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I'm seeing a lot of comments from people who are disappointed that we did not share the exact plans for WCS 2014. To clarify, we did not intend for this to be an announcement, or an announcement of an announcement for that matter  The reality is that we are still finalizing the details of WCS 2014 with our partners, however, we did not want to wait until everything was finalized before letting you know some of the things we were discussing. We want to give the community an opportunity to provide feedback before we locked down the specific details. We have outlined most of our plans and ideas in some of our answers, but haven't fully committed to any of the decisions because we want to hear from the community. Our goal is to confirm and announce the plans for WCS 2014 before BlizzCon. That gives you at least a week to give us your input on what we've shared! Thanks again for your support! -kimaphan |
United States43 Posts
On October 15 2013 09:45 Killmouse wrote:
"We hope to provide a greater spotlight and give more importance to the major tournaments such as DreamHack, IEM, and Red Bull Battle Grounds."
R.I.P in piece MLG starcraft i guess^^
Please don't read into this because it doesn't mean anything. Just because we didn't mention a specific tournament doesn't mean they are not an important piece to the SCII ecosystem.
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On October 15 2013 14:18 Chill wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 14:16 StarStruck wrote:On October 15 2013 13:38 Chill wrote:
Pretty sure step one should be "playing in your closest geographical region is mandatory".
You're welcome, Blizzard. You want a glorified WCG all over again Chill? Yes. Because then at least the qualifying stages will be dynamic.
wcg used to be pretty awesome
but ye maybe teamleague would be the way to go but i know it will never happen
make all the arcade free to play(could have some premium maps) and advertise it should increase player base and maybe some would buy the game for ladder
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On October 15 2013 16:55 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 16:32 Heartland wrote:
I think this overall looks rather reasonable but it's hard to say without any more clear decisions. I agree, it looks good but it is all rather non-committing. A few things I'd like to see next season: - WCS Asia+Australia (excluding Korea) - This does not appear to happen in 2014, and that would be a missed opportunity I think.
- At least one National Team tournaments - Not mentioned, but would work very well in Europe at least. Maybe DH could think of this?
- Limit the number of region hoppers in qualifiers, challenger league and premier league - seems to be happening
- More WCS points in non-WCS tournaments - again, this seems to be happening
- 2v2 tournaments like the doubles in tennis - Maybe this is just my own wet dream, but imagine how cool it would be to see Naniwa and Scarlett teaming up against, uh, I don't know, Life and Innovation. Individual skills important, yes, but will slick team play and elaborated tactics beat über micro etc etc?
The national team thing could be fun. I think there are some other issues with a few of your points however. A non-Korea Australia/Asia WCS might just be a bit too poor in terms of player quality.
Another problem with giving out more points in other tournaments is that it's going to solidify Korean dominance rather than diversify it. I'd rather see more WCS points to the national tournaments like the now-defunct tour that TB did, like the Copa America or the two Swedish tournaments. However, the problem with that is that it is likely that it will strengthen already strong scenes (the Swedish one most likely) and not spread out points.
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51449 Posts
Im very disappointed in this interview :S
I was expecting for so much clarification, but you get the exact opposite. The only thing confirmed for WCS 2014, is that WCS 2014 will happen. Thats all we have to go off >.<
Im not sure why it takes so long to organize plans for next year and the biggest stumbling block they are having is trying to sort the region lock problem out which is pretty simple to figure out.....
One thing im disappointed about as well is that China is not getting its own region for next year, they should have one as their scene seems to be growing pretty strong right now (imo).
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After reading this I feel really happy about doing less tournaments. WCS was on so much that it killed other tournaments and that every WCS match felt less important.
All the other stuff is just to vague to really comment on right now.
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One thing im disappointed about as well is that China is not getting its own region for next year, they should have one as their scene seems to be growing pretty strong right now (imo).
But the WCS is organised on a continent level, not a national. Why would a weak scene receive it's own WCS? It's growth seems to be disputed by the different interviews by Chinese players who are all depressed over the state of sc2 in China, the folding of teams, etc.
