A report from Daily Esports states that Samsung Khan's head coach, Kim "January" Ga-eul will not be renewing her contract with the team. January's contract had run out at the end of September, and she had already moved out of the team house in order to rest and look for new opportunities.
DES speculates that January may continue to work in esports: Janaury has told those around her that she has not "retired" but simply not extended her contract with Samsung. DES also mentioned past rumors that January may depart the team due to Samsung's signing of ex-MVP head coach Choi Yoon Sang along with the Team MVP's League of Legends teams.
I always liked to think she was somewhat of a Mom to all the lil Samsung progamers... doubt it was actually like that but that's what I thought of in my head.
Stork has outlasted Bisu, January, Jangbi, Idra, Sea, MKP and Ganzi. Much like how Genius outlasted Puzzle, Coca, Miya, sC and MKP even though he played LoL before any of them.
Really sad I started really rooting for Khan because of January/Stork/Jangbi/FBH. Now Stork is the only one left, and I'm not counting on that lasting for too much longer. Good luck to her in whatever she does next, but I'll miss the Khan that I knew and loved.
On October 22 2013 16:51 Miss_Foxy wrote: She could be joining another Korean Starcraft 2 team, who knows.
PS: After all, Starcraft II is still growing at a pretty rapid rate in other countries, and still growing in Korea (According to sources).
wut. sc2 has been dying for a while in korea stork....your time is coming
I don't know about dying. It was expected to be the next BW, but it wasn't. However from my understanding the scene is growing at a slow rate, not explosive growth. The other day, amazingly enough, I saw kids playing SC2 in a pc room...I almost died of a heart attack
Sad. Always loved January. Just nice to have a female head coach/manager in a male dominated sport.
On October 22 2013 17:02 GulpyBlinkeyes wrote: Really sad I started really rooting for Khan because of January/Stork/Jangbi/FBH. Now Stork is the only one left, and I'm not counting on that lasting for too much longer. Good luck to her in whatever she does next, but I'll miss the Khan that I knew and loved.
Yeah I know how you feel. Jangbi and Great were 2 of my favourites. And everyone's fond of January I think. Still, I'll always love Khan regardless of who plays.
On October 22 2013 17:18 riyanme wrote: stork will definetly follow when his contract expires. im pretty much sure he will not renew given the cirumstances...
So sad to see her go. She was practically the face of Samsung KHAN.
But if Stork is still kicking around, who knows. There may be hope yet that some Koreans enjoy pro sc2 as an esport compared to other alternatives, and considering he renewed his contract..
Khan without January is like a Die Hard movie without explosions and copious amounts of blunt force trauma. Stork will have to keep the flame burning, at least until the initial colonies on Reach are established.
I wonder if Blizzard have recently heard about those retirements and not renewing contracts. They seriously need to ask themselves what is wrong and they should fix it.
On October 22 2013 17:54 darkness wrote: I wonder if Blizzard have recently heard about those retirements and not renewing contracts. They seriously need to ask themselves what is wrong and they should fix it.
Well it's not League of Legends and it's probably very hard to fix that.
On October 22 2013 16:22 itsjustatank wrote: the end of an era, really.
Yeah... When KHAN's lineup was the awesome FBH, the monstrous Stork, the talented JangBi, the promising Great and the decent but hated sniper FrOzean, leaded by January, good old times .
And now that January is gone, Stork will play way too much WoW.
Everybody run to lol or wot this is starting to be hilarious..........SC2 is in big depart mode (everybody jumping of boat to join new ship with bigger potential and its normal). Blizz just screwed this game .....
On October 22 2013 19:16 GTR wrote: Sad to see her go. Looks like Lee Jae-kyun of Woongjin is the last remaining out of the original Proleague head coaches.
Was Coach Park not one of the originals? He's at CJ now right?
On October 22 2013 19:16 GTR wrote: Sad to see her go. Looks like Lee Jae-kyun of Woongjin is the last remaining out of the original Proleague head coaches.
Was Coach Park not one of the originals? He's at CJ now right?
I think I'm gonna pull out of Samsung KHAN. When JB retired I thought, "well at least we've got our coach!" And now we've got even fewer players besides Stork.
God damn it, she was such an inspiration, everything she was on camera in SPL you could just feel her presence. Will not be the same without her, I can just imagine what the Samsung players are feeling.
On October 22 2013 19:16 GTR wrote: Sad to see her go. Looks like Lee Jae-kyun of Woongjin is the last remaining out of the original Proleague head coaches.
Was Coach Park not one of the originals? He's at CJ now right?
coach park is a new school kid.
