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NOTICE: Blizzard has not officially announced any information on visa criteria, and some players are operating under unconfirmed assumptions. |
The bottom line is, World Championship Series won't represent the best competition of the best players in the world. GSL's Ro32 would have way more talented, skilled, and dedicated players. This is what the "I don't want to watch more faceless Koreans"mongers wanted, lets see how it plays out. As for me, this de-legitimizes the scene as a whole. If the players don't care about having the best possible competition, why should I spend the time to watch it?
Instead of casually turning on WCS NA when it is on, I'll just keep watching Proleague VODs like BW days.
And about CatZ and his so called "skill gap" it is BS. The skill gap between the "breaking out" candidates in NA and fringe Code B players is closer to NFL players to high school All American teams than NFL to AP All American Collegiate players. Not to mention many of them are 1.5 or 2nd generation Korean immigrants anyways.
As to how much it affects viewership and how the great white Jesus "will save NA Sc2" is up to you to fantasize about.
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The fact that people can not recognize the difference between Soulkey and CatZ without looking at their nicknames in a game, doesn't mean that people don't prefer too watch the better play anyway. As someone said here, I am not an expert in Boxing and I can not tell the specifics differences between the top 5 boxers in the world and the top 5 boxers of the city I live. But I would obviously prefer to watch a fight between the top 5 boxer than the championship of the city I live, because I KNOW they are doing awesome things and they would humiliate boxers like those from my city.
As CatZ admitted, a top korean GM could point the differences between soO and Nerchio skill in a game, so, I prefer to watch soO because I KNOW he is doing awesome things, while Nerchio is doing things that maybe EVEN ME could do, or, at least, he is doing not-so-bizarre-things.
That is the reason I love to watch top koreans against foreigners (except snute), because it became evident the gap in skill, sense of game etc.
I would never watch WCS NA without the koreans, because I KNOW (by experience) that the skill level would be low, and that's the same reason and don't watch a box competition from the city a live.
(sorry my english)
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On September 10 2014 23:44 Goofinator wrote:
I don't see why the average viewers ability to tell the difference between Korean and non-Korean play is relevant to the discussion about region lock. For a start, I think to say people want to watch "Koreans" is wrong. People want to watch the best players and the best players happen to be Korean, as proven by tournament results. By removing the Koreans from WCS America, you are robbing the audience from watching the best players in that region, which leads them to enjoying the games less because they know they could be enjoying an objectively better product, regardless of whether they can perceive the difference or not.
True, i think most people want to watch the best players, regadless of being able to tell the difference in player skills.
But we can still watch the koreans in GSL and other tournaments, since only WCS AM and EU are changing. Hopefully the koreans will keep traveling to play.
And i disagree that better players = better games, specially when the level of play is high anyway and the skill gap is not huge. Every time we have the best games thread i sense some bias towards selecting the games from the best players, excluding highly entertaining games from players of lower skill, less famous or less appreciated. I remember how much i enjoyed HomeStory Cup, mostly for the group stage games between foreigners that are not Scarlett or Snute (i love them btw). Some people are missing great games and a ton of fun wearing "full foreigner" and "full NA" glasses.
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On September 10 2014 06:52 SFDuality wrote:
Taeja laying down the smack. What a time for him to retire, too. Fans want to see him in GSL, Code S players want to play him in GSL, Blizzard implements a region lock that basically forces him to play in GSL, and he fucking retires.
Love those miscellaneous answers.
Taeja just doesn't give a fuck
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What about chinese players?
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On September 11 2014 01:25 ppp wrote:
What about chinese players?
They will play in WCS AM, like this year. But I hope that Blizz will get rid of the seperate qualifiers for the variopus regions that fall under WCS AM and just have qualifiers amongst all of them (though latency might be an issue here).
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JD back to GSL <-- you heard it here first
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The NA scene is currently not as skilled as the Korean scene. The problem WCS introduced was it killed off most other NA tournaments besides the Redbull events, and flooded the NA scene with Koreans who play on the Korean ladder but play WCS NA. This meant the NA scene had no potential for skill growth. This meant there were fewer NA pros. This meant the audience for NA sc2 shrank because people like to root for the home town hero (the most moneyed and popular players in early sc2, Huk and Idra, were not the most skilled. They were from NA). Now that the region is locked, the quality of games in WCS NA will decrease but the skill of NA pros will increase. Blizzard is taking a gambit: they are hoping NA pros will take this opportunity to increase their skill, now that they have an achievable goal. Ultimately, if the gambit pays off, we will end up with a vibrant and relatively skillful NA sc2 scene. If it doesn't, wcs na will just be a joke, but we can still watch plenty of high level sc2 in wcs eu, wcs kr and everywhere else. But if the gambit does pay off, we should see an increase in foreign viewership, without a decline in korean viewership (which is dependent mostly on proleague and gsl, not randos from axiom competing in wcs na). This is good for the scene.
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On September 11 2014 00:11 prokofiev wrote:
I would never watch WCS NA without the koreans, because I KNOW (by experience) that the skill level would be low, and that's the same reason and don't watch a box competition from the city a live.
(sorry my english)
Why do you watch WCS NA at all then? It isn't the highest skill level tournament right now. That's GSL. If you prefer to watch the best sc2, where best means highest skilled, you should have always been watching GSL and wcs na should always have been a backwater.
