by stuchiu

StarCraft 2 has been a competitively played game for nearly four years now. In that time we have had 25 IEMs, 23 GSLS, 21 Dreamhacks, 20 MLGs,10 HSCs,10 GSTLs, 7 ASUS Rogs, 7 Red Bulls, 4 Hot6ix Cups, 4 NASLs, 3 WCGs, 3 WCS Season Finals, 3 Blizzcons, 3 IPLs, 2.5 seasons of Proleague, 2 Iron Squids, 2 OSLs, 1 WCS 2012 Finals, 1 Kespa Cup, and a handful of other miscellaneous premier leagues. This doesn't even touch upon the extended list of majors, minors, locals and online tournaments.

In total, that adds up to 144 premier tournaments since SC2's launch. In comparison, Brood War had 12 years of history starting from the Hanaro Starleague in 2001. If we bundle all OSLs, MSLs, KPGAs, GOM Classics and WCGs into one package, it adds up to 72 premier tournaments. Reflect upon that. By the end of Wings of Liberty (2+ years into SC2’s history), we had already surpassed Brood War in sheer number of tournaments. I assert all of this not to incite BW vs SC2 discussions or to imply an inherent competition between the two games, but to give you context for the following statement:

The term bonjwa is meaningless in SC2.

Brood War was an entirely domestic scene, completely centralized in South Korea. It spanned over a decade, had only two major premier titles, and one sole team league (Proleague). Throughout its run, the game received little direct intervention from Blizzard. BW got its last gameplay patch on 4/18/01 on patch 1.08, 2.5 years after launch. After that, it was all up to professional players and mapmakers to create balance, either through innovative strategies or map design.

On the other hand, SC2 was larger from the beginning. Tournaments sprung up everywhere from America to Canada to Europe to SEA to Taiwan to China. Not only did SC2 bring in a new wave of Korean players, but it also established a truly global presence that persists to this day. So far, the foreign scene has resiliently repulsed every threat that would have demolished it back in Brood War: Koreans flying over to winning their weekend tournaments, Koreans settling in to win their WCS tournaments, and the huge influx of players switching from BW. And unlike BW, foreign pros are much closer to their Korean counterparts. While it's still rare for any of them to win a premier tournament (Sen is the only foreigner to do so in the last 2 years), it is a fairly common occurrence for a top-tier foreigner to knock out a Korean.

Beyond that are the relative importance of patches to both games. Like I mentioned before, Brood War was remarkable (by today's standards) for the off-hands approach of its developer. After patch 1.08, all "balance" issues were left up to players and mapmakers to tackle. By contrast, SC2 patches are almost continuous and a reaction to community demands. Sometimes it only took a single definitive series, from San vs sC to Thorzain vs MC, to convince Blizzard's design team that danger was imminent. In most cases the choice was fostered by collective outrage stemmed from frustration.

This sensitive attitude towards improvement has made the game volatile from a pro's standpoint. At one time in 2012, Zerg was considered too weak against Terran in the early game due to gas-first reactor hellions. In response, queen range was increased from 3 to 5. Infestors were widely judged to be too strong at the end of WoL (thanks in no small part to the queen buff, which allowed zerg to skimp defensive precautions) so they consequently received the nerf hammer; today, they are a niche unit only made after hive tech in extremely long games. For a long while Protoss ran amuck on blink friendly maps blinking out every Terran until only 3 were left in Code S. Blizzard eventually nerfed blink, instituted a new Terran-favored map pool and buffed the widow mine. And how can we forget the endless nominal adjustment to bunkers?

To be an SC2 pro is to be subject to the prods of a hundred different influences. A player's success in this age is subject to the whims of balance and maps. No matter what strategy you make, it can be rendered useless by an incoming patch. Information dissemination is at an all-time high thanks to widespread internet, increased coverage, and the ease of acquiring replays. No matter how amazing the strategies or mechanics, they will inevitably get studied, copied, impersonated and eventually countered by their peers. Traveling to foreign tournaments brings its own set of unique issues. The most amazing player and the most forgettable scrub have to equally deal with jet lag, travel, LAN issues (remember MLG Dallas and Blizzcon?), and fatigue. For world warriors like MC, HyuN and Jaedong, such peripatetic lifestyles often translated into slowly degrading skill-sets. While they wore themselves out hopping from plane to plane, their peers back home could watch, dissect, practice and put in more hours of practice and get ahead of them.

