more often than not lack-luster, it's not their speciality. Their speciality is that daily show and the supporting content that is created around it. I honestly doubt we'll see a big leap in viewers. As much as its the popular opinion to suggest that less popular casters drag the viewer count down significantly it's really not the case at all. The lack of EU audience is what kills WCS America and it always will if it continues at that timeslot.
Anyway, I'm glad MLG can get back to doing what they do best and what they've always wanted to do. I've been behind that curtain and I saw how hard they worked on WCS America but it was abundantly clear that its not their biggest strength. There's nothing quite like an MLG crowd and hopefully WCS will not affect future MLG live events in the way it's affected Anaheim.