Yep, he was never an original lmao. I see people need to be educated about the Telecom.
On October 22 2013 16:51 Miss_Foxy wrote: She could be joining another Korean Starcraft 2 team, who knows.
PS: After all, Starcraft II is still growing at a pretty rapid rate in other countries, and still growing in Korea (According to sources).
wut. sc2 has been dying for a while in korea stork....your time is coming
I don't know about dying. It was expected to be the next BW, but it wasn't. However from my understanding the scene is growing at a slow rate, not explosive growth. The other day, amazingly enough, I saw kids playing SC2 in a pc room...I almost died of a heart attack
Balderdash. It was never supposed to be, lol. You guys have some ridiculously high expectations even for today's day and age compared to what gaming was back then. BW set a pretty high staple for any competitive game. It's only going to get harder for developers to make their games relevant for over a decade when it comes to sponsorship dollars and its fan base.
On October 22 2013 19:16 GTR wrote: Sad to see her go. Looks like Lee Jae-kyun of Woongjin is the last remaining out of the original Proleague head coaches.
Was Coach Park not one of the originals? He's at CJ now right?
coach park is a new school kid.
Yep, he was never an original lmao. I see people need to be educated about the Telecom.
I only really started following progaming in about 2007 and I've got an awful memory :p
January may not have always been the most consistent coach in Proleague, but she almost always had one of her players in the OSL/MSL finals. Also she let firebathero be firebathero, so she deserves props for that. I hope she finds a new path she can enjoy.
Oh man I don't know how important she was to the starcraft community but she seemed like the strong person who would lead the team to great sucsex. Sad to see a prominent figure go. BTW where is Coach park?
wow that really is the end of an era, never thought I'd see her leave.
On October 23 2013 02:26 Dontkillme wrote: Oh man I don't know how important she was to the starcraft community but she seemed like the strong person who would lead the team to great sucsex. Sad to see a prominent figure go. BTW where is Coach park?
On October 23 2013 02:26 Dontkillme wrote: Oh man I don't know how important she was to the starcraft community but she seemed like the strong person who would lead the team to great sucsex. Sad to see a prominent figure go. BTW where is Coach park?
It's success b.t.w. , wonder if you sir - did it on purpose.. rofl
Stork has outlasted Bisu, January, Jangbi, Idra, Sea, MKP and Ganzi. Much like how Genius outlasted Puzzle, Coca, Miya, sC and MKP even though he played LoL before any of them. [/QUOTE]
CoCa still plays SC2 and Puzzle as well as far as i know.
Wow, this hit me harder than I thought it would, since I'm not a big Khan fan Somehow she just became a constant in the BW eSports world, and I can't imagine it without her =/. She really cared for her players, I'll miss her.
Stork has outlasted Bisu, January, Jangbi, Idra, Sea, MKP and Ganzi. Much like how Genius outlasted Puzzle, Coca, Miya, sC and MKP even though he played LoL before any of them. [/QUOTE]
CoCa still plays SC2 and Puzzle as well as far as i know. [/QUOTE]
Retirements were happening in Brood War, but it's a bit different seeing big names like January and Bisu retire because they represent a different, better time in Starcraft's history that we will never get back.
the drunk ahjussi stepping onto stage in 2007 is one of the most hilarious moments of esports history also recognized the fact the players needed security at events as big as that -_-
On October 23 2013 11:48 GTR wrote: the drunk ahjussi stepping onto stage in 2007 is one of the most hilarious moments of esports history also recognized the fact the players needed security at events as big as that -_-
On October 23 2013 03:51 hacklebeast wrote: Kim "let's send great for ace match" Ga Eul
LOL....
I remember the stream chat exploding whenever something like this happened. Right before the ace match, Stork or Jangbi just destroyed someone and look on fire. Great comes out.
Not surprising tbh although a bit unexpected. SCII isn't doing as well as BW in Korea and she may not like the game as much as BW either. That and salary negotiations and such might've contributed. Best of luck to her!
Well leave it to Blizzard with its WCS to basically dismantle competitive Starcraft. I mean where are the hundreds of thousands of viewers for every tournament?
The WCS from the last couple of days has been floating around 20k viewers, I'd say cumulative they've had about 100k viewers, but unique viewers would probably be about 30k which is the most important.
I mean I remember in SC2, not the expension, about a year after the release the dreamhack winter I believe had 100k viewers at all times, rising to as much 160k and throughout the day had over 1 million overall views. These days even half those numbers are a pipe dream.
I also don't watch SC2 much, because its not interesting enough, the WCS is really confusing for me, I don't really know the dates, the schedules, the groups, it kind of feels all over the place.