The relationship between acclaim and circumstance is more blatant when looking at the stay-at-home types. Take INnoVation and Flash. At the beginning of HotS, both were considered two of the best Terrans in the world. They pioneered the lean, streamlined aggression of modern TvZ with hellbat drops and bio/mine pushes, and few opponents had the right answers. Their tag team efforts were so dominating that Blizzard was forced to step in. After the balance team nerfed both the mine and hellbat, they subsequently both fell off form; neither got close to a championship again until this year. Was it a coincidence that they rose from the ashes when Blizzard put in Terran-favored maps, better hellbats, better thors and better mines? Expansions, maps, balance changes, influxes of new players, constant strategic innovations, all of these factors put together created an atmosphere of pressure unlike any seen in BW. Patches come regularly and often and players have at some point literally gotten on a plane and landed to only realize the game was patched when they were midair. When you take all of those elements into account, it becomes easy to understand why consistency is so hard to manage.

Yet even among this unmitigated chaos players have risen time and time again to not only win a championship, not only to lead their race in strategic innovation, but to do so anywhere from one month upwards to an year. In that race for the top, dynasties and legacies were formed.



For 2011 there was but one King. Mvp. But unlike his two compatriots, Nestea and MC, he was never a lone traveler. 2011 is remembered derisively as the year of TvT and the year when players like Polt, MMA, MKP, Bomber and PuMa made their mark. Yet most of those champions proved their staying power: all of them except Puma have survived the test of time. Nearly 3 years after they debuted, all of them have won multiple premier tournaments at some point or another.

Together they pushed the TvX meta forward at a rapid pace. An acknowledgement must be given to Jinro for laying the groundwork of 3 base Terran play (at the time of 2010, it was thought to be impossible). After him came MKP, who changed TvZ forever with his series against Kyrix. His micro skills demonstrated that Terran would be the "cost-efficient" race and the tempo controller for most of WoL. He also pushed forward the strategy of base trade style TvT, which largely fell out of favor until the introduction of speedvacs. Polt distinguished himself as a master of tactical engagement. His ideas on strategic and tactical engagement were so important that they are still a large aspect of modern day TvP and TvT. MMA proved that high aggression, multi-pronged harass was not only viable but beneficial and sometimes superior to large army engagements.

By 2012, the Summer of TaeJa had begun. In it we saw a player unlike any other Terran emerge. Terran at its core is an aggressive race. Things like larvae inject, creep spread, chrono boost, storm and collosus meant that Terran had to attack early on; otherwise, Zerg/Protoss could build up their economy and upgrades and parlay those advantages into far superior armies. TaeJa was the lone exception to the rule. He certainly played aggressive if the situation warranted it, but his general gameplay was based around a defensive macro based Terran style. He excelled at using his superior strategic vision and insane game sense to come out on top at any point of the game.

After him came the single most influential Terran player of HotS. Instead of winning off of one concentrated swoop, a slow siege, or thousands of pinpricks, INnoVation created and perfected an autonomous war machine style of Terran aggression. His style relentlessly battered its opponent into submission with unceasing reinforcement and mechanical superiority, properties boosted by the power of the widow mine and speedvacs. INnoVation was so successful that his approach was slowly absorbed by the scene via osmosis, becoming the framework for all modern Terran play. But half way through he was hit by major nerfs to his favorite toys, leaving a large gap that was to be taken by Maru. He was a player who took cute little micro tricks to the extreme: Maru used single marauders to negate collosus army AoE, and dropped 8 marines on top of collossi to snipe them. He posited the idea of mass MMM + widow mine parade pushes against Protoss pre-buff and made it work. His insane battle engagement, strange builds and incredible series planning made him the only relevant Terran in Korea during the Blink Era.