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On October 15 2013 16:32 kimaphan wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 16:04 USvBleakill wrote:On October 15 2013 15:39 Liquid`Ret wrote:
I think that TL.net needs to be a place for constructive feedback, all of this hate is not contributing anything.
Blizzard is right here in this thread, use it! Wait so this "kimaphan" guy is real? Haha i was pretty sure that is just a trolling guy with so few posts and was wondering why he wasn't banned. Maybe give him a Blizzard tag Ok then i have a question or rather a concern: Does Blizzard hate teams? Or at least dont care that much about them. It was right at the beginning of WCS were it seems to be a lot of confusion because Blizzard mainly contacted players and "ignored" the teams. But even besides organizational things the exposition of Teams and their sponsors is not supported by WCS. At the Finals at gamescon it was "Teaja" not "Liquid Teaja" why? I can only guess because i am obviously not part of the esport business but i think that most of the money still comes from sponsors. And sponsoring is a tough field in marketing because it is hard to calculate the value for the company. So why not helping the teams with showing the main sponsors at the beginning of WCS games. Or some "premium team sponsors" shown on stage. I can only imagine how hard it is to gather money for something like esports with business models that are fighting for a "black zero" but why not help the Teams to expose their sponsors and give them weapons like "hey Razor your investment is worth it, X viewers were able to see your logo for Y times and Z minutes because Teaja is awesome and made it to the ro4". Of course we don't hate teams. When we contact players, we also include their team managers. What makes you think we ignore teams? We're looking into ways we can incorporate and better support teams into WCS 2014.
Obviously "hate" is a too strong word, its more a feeling that Blizzard doesn't care that much. In my opinion its a point were a lot of improvement could happen.
An example: If i go on the WCS Battle.net side and look for Innovation, Acer is mentioned only once, without a logo or a link to their web side. On the other side, on the picture he is still on STX Soul and the bio text still calls him a "Terran for STX Soul" a team that no longer exists in his former form. If i would be an Acer manger this would make me kinda angry because he isn't some random guy that only insiders know, he is number one in points.
And i would question why Liquidpedia and Twitter gets her own links but not the Team that basically makes him able to play and travel.
I just think that is a point that could be relatively easy to improve.
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Netherlands4511 Posts
I personally think the idea of somehow rewarding ladder peformances in a minor way is very interesting. That could be the first step into a solution for the 'Barcode situation' which is hugely detrimental to the community feel on battle.net as well as on the personal player streams.
On top of that I also hugely support a region lock based on where someone is residing and thus where they are practicing.
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Also, we are pushing for more of our broadcast content to happen in a physical studio environment, inevitably pushing players to commit to longer periods of time where they must reside locally. Other points of interest we feel relevant to this include encouraging pros to play on their prospective regional ladders and requiring that anyone who wants to qualify in a region be ranked at a certain level on that region’s server. We have even been considering rewarding WCS points to players on the ladder who have registered with us as official WCS players.
This needs to happen. Don't say "only owners of a EU passport can play in EU" just make ro32 offline and let the players deal with the commitment. The needed commitment to play in the ladder etc.pp. should also improve the level of competition on the server overall.
we have been considering include carving out a portion of player slots dedicated to legal residents that would guarantee players living in a particular region would always have a consistent chance to make it into Challenger League
that would be worst case scenario..... don't give any special treatment to any player!
I like that they plan to cut out the global season finals, they were pretty bad anyway, regional finals are enough. I really like the idea that at the end of the season, at the GLOBAL FINALS all champions from every region and every season will battle each other for the grand champion title.
Besides that, a lot of stuff still up in the air but overall it sounds rather promising to me.
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No WCS China is just depressing.
Is there still vengeance cup for SEA?
