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United States23455 Posts
On February 08 2014 23:51 Tanzklaue wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2014 23:40 wrier wrote:On February 08 2014 21:38 Aeroplaneoverthesea wrote: TL has always been crazy biased towards Taeja. They way overhype the "summer of Taeja" too (a phrase used purely by TL writers).
No one who didn't even qualify for Blizzcon has any business being in any player of the year discussions. Taeja was at Blizzcon, lost to Dear on the 2nd Stream. who was at that point of time still the probably hottest player in the world. also taeja had one of his "how did he win tall those championships with that kind of play?" day. The games were actually pretty good, Dear just had the best PvT in the world bar none at the time. He had just come off beating Maru twice in a row, once again with good games but a seemingly dominant scoreline.
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On February 08 2014 22:08 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2014 22:03 ACrow wrote: Taeja has won the most tournaments and has had consistently the highest performance if you consider the whole year (as opposed to Dear who rose only later in 2013, Innovation who had a big dip after hellbat nerf etc). So there is definitely a strong reason to pick Taeja as best player of the year, even though I personally would have gone with one of the GSL winners too, just because I value that title so highly. I don't see any TL bias here, don't be unfair guys just because your favorite maybe was deserving as well! 3 of them were not really stacked though, i mean i love HSC, but cmon let's be real now^^ And looking at the Asus path of taeja, this wasn't really hard either... Winning isn't everything, else some zotac cup (or whatever weekly tournament) winners would be player of the year now  because zotac cups and premier tournamnets are totally comparable 
at the higher stages, both asus and HSC get just as hard as tournaments that are mroe stacked, so winning them still accounts a lot.
and both dreamhack titles were 2 of the most stacked events of the year, easily comparable to WCS Korea in terms of skill. and only soulkey and dear won 2 tournaments of that caliber besides taeja, minus his extras.
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very glad they didnt pick sOs
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On February 08 2014 23:52 Zealously wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2014 23:51 Tanzklaue wrote:On February 08 2014 23:40 wrier wrote:On February 08 2014 21:38 Aeroplaneoverthesea wrote: TL has always been crazy biased towards Taeja. They way overhype the "summer of Taeja" too (a phrase used purely by TL writers).
No one who didn't even qualify for Blizzcon has any business being in any player of the year discussions. Taeja was at Blizzcon, lost to Dear on the 2nd Stream. who was at that point of time still the probably hottest player in the world. also taeja had one of his "how did he win tall those championships with that kind of play?" day. He did? I seem to recall Taeja playing fairly well against Dear, he just happened to face the best PvT in the world. Then again, I was dual-streaming at the time so I may be wrong. also @Darkhoarse, if i recall correctly, he had one really good game against Dear and the rest of the games were rather meh. but i probably just look at them as worse as they were because i as a Taeja fanboy couldn't believe how hard Dear beat him
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Couldn't you have dedicated more than 2 minutes to writing something about broken promises? Still butthurt?
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Funny how WCS was meant to find who the best player is. What a miss from Blizzard :p
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On February 09 2014 00:02 Tanzklaue wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2014 23:52 Zealously wrote:On February 08 2014 23:51 Tanzklaue wrote:On February 08 2014 23:40 wrier wrote:On February 08 2014 21:38 Aeroplaneoverthesea wrote: TL has always been crazy biased towards Taeja. They way overhype the "summer of Taeja" too (a phrase used purely by TL writers).
No one who didn't even qualify for Blizzcon has any business being in any player of the year discussions. Taeja was at Blizzcon, lost to Dear on the 2nd Stream. who was at that point of time still the probably hottest player in the world. also taeja had one of his "how did he win tall those championships with that kind of play?" day. He did? I seem to recall Taeja playing fairly well against Dear, he just happened to face the best PvT in the world. Then again, I was dual-streaming at the time so I may be wrong. also @Darkhoarse, if i recall correctly, he had one really good game against Dear and the rest of the games were rather meh. but i probably just look at them as worse as they were because i as a Taeja fanboy couldn't believe how hard Dear beat him  The game on whirlwind taeja gged way too early as he could have won as there was only an archon and a few zealots in his natural but he had a 3rd CC whereas Dear was only on 2 nexus.
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Taeja obviously master race guys come on
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On February 09 2014 00:32 ANLProbe wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2014 00:02 Tanzklaue wrote:On February 08 2014 23:52 Zealously wrote:On February 08 2014 23:51 Tanzklaue wrote:On February 08 2014 23:40 wrier wrote:On February 08 2014 21:38 Aeroplaneoverthesea wrote: TL has always been crazy biased towards Taeja. They way overhype the "summer of Taeja" too (a phrase used purely by TL writers).
No one who didn't even qualify for Blizzcon has any business being in any player of the year discussions. Taeja was at Blizzcon, lost to Dear on the 2nd Stream. who was at that point of time still the probably hottest player in the world. also taeja had one of his "how did he win tall those championships with that kind of play?" day. He did? I seem to recall Taeja playing fairly well against Dear, he just happened to face the best PvT in the world. Then again, I was dual-streaming at the time so I may be wrong. also @Darkhoarse, if i recall correctly, he had one really good game against Dear and the rest of the games were rather meh. but i probably just look at them as worse as they were because i as a Taeja fanboy couldn't believe how hard Dear beat him  The game on whirlwind taeja gged way too early as he could have won as there was only an archon and a few zealots in his natural but he had a 3rd CC whereas Dear was only on 2 nexus. They found out that Soulkey, Dear etc are the best. Not wrong.