Until the end of 2011, MC was the only Protoss worth mentioning in WoL. His strategies, mindsets, all-ins and series planning have fundamentally shaped the way players look at and play as Protoss. The only other memorable Korean Protoss from that time period was PartinG, who popularized 2 base high templar as a viable opener against Terran. After that Protoss was ruled by triumvirates. Initially it was PartinG, Squirtle and Seed, three players whose builds are still used to this day (Soul Train, 2 base colossus/stalker all-in, and fast 3 nexus -> mass blink PvZ respectively). Then it was Rain, Creator and PartinG. Rain mapped out all of PvP to the point where passive macro play was possible to execute on a consistent basis; Creator introduced double forge builds to both PvZ and PvT; PartinG mastered the Spirit Bomb and made the Soul Train a default build in PvZ. No Protoss ruled the race alone until Dear walked the double royal road at the end of 2013. His astounding reign was short-lived as Zest rose up over the corpses of the entire SKT team to rule. His kingship is even more impressive when you consider how strong the Protoss field was in 2014. Although PartinG, Rain, sOs, herO and Classic all had a major presence, they could not match his stability.

Similarly, NesTea was the incarnation of the Swarm at the beginning of WoL. He was the first to understand the larvae mechanic and what it implied for Zerg as a race. As a result he codified ling/bling/muta in ZvT, heavily influenced the ZvP meta with cheeses and tech transitions alike, and delineated all the relevant permutations of ZvZ. Soon afterwards DongRaeGu succeeded him, symbolically receiving the torch by defeating Nestea in one of the greatest ZvZ battles of all time on Antiga Shipyard. The neo-Dong did not establish as much groundwork for future Zergs but demonstrated superior tactical execution and mechanics, pushing the ling/bane/muta composition to its limit. Then came Life, a player who changed the fundamental dynamics of ZvT and ZvZ. While he is most famous for his zergling micro Life quietly introduced breakthroughs in terms of counterattacks, pressure timings, and larvae management. His off-tempo larvae usage capitalized on timings and weaknesses in other players' builds, which were buttressed by a zenith of calm that has only ever been equaled by Stephano. His reign, though long and memorable, inevitably ended after his loss of interest in the game and lack of practice. And in that vacuum came Soulkey, the best Zerg player in 2013 and one of the greatest defensive players the world has ever seen. In turn he was one-upped by soO in 2014; despite never winning a finals soO has now reached 4 consecutive GSL Finals, a feat unmatched in all of SC2.

Yet there is one player who still stands above the rest. One who, without a result to speak of in nearly 1.5 years, still looms over the SC2 scene like a specter. His achievements are more than numerical, though those are still by far the most impressive of any player: 4 GSLs, 2 GSL silvers, a double Triple Crown, and 9 premier victories overall. For nearly 2 years, he ruled with undisputed dominance in a game where most players are only able to hold such a spot for a week or a month. His reign was a paradox. At times he was both the strongest champion and the biggest underdog. In 2011 he defeated everyone with preternatural mechanics and strategy borrowed from his Brood War roots; in 2012, he beat everyone with all-new strategies and sheer will power. His series planning, tenacity, comebacks, and unrelenting drive to win were the very essence of SC2 competition.

Three months ago I posited that the entirety of GSL is driven by pure systemic egotism. It is the pursuit of victory against all odds. It is the fall of YugiOh and the redemption of Stork, it is the unending dream to be a Champion and the unending ambition to become the greatest there ever was. To occupy that empty throne Mvp left vacant, to become an even greater Champion than Mvp was.

And now time is running out. Blizzard announced the newest expansion at 2014 Blizzcon and detailed how Legacy of the Void would be a complete overhaul. Whereas HotS was essentially an add-on of units/spells and some balance tweaks to WoL, LotV would upend all the old conventions. What little they showed us was a complete overhaul of everything. There were new units that had the potential to change entire matchups, significant redesigns of old units like the Swarm Host, and fundamental alterations in economic design. If the promises come to fruition LotV will be a completely different game, as different as BW was to SC or TFT was to RoC. At that point, the book will have closed as the differences between LotV and HotS/WoL could be so large that comparing the success of players from one to the other would be nonsensical.