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On October 15 2013 16:47 aike wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 15:56 felisconcolori wrote:On October 15 2013 15:53 aike wrote:On October 15 2013 15:51 Gospadin wrote:
I just want to know how they're going to ensure their players can get Visas, or if they can't get their visa by a certain deadline, promote players who can legally travel instead of walkovers. That's where requiring that the players live in the region in which they play in is a good idea ;D To be honest, I'd have to sit down with an immigration lawyer to figure out what visas apply to whom and if they're correct for the activities they're engaging in - I mean Polt is in the US studying, but what visa is in play? There are restrictions on student visas, and I have no idea where "professional StarCraft player" falls in that context. Could EG bring Jaedong in on an H1-B visa? (I think, out of most uses that one gets, he's probably a poster child for "can't fill with local citizen due to lack of qualified candidates".) No I'm thinking more along the lines of a P-1 visa, which is what he should fall under. (No different than any international athlete in pro sports)
That's only been a very recent thing, and I would bet half the embassies are still going "No, really? What?" And that wasn't a thing when Polt came into the US. They really should all be P-1 visas - maybe Kim can answer that one if she's aware.
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On October 15 2013 16:45 kimaphan wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 09:17 Fizzy wrote:
Hm, i cant really say i got any wiser from reading this... but i guess that was to be expected.
This will sound increadibly negative, and i apologize for that, but all Kim Phan is saying is "We are going to make changes, we cant announce any changes because we havnt decided what to change... but there will be changes. And we know what changes people in the community are suggesting.. and we are taking them into consideration."
But its good to hear there will be changes atleast. Hi Fizzy! I'm sorry you were disappointed. I was trying to say more than what you got out of it. I'll try to summarize what we're definitely doing next year: - Three regions (AM, EU, and KR)
- Three seasons instead of four to allow us to spread the schedule out
- Doing the above will allow us to simplify the format so that it's easier to follow. We want a more linear approach, meaning the qualifiers would take place first, then challenger, then premier league.
- Improve the broadcast schedule so that it's more predictable. This would mean having a set schedule for the days each of the WCS regions would broadcast, allowing you to better plan your schedule for following WCS.
- Removing season finals in their current form. We want there the be more spotlight on the regional finals and give other tournaments the opportunity to host events very similar to the season finals
For the rest of the changes, we're still in finalizing the decisions with our partners and looking forward to hearing the community feedback.
Could these points be edited into the post? Thanks for clarifying Kim but all that info was buried into a lot of Q&A text where some things weren't finalized.
I'm crossing my fingers you rethink region qualifications. Thanks for taking the time to answer questions.
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@KimaPham
What do you guys/girls at Blizzard think of the video work you did this year for WCS such as the WCS Highlights, spotlights, Top 5 plays?
Do you see opportunity for experimentation next year? I went to the WCS AM fan meet n greet earlier this summer at the Santa Monica Pier and it looked like a great opportunity to make some video content for WCS but not much came from it.
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On October 15 2013 17:02 Heartland wrote:Show nested quote +On October 15 2013 16:55 BaneRiders wrote:On October 15 2013 16:32 Heartland wrote:
I think this overall looks rather reasonable but it's hard to say without any more clear decisions. I agree, it looks good but it is all rather non-committing. A few things I'd like to see next season: - WCS Asia+Australia (excluding Korea) - This does not appear to happen in 2014, and that would be a missed opportunity I think.
- At least one National Team tournaments - Not mentioned, but would work very well in Europe at least. Maybe DH could think of this?
- Limit the number of region hoppers in qualifiers, challenger league and premier league - seems to be happening
- More WCS points in non-WCS tournaments - again, this seems to be happening
- 2v2 tournaments like the doubles in tennis - Maybe this is just my own wet dream, but imagine how cool it would be to see Naniwa and Scarlett teaming up against, uh, I don't know, Life and Innovation. Individual skills important, yes, but will slick team play and elaborated tactics beat über micro etc etc?
The national team thing could be fun. I think there are some other issues with a few of your points however. A non-Korea Australia/Asia WCS might just be a bit too poor in terms of player quality. Another problem with giving out more points in other tournaments is that it's going to solidify Korean dominance rather than diversify it. I'd rather see more WCS points to the national tournaments like the now-defunct tour that TB did, like the Copa America or the two Swedish tournaments. However, the problem with that is that it is likely that it will strengthen already strong scenes (the Swedish one most likely) and not spread out points.