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Dissing the broken promises thing is stupid and immature. How hard can it be to admit a wrong. Acting like people didn't care about the Hyun thing is also amazingly stupid as he got beneficial showmatches/tournament with a huge amount of donations from the community to help him because they cared about it. Such a ridiculous write-up.
No foreign terran award is a bit funny but also a bit sad . I agree with the other awards except player of the year which should have been Jaedong!
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On February 08 2014 23:47 Darkhoarse wrote: Here we go again with people complaining about awards given for fun. We shall call it the "2013 drama award"-drama crisis.
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Good list! However think best player should have gone to Jaedong/Soulkey :p
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On February 09 2014 00:35 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:Dissing the broken promises thing is stupid and immature. How hard can it be to admit a wrong. Acting like people didn't care about the Hyun thing is also amazingly stupid as he got beneficial showmatches/tournament with a huge amount of donations from the community to help him because they cared about it. Such a ridiculous write-up. No foreign terran award is a bit funny but also a bit sad  . I agree with the other awards except player of the year.
There was probably a bit of vested interest in that piece. TL and EG both took some flack for the pizza.gg showmatch from the community, and this is probably TL's underhanded way to try to get back at the community.
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Terran of the year: maybe Taeja - Player of the year: not really Taeja.
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Great article but bitching about adblock, really? Seemed like it doesn't really fit in an article like this.
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4713 Posts
Really good write up enjoyed every bit of it, minus the drama part which I didn't understand (thank goodness I don't visit enough reddit).
I must say I find it amusing how people consider TL biased for voting on Taeja when they themselves don't provide enough support for their fan favorites.
Lets look at the facts, first best terran of the years. The candidates: Polt, Bomber, Innovation, Maru and Taeja.
First of all, apart from Taeja and Polt, none of the other players have more then 1 championship gold the entire year in a premier tournament. Yes, if you look at the year in review for yeah player you'll see that all of them have had very high placings, frequently making it to semifinals, quarter finals, but only 1 gold medal, which really counts a lot when talking about best player. At the end of the day consistency is nice and all, but the only thing people will remember years from now is who actually won shit, so with that in mind the list of best terran of the year from Korea is quickly narrowed down to just Taeja vs Polt.
For the purpose of my analysis I'll consider all tournaments equal because, I don't want to start a shit flinging contest by calling out certain players for being inferior to others to prove a point that one player's journey was harder then another. And for all intents and purposes, their tournament runs where actually quite comparable and balanced in difficulty. Taeja's championship runs in all the tournaments he attended had him go up against numerous Koreans, a lot of them champions in their own right, during both group stages and the playoff parts, and he had to face players of all races and he did so soundly. Yes even at HSC Taeja had to face quite a lot of Koreans, of respectable caliber to reach his gold. I also have to give Taeja the edge because he played a pivotal role in a lot of TL's team leagues wins while Polt wasn't on a team.
And, if we have to talk about player of the year, very few have actually been as consistent as him during the entirety of the year. Fun fact, Soulkey, Dear, Polt, Life and Taeja are the only players with more then one championship victory last year. SK and Dear with 2 each, Polt and Life with 3 and Taeja with 5.
Yes for all his great consistency in the early part of last year, Innovation only has one gold to his name and lots of top placing finishers, but again, they don't compare to so many golds from other players. Dear wasn't consistent for all the year, he basically began rising towards the mid to end parts of the year, Soulkey has been indeed consistent with lots of high place finishes and 2 golds, but it still pales in comparison to Polt's 3 and Taeja's 5.
Polt looked extremely strong during his WCS NA wins and MLG run, but looked quite underwhelming in other tournaments he played so his championship winning form was only active for a short while.
Life didn't look at all good last year, despite winning 3 titles, he had periods of extreme vulnerability but every so often he managed to rediscover his championship winning spark and nabbed 3.
Meanwhile Taeja had a very, very long period of time where he looked extremely strong. He was the last terran to make it deep in a WoL GSL, reaching RO4 and losing to the eventual champion RorO, he then had a bit of a downtime and returned in force in summer, where he, again, took championship after championship and looking dominant whenever he won, and still looking extremely strong whenever he lost. Hell, a lot of the players that defeated Taeja also went on win the rest of the tournaments, at least that was the case for RorO, Polt and Bomber, so its not like he lost to scrubs.
For the record I'm not a huge Taeja fan, I wasn't a fan of his style when he first made a splash, in fact I hated it, looked like brute force with no finesse, it looked like he was greedy and people where just letting him get away with it. However, objectively, for his extended period of domination, for his championship winning form and for his 5 gold medals, Taeja is head and shoulders above everyone in 2013.
Again, very funny how people have the nerve to call out TL for being biased when not researching any facts themselves, I bet more then half of them would be shocked at how plain most of their favorite players actually where during the entirety of the year in comparison to Taeja.
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Great awards. Agree with a lot of them.
So glad I watched 2/3 of the best tournaments of the year live. So awesome.
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The French was robbed with not even getting their Iron Squid on the list. Now that was a good show.
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United Kingdom31935 Posts
Teamleagues dont factor in enough imo.
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On February 09 2014 01:43 GumBa wrote: Teamleagues dont factor in enough imo.
Seconded
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