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On September 11 2014 01:34 Rikudou wrote:
JD back to GSL <-- you heard it here first
Back to Code B
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lol soO tells everyone the truth
the problem is not that GSL gives not enough points - the problem is Korea SC2 scene is small compared to a whole continent like Europe - and its not easy to do Tournaments with Kespa.
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On September 11 2014 01:49 Oreo7 wrote:
The NA scene is currently not as skilled as the Korean scene.
true
The problem WCS introduced was it killed off most other NA tournaments besides the Redbull events, and flooded the NA scene with Koreans who play on the Korean ladder but play WCS NA.
WCS NA did not kill off MLG, WCS NA was supposed to give NASL a focal point.
This meant the NA scene had no potential for skill growth.
false, tough korean competition helps close the skill gap between Korea and foreign land. Snute and other legitimate foreigners have said as much, as well as Koreans themselves.
This meant there were fewer NA pros.
the bad players indeed left the scene, the truly good players stayed to compete.
This meant the audience for NA sc2 shrank because people like to root for the home town hero
the audience for SC2 generally speaking has gone down over time, not just NA. someone had numbers posted somewhere, not very precise I know, but there you have it.
(the most moneyed and popular players in early sc2, Huk and Idra, were not the most skilled. They were from NA).
false. HuK is still in WCS AM today, competing with Koreigners. he's legitimately good and very consistent. Idra was one of the best foreigners in the world from 2010-2012, notice the amount of first place wins he has as well as deep GSL runs.
Now that the region is locked, the quality of games in WCS NA will decrease but the skill of NA pros will increase.
this is balderdash. if NA "pros" require less competition to play better, then they're not good at all. there is no way in hell that WCS AM is going to get stronger with skilled players being kicked out of it. this is absolutely ridiculous.
Blizzard is taking a gambit: they are hoping NA pros will take this opportunity to increase their skill, now that they have an achievable goal.
if someone isn't able to increase skill when the competition is fierce, they're not able to do it when that competition is gone. NA pros won't get better, they just won't have strong players who are better than them to compete with. so they won't lose as much. that simple. NA to EU is perfectly fine in terms of latency, so there's no reason that NA players can't play on EU.
Ultimately, if the gambit pays off, we will end up with a vibrant and relatively skillful NA sc2 scene. If it doesn't, wcs na will just be a joke, but we can still watch plenty of high level sc2 in wcs eu, wcs kr and everywhere else.
so you're saying that the NA scene could very well die? how is that positive? about about the legitimately good NA players?
But if the gambit does pay off, we should see an increase in foreign viewership, without a decline in korean viewership (which is dependent mostly on proleague and gsl, not randos from axiom competing in wcs na).
the viewership might increase at first, but in the long run, the NA scene is going to get really bad and no one is going to watch their local heros play between each other when they know they're actually small fry compared to the big Korean fish
This is good for the scene.
only if blizzard supports these changes with things that make sense. e.g. help relieve pressure on the Korean scene. help players obtain visas. and so on.
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On September 10 2014 06:13 Silvana wrote:I think CatZ paid soO to say what he said  Seriously, the three regions similar in difficulty? I want whatever he is smoking. Now really seriously, couldn't be that he meant something else... like... "you should be recognized and rewarded in the same way in all regions regardless of difficulty"? Otherwise I really don't get it, if GSL wasn't way more difficult why would all these Koreans fly to other regions...?
Well, to soo, the GSL is an easy tournament lolol
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Catz said: The skill gap between foreigners and Koreans is all in tiny details, and often times its not even there.
WUT? so how does he explain the fact that Koreans win everything? come on man, what he says make ZERO sense.
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On September 10 2014 22:55 Tenks wrote:
Catz is off his fucking rocker if he thinks a ro32 game in WCS NA is anywhere near the level of WCS KR ro32. Even WCS EU has some pretty off-the-rails bad games in the ro32.
His point is that they might not be equal in skill level but that they can be equally exciting.
It's really not that hard, sweetie.
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On September 11 2014 02:43 chairmobile wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2014 22:55 Tenks wrote:
Catz is off his fucking rocker if he thinks a ro32 game in WCS NA is anywhere near the level of WCS KR ro32. Even WCS EU has some pretty off-the-rails bad games in the ro32. His point is that they might not be equal in skill level but that they can be equally exciting. It's really not that hard, sweetie.
Yes, I agree.
Watching Neeb getting obliterated tonight will be very exciting!
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United States33502 Posts
Neeb has played some pretty exciting and competitive series against Korean players yo
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Sweet! I might watch some starcraft again after one year of dota if a foreigner has a chance of winning a tournament again.
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You guys are getting so bent out of shape about some comments that are basically true. Maybe he took it to an extreme by saying you "can't tell the difference," but what he means is - the difference isn't that huge, and it's not big enough to detract from your enjoyment. He's right.
The Koreans in WCS NA are inferior to the ones in Korea, right? I'd rather watch less skilled foreigners than less skilled Koreans any day.
Also, it's not like there will be zero Koreans in other regions. It just means they have to move there, and actually contribute toward improving the scene. Instead of just talking all the money and WCS points and flying back home.
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As for Wc3, the Europeans had a solid player base which didn't really decline, but the NA scene was kinda dead with just a handful of good players, like it is now. Maybe Americans just don't like RTS very much. I don't think this change will help the NA scene much.
Hoping that not too many Koreans will retire, but surely many will.
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EPT