Like you don't know how big or how small the tournament is, you don't know how important it is, before you knew, you knew dreamhack was major, you knew all the top players would be there, you knew MLG was major, you knew IPL was major, you knew GSL code S was major, you knew what you were watching, the tournaments were spaced out nicely, you knew exactly when they start, how long they run, etc...
I also feel like Blizzard has made the game really boring, I loved Brood War, SC2 while inferior was still interesting, of course it had its major problems, but at least ZvT was super interesting, with SC2 expansion it became interesting again with the units and stuff, but since the release its become boring and repetitive.
They need to enable more options, they need to just remove the damn colossus out from the game, the unit sucks, everything revolves around it, we need tanks back in TvZ, that dynamic is really interesting and we need Carriers back for Protoss.
On October 23 2013 17:33 BillGates wrote: Well leave it to Blizzard with its WCS to basically dismantle competitive Starcraft. I mean where are the hundreds of thousands of viewers for every tournament?
The WCS from the last couple of days has been floating around 20k viewers, I'd say cumulative they've had about 100k viewers, but unique viewers would probably be about 30k which is the most important.
I mean I remember in SC2, not the expension, about a year after the release the dreamhack winter I believe had 100k viewers at all times, rising to as much 160k and throughout the day had over 1 million overall views. These days even half those numbers are a pipe dream.
I also don't watch SC2 much, because its not interesting enough, the WCS is really confusing for me, I don't really know the dates, the schedules, the groups, it kind of feels all over the place.
Like you don't know how big or how small the tournament is, you don't know how important it is, before you knew, you knew dreamhack was major, you knew all the top players would be there, you knew MLG was major, you knew IPL was major, you knew GSL code S was major, you knew what you were watching, the tournaments were spaced out nicely, you knew exactly when they start, how long they run, etc...
I also feel like Blizzard has made the game really boring, I loved Brood War, SC2 while inferior was still interesting, of course it had its major problems, but at least ZvT was super interesting, with SC2 expansion it became interesting again with the units and stuff, but since the release its become boring and repetitive.
They need to enable more options, they need to just remove the damn colossus out from the game, the unit sucks, everything revolves around it, we need tanks back in TvZ, that dynamic is really interesting and we need Carriers back for Protoss.
You guys have some very far-fetched expectations about how many people will tune in.
On October 23 2013 17:33 BillGates wrote: Well leave it to Blizzard with its WCS to basically dismantle competitive Starcraft. I mean where are the hundreds of thousands of viewers for every tournament?
The WCS from the last couple of days has been floating around 20k viewers, I'd say cumulative they've had about 100k viewers, but unique viewers would probably be about 30k which is the most important.
I mean I remember in SC2, not the expension, about a year after the release the dreamhack winter I believe had 100k viewers at all times, rising to as much 160k and throughout the day had over 1 million overall views. These days even half those numbers are a pipe dream.
I also don't watch SC2 much, because its not interesting enough, the WCS is really confusing for me, I don't really know the dates, the schedules, the groups, it kind of feels all over the place.
Like you don't know how big or how small the tournament is, you don't know how important it is, before you knew, you knew dreamhack was major, you knew all the top players would be there, you knew MLG was major, you knew IPL was major, you knew GSL code S was major, you knew what you were watching, the tournaments were spaced out nicely, you knew exactly when they start, how long they run, etc...
I also feel like Blizzard has made the game really boring, I loved Brood War, SC2 while inferior was still interesting, of course it had its major problems, but at least ZvT was super interesting, with SC2 expansion it became interesting again with the units and stuff, but since the release its become boring and repetitive.
They need to enable more options, they need to just remove the damn colossus out from the game, the unit sucks, everything revolves around it, we need tanks back in TvZ, that dynamic is really interesting and we need Carriers back for Protoss.
Yawn, try less bad opinions and more words that matter if you really want to post an essay....
Immensely sad that my favorite coach isn't with my favorite team anymore... She said that she isn't necessarily retiring, just not renewing. I hope she signs something new with Samsung, but if nothing else, I just hope she gets a good job in eSports.
I wasn't around when BW was big, but wasn't the smaller and tighter community exactly what made it awesome? Things do not need to be insanely huge to be succesful. Look at EVE's subscription model as example. About 300-500k players/accounts but very stable, versus the formerly 11 mil for 'WoW'.
I think we're all forgetting that gaming used to be very underground and that we're now stepping into the limelight. With all due respect, I sometimes think that the people complaining most about 'SC is dying zomg1!1!1!one!!11!eleven' are people who haven't had the experience that a lot of the old gamers had.