The A+A-K scene may be weak today (I'm not sure this is the case however, could be stronger than the AM scene for all I know), but if no emphasis is put there, it won't grow any stronger either. Hence missed opportunity.
The season final WCS points need to be re-distributed and there are plenty of ways of doing this. Like you say, if Copa America got a share and other similar tournaments, they would (hopefully) get more attention locally as well. It could be that strong scenes would gain initially, but it would also strengthen tournaments like Fragbite etc, and this could bring in more sponsorship and as well viewers. It is all down to the hype of WCS points. 
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United States43 Posts
We would like to focus on three leagues for WCS 2014, but we want to find ways to further support the scenes in other regions. One way would be to adjust the WCS point system so that it incorporates tournaments and leagues from these other regions in a more meaningful way.
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On October 15 2013 15:31 Ketch wrote:
I stopped reading after the answer to the first question "we still have to decide on region locking".... it is almost 2014, make a decision ffs
Edit: ok read the rest... not really impressed. Have they been doing anything at all?
Wow, ok. Props to Kim for responding like this in the thread. Maybe this happens on battle.net as well, I don't know .... My post came from the fact that I am quite annoyed as to the lack of communication regarding WCS and the seeming lack of actions.
I'll be a little bit more constructive then
- I think it's imperative to communicate more clearly and urgently. I for example love what David Kim is doing in opening up the balance changes, by actively sharing his thoughts. We saw these communications problems also in the first seasons of WCS as it was very unclear where and how people could change regions and back again, both for players and public, which leads to frustration. I understand you have to talk to a lot of partners and come to an agreement together on various matters, but I would strive to put deadlines for decisions earlier, so you can communicate them better. The situation with persons like Taeja not playing challenger is an example. Not having the decision ready yet undermines the current WCS structure.
- I approve very much of spreading out the seasons, doing challenger first (instead of after like now) and removing the season finals, and giving more room for other tournaments. Also, smaller events like Shoutcraft Invitationals or Apollo's UK-PC-Shop tournaments might come back, I always liked those little tournaments very much.
- If you give more room to other tournaments and remove the season finals, WCS points at those other tournaments will become more important I think. I think there have to be very good rules or strategy to invites for those tournaments / ensure always open qualifiers etc. Equal opportunities for all players thus. Be clear about what tournaments like IEM are allowed to do if qualified people drop out in regards to WCS points.
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I think WCS should be about residency locks. Koreans coming in for 1-2 weeks in EU/AM for the tournament and then leaving again doesn't help these regions at all. If they were to stay there for longer periods of time, then t european and NA players could have better training partners. Good examples: MC, Forgg.
I don't like all this "we train in Korea (have better training partners), come to EU/NA for a few days, win the money and then leave back to the land of better training".
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On October 15 2013 17:17 kimaphan wrote:
We would like to focus on three leagues for WCS 2014, but we want to find ways to further support the scenes in other regions. One way would be to adjust the WCS point system so that it incorporates tournaments and leagues from these other regions in a more meaningful way.
Yes, adding WCS points to bring up the status of such tournaments could work. The obvious danger is that such tournaments would get infested by players from the regions that already have WCS leagues though.
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- Great to see Blizzard listening; It's a pity so many people on here always want to criticise, and never be happy that Blizzard takes such good care of its player base. I was part of the competitive Call of Duty scene on PC, and developers never had any form of post-purchase interaction with their playerbase, nor did they ever invest a fraction of a penny in eSport. So I'm extremely thankful to Blizzard for being awesome.
- I am glad soft region-lock seems to be strongly considered. Citizenship is too strict, and people like DeMusliM and Polt are great for WCS AM, as are StarDust and other Koreans in EU, as long as they are part of the AM/EU scene. Having TaeJa, Jaedong, and other Koreans who practiced in Korea, and only showed up in their respective regions in the RO16 was not helping growth, especially since these Koreans were winning more money than their compatriots in WCS KR, and being less skilled. What would happen, however to NA players like Kane and goswser who are currently living in Europe? Imo, they should be allowed to choose the region to play in.
