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!
On October 15 2013 09:29 BillGates wrote: This whole WCS is absurd. What Blizzard needs to do is have 1 big tournament at Blizzcon where they have a huge prize pool like half a million dollars (like dota2) and have it be redistributed over 32 players.
This will be the end year tournament that will have the best player in the world as winning the 1 million dollar tournament is going to be the highest priority for all the players and the best one will win.
This WCS crap where you don't know when it is, the studio is extremely small and feels so small in scope, there are too many regions, too many tournament, too weird of a situation with players from other continents playing in other regions, etc...
Just a giant mess that is destroying 3rd party tournaments like Dreamhack, eswc, MLG, NASL, Totalbisquit tournaments and smaller tournaments.
1 big tournament wouldn't work in starcraft imo :/
Lol at this "Q and A". Was nothing but simple PR and dancing around topics and questions with empty, meaningless words stating how they will consider things, or are taking all ideas into account. Not really surprising though honestly.
I wish there was a Latin american league which the winner would get a spot in the season finals or even play against someone from another region to get it (similar to what the FIFA world cup have, when the 4th placed team from North, Central America and Caribbean plays with the Oceania's champion).
And I am also not fond of the idea of not having a season finals.
TL;DR we haven't made any decisions yet and we're not even sure why we agreed to do this Q&A now To be fair they did say there will only be 3 seasons, and no new regions
Seems like they're hinting at a semi-region-lock, where some Challenger qualifier spots are reserved for players who live in the region, and some are open to anyone.
The restructure of Challenger will be so that there are more than 8 qualifier spots each season, I'd guess.
I appreciate the continuity in format, structure etc that is promised when she says there will be no drastic differences. Already now, SC2 tournaments are booked for more than a year away. This scene is staying really strong!
I don't think a full on region-lock would be good.
What she said regarding the prize pool is really interesting. Personally I think money would be better spent helping teams establish team houses close to the different studios. That would help with the logistical issues connected to playing all games offline. This would also improve the conditions for a team league, which Kim mentioned was something to encourage, and I agree; it helps new-comers establish themselves and get studio experience.
I don't like removing the season finals; I really liked them. I think the problem of them blending into and oscuring the regional storylines will be solved if there is more time between them and the regional finals, which should be the case with three seasons instead of four.
Challenger League should be played before the Premier League, creating a more linear and logical story and build-up towards the finals.
I would be interested in a WCS Asia (China+SEA), but I could see that there's not enough base material and interest for it to occur. Perhaps a solution would be to create a second tier of WCS tournaments, with one in South and Latin America and one in SEA and China. Those being less prestigious, with less prize money, less production and less spots in Season Finals.
WCS 2013 has been awesome so far, and the Global Finals are still to come. Thank you, Blizzard! I look forward to WCS 2014 already!
I'm probably a minority with this view, but I dislike how both Blizzard and many posters in community sites are so focused on upper end symptoms (low viewership on pro tourneys) rather than what I view as more base level issues... the primary being small (relatively speaking) playerbase.
If more people play the game, viewership should just grow and sustain at higher number because people who play the game will have emotional understanding of the game.
"Storylines" (I hate that term in esports urgh) and good production can only carry this business so far. It's hard to convince someone to care about other people playing a video game when that person couldn't care enough to play the game in the first place.
SC2 is just too mechanically demanding to sustain a playerbase size large enough to grow any further. BW fans will probably disagree with me since BW was definitely much more mechanically challenging yet had some amazing success in Korea. But Korea has the fortune of having a central location and back then competition was just different.
Considering some sort of lock, probably not hard region lock
Possibly Ro32 live
Possibly ladder contribution to be relevant
Some way to involve teams
Rethinking the point system
More linear system and reworking Challenger League
These are all (extremely) positive changes for the scene. It's good to leave more room to hype each WCS and create room for other tournaments both online and offline. Hopefully the prize money from the missing tournaments leads to some of that finding its way back into the scene. Purely from a structural perspective it is a huge improvement and absolutely what is needed. Most of the above are badly needed, all are improvements, and it is good to see they are being considered. Half of the reactions are really confusing me. It seems an absurd amount of negativity even though most of the information is positive.
Lot of fluff, not a lot of content. A lot of what Blizz is saying is basically "the details are up in the air, we're thinking we'll do so and so, but not certain about it." As per usual, we're going to have to wait until Blizzcon or later for the finalized details, but that should be okay. Still a few months until 2014, a lot can change in that time, especially in a place like esports. Plus the stuff they're thinking about and the concepts they're focusing on are pretty good.
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^^
Bullshit. She didn't mention HSC or ASUS ROG - do we think these tournaments are dead just because of that?
Very happy to see the removal of the season finals. Let other tournaments like DH and IEM handle the primary international competition. It was sad to see the winners of the S2 regional finals devalued immediately by Jaedong and Bomber.
EPT