If this is the case, 2015 will be the last year for any player to catch up or surpass Mvp’s achievements in this era. And the stage has been set perfectly. Almost every Korean has been forced back to Korea after the initial diaspora of 2013; the only ones confirmed to not be in Korea are Polt, Violet, ForGG and Hydra. The rest are coming home to roost, making the already hard Korean pool just that much harder. On top of that is the increased LAN presence in Korea for 2015. In 2015 we have 9 confirmed Korean lans: 3 SPOTV Starleagues, 3 KeSPA Cups and 3 GSLs. Assuming there is another Hot6ix and WECG, there will be a total of 11 Korean LANs without even counting the possible IEM/DH lans that could happen. This is the largest amount of Korean LANs we've had since 2011 and it could potentially be more if the rumors of an IEM/DH-style LAN in Korea come true. Here is a list of total Korean LANs per year:

2010: 3 GSLs
2011: 9 GSLs, 1 WCG, 1 BlizzCup (11 total)
2012: 5 GSLs, 1 OSL, 1 WCG, 1 WCS Korea, 1 BlizzCup (9 total)
2013: 2 GSLs, 1 OSL, 3 WCS Season Finals, 1 WCG, 1 Hot6ix (8 total)
2014: 3 GSLs, 1 Global Championship, 1 KeSPA Cup, 1 Hot6ix, 1 WECG (7 total)

This is the last chance for someone to escape Mvp's shadow, to ascend the throne and rewrite SC2 history in their own name. Given their past results, current form and ignoring the possibility of a new player uniting all 9 titles, there are 5 real contenders to overtake Mvp.

MC: One of the greatest players to ever touch the mouse. He and Polt are arguably the two most consistent players to have ever played in SC2 as both have been top players since 2010. MC has 2 GSL titles under his belt and 1 silver. He has 6 championships, 9 second places and numerous high placing results. While he is the weakest in form among the list, he has proven he can go head to head with anyone at his best.



Zest: 2014 has been his year. He spent the first half murdering every SKT player he met, won GSL Season 1, took the Global Championship and conquered KeSPA Cup. He is by consensus the best Protoss in Korea and the best Protoss of the year. His only real weakness is Terran. Considering that Terran are fairly numerous these days, that could be a hard obstacle to overcome.



soO: If soO had won all his finals, we could have already called this a done deal. Instead, soO lost all his finals and became an ever-present reminder of the ineffable difference between what it means to be Mvp and what it means to be Yellow. Despite that, soO has the single best run in history with 4 consecutive GSL Finals. But at this point in his career, winning a finals may feel like an insurmountable task.



Life: The 2014 Blizzcon winner is in similar form compared to his memorable spree at the end of 2012. Life won against all odds as he vanquished Zest and San, fought in a titanic struggle against Taeja and kicked MMA off a cliff. He followed up success by losing out in the Hot6ix qualifiers and getting to the finals of DHW, where ForGG ran him down with hellions, hellbats and banshees. Life’s biggest hurdle to taking the throne will be rigor. Life’s career has seen him rise to the top for a few months, before going back down due to disinterest and a lack of practice.



TaeJa: The only player on this list to have never even made a GSL Finals. His claim to fame is that he has won the most premier tournaments in all of SC2 (11 total). He is one of the most feared players on earth, with soO, Solar, Life and Zest all naming him as one of their most feared opponents. He is a weekend LAN monster, but often suffers in long preparation matches. He is the least likely to succeed Mvp. Beyond his weakness in GSL format tournaments, he’s also only delaying his retirement because the Korean military draft list is currently full. He’s already expressed contentment with what he’s accomplished so far in SC2, and it seems like he’s participating in GSL as a part-time venture before going to the military.