- I welcome the decision to remove the Grand Slams, as they did disrupt storylines, and their atmosphere could be re-created with less expense in events like DreamHack, MLG, Iron Squid, IEM, Assembly etc. They also gave even bigger rewards to players who had already won the top prizes, and the most points. However, I hope that the $450,000 in prize money that is freed up is still somehow invested into the scene.
- Different regions have different circumstances, and I would like to see the Korean region being given some autonomy. Going from 5 GSL events and 1 OSL event, to 2 GSL events and 1 OSL event under WCS, with less prizemoney is not a good thing. I am a bit sad that there does not seem to be any changes here.
- The thing that I was perhaps most disappointed about is the lack of a WCS region for China, Taiwan, South East Asia, Japan, Oceania, and the rest of Asia. Whilst some people may say that this further dilutes viewerbase, and that there aren't enough good players in these regions, I believe this to be incorrect. The market for such a league wouldn't necessarily be the fans in the west, but rather, the Chinese-speaking market, which has tons of potential. It would also have an English cast of course, for the viewers in SEA and AU/NZ and anyone interested in the west. People here should realise that us (the EU and NA market) should not be the only target audience, and I think Blizzard can greatly benefit from more exposure to China and the surrounding regions. Not having a WCS region to the above is of great detriment in my opinion. With that said, it does not mean that it definitely has to have the same prize pool, and the same point distribution as say WCS Korea, but no WCS event whatsoever is really bad in my opinion. Hell, people forget that Taiwan has an SC2 league shown on TV, just like Brood War in Korea. Such a league would also largely eliminate the problems that Chinese players had with WCS America - communication, timezones, travel etc. I really wish Blizzard would re-consider.
- I am aware Blizzard tried organising smaller tournaments for regions without WCS leagues, namely Copa America for Latin America, and the Vengeance Cup for SEA. Whilst these were great, I would really like to see them merged in the WCS.
- I hope WCS support extends to tournaments other than the few we got in 2013. Smaller, but significant tournaments should still be able to give out some (smaller) amount of WCS points. It would be great to see a really global WCS system, where most tournaments matter for the grand finale at BlizzCon. So events like EPS Germany, Shoutcraft America, Fragbite Masters, Ritmix RSL, TeSL, Chinese tournaments, ESET Masters etc. SC2 has many  Major Tournaments and Minor Tournaments that unfortunately go below the radar for most.
- Three regions rather than four is actually a good thing - allows for breathing room for other great tournaments. It's a pity something like ATC and SC2L sometimes struggle to keep a regular broadcasting schedule because of WCS, let alone other tournaments that did not happen because WCS is constantly running. It also gives some breathing room for players.
- It's a pity that Team Tournaments still won't be a factor in WCS. Unfortunately, they haven't been the most popular thing since SC2's inception, yet most people fail to realise the importance of teams. It is teams who pay the players' salaries, it is the teams who make the life of pro players more manageable, allowing them to focus solely on their training, and it is teams who are in a much better position to properly market third party sponsors. They are crucial to the life of any eSport, and the focus on 1v1 tournaments has made some traditionally affluent such as SK Gaming, Team Alternate, Virtus.pro, Alliance and Team Empire amongst others going for one or two players rather than a proper team (thus less opportunities for players to become professional gamers); I would really like to see a proper team league in the west, though how this would tie up to WCS, I don't really know!
Hope Blizzard reads! <3
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On October 15 2013 17:09 Liquid`Ret wrote:
I personally think the idea of somehow rewarding ladder peformances in a minor way is very interesting. That could be the first step into a solution for the 'Barcode situation' which is hugely detrimental to the community feel on battle.net as well as on the personal player streams.
On top of that I also hugely support a region lock based on where someone is residing and thus where they are practicing.
I agree, the barcode men are not really helping the fans. The ladder seasons would become an online tournament in its own right with WCS points. I like!
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EPT
