DRG leaves SBENU

On October 16 2015 01:50 The_Red_Viper wrote:
I hope WCS gets a full region lock next year, i am one of the biggest korean fanboys here on TL, but this simply destroys ANY chance for the foreign scene, which is probably bad for sc2.

On October 16 2015 02:02 Horiken wrote:
EU/NA player don't need to win against KR player.Look at League of Legends.
EU/NA team hardly win against TOP Korean team,but they have so much popluarity.
This is because local scene is very well-established in LoL.
Blizzard should do this.Establish local scene,just like they did on 2012 WCS.

On October 16 2015 01:57 Clonester wrote:


But how does the foreign scene improve if not with a competition on a daily base?
The WCS 2015 system helped him money and viewer based. But skill based, they chased all but one Korean from EU back to Korea while these where the guys giving foreigners a daily competition on EU ladder. Now WCS 2015 has only NA Koreans who play on KR server left and thus failes completly in helping the foreign scene to improve.
Yes the money helps the players to stay in SCII, to be able to focus on the game, but it increases the gap between Korea and rest of the world ( EU for the most) more and more.

Blizzard needs to find a solution for all 3 things, money, viewers and skill gap. 2015 only helped in to branches and a full region lock (passport lock) will additional help money and maybe viewers, but increases the skill gap.

On October 16 2015 00:54 Clonester wrote:
He can only play WCS if he gets a working / sports Visa... so mostlikely he needs a American team (or a Europeen team that invest a good bunch of money into him).
I dont understand his decision at all.

On October 16 2015 05:44 Steelo_Rivers wrote:

or foreign players can just get good and quit complaining about people being better than them. Korean players and created the same way everyone else in the world is. I don't understand why people even make this a thing. iirc, Korean players rarely ever played with foreign players in BW and now all people can do is complain about how their lack of skill shows when they're up against their Korean brethren.

On October 16 2015 06:08 opisska wrote:
DRG is as far from "faceless korean" as you could ever get, so I don't think anyone should complain about him taking foreigner's slots. He is one of the few people where such a move even makes sense, because if someone has a chance to be picked up by a foreign team out of the blue, it's DRG.

Still, he should have stayed on SBENU, it was such an awesome dreamteam.

On October 16 2015 07:08 deacon.frost wrote:

So, basically, sacrifice ForGG, JaeDong, Polt and Hydra? (and maybe others I missed, do not follow WCS for foreigners) and lower even more the foreigner skill. Cool, I am OK with that, at least they will re-broadcast Korean leagues when EU/NA will become pathetic.

On October 16 2015 00:42 Ej_ wrote:
lol Korea sending Zergs to WCS to show Hydra how it's done

On October 16 2015 05:44 Steelo_Rivers wrote:

or foreign players can just get good and quit complaining about people being better than them. Korean players and created the same way everyone else in the world is. I don't understand why people even make this a thing. iirc, Korean players rarely ever played with foreign players in BW and now all people can do is complain about how their lack of skill shows when they're up against their Korean brethren.

On October 16 2015 07:08 deacon.frost wrote:

So, basically, sacrifice ForGG, JaeDong, Polt and Hydra? (and maybe others I missed, do not follow WCS for foreigners) and lower even more the foreigner skill. Cool, I am OK with that, at least they will re-broadcast Korean leagues when EU/NA will become pathetic.

On October 16 2015 14:53 StarStruck wrote:


sorry to break it to you but that's not going to fucking grow the game's viewership internationally. You guys can theorycraft all you want. It's not going to change shit.

No the reason why people like MLG don't touch it is because of the WCS alone and the fact of the matter SC2's time is up with them. They're focused on other things.

On October 16 2015 17:00 deacon.frost wrote:

It won't change without viewers! Right now we can theorycraft we like, but the fact is that there are not that many people who like to watch only foreigners fighting themselves.

Without viewers others than Blizzard don't have any reason to invest the money. There's a reason why the last DH was Thu/Fri and not during the weekend... I don't have any numbers but I would be surprised if WCS World would be profitable for Blizzard at all.

Region lock will only make things worse IMO. Numbers will decline even more, because, frankly, there are only like 8 foreigners who are interesting enough to watch their games and don't laugh or feel bored.

The most funny part about this is that the biggest numbers we get is when foreigner is playing a "bad" Korean so he has a chance for a win. And by the strict region lock we will lose these numbers for WCS and therefore other investors will see another decline in numbers in the highest league outside of Korea(which is where they do the tournaments most of the time).

On October 16 2015 17:00 deacon.frost wrote:

It won't change without viewers! Right now we can theorycraft we like, but the fact is that there are not that many people who like to watch only foreigners fighting themselves.

Without viewers others than Blizzard don't have any reason to invest the money. There's a reason why the last DH was Thu/Fri and not during the weekend... I don't have any numbers but I would be surprised if WCS World would be profitable for Blizzard at all.

Region lock will only make things worse IMO. Numbers will decline even more, because, frankly, there are only like 8 foreigners who are interesting enough to watch their games and don't laugh or feel bored.

The most funny part about this is that the biggest numbers we get is when foreigner is playing a "bad" Korean so he has a chance for a win. And by the strict region lock we will lose these numbers for WCS and therefore other investors will see another decline in numbers in the highest league outside of Korea(which is where they do the tournaments most of the time).

Do we really want to lose other people? We already lost MC! Do we need to lose ForGG, Polt or JD? Do we really want that?

On October 17 2015 00:45 The_Red_Viper wrote:

edit: Notice that i am a big JD fan, but if he cannot compete in korea, well then he still has the options to go to weekend tournaments and maybe play in proleague.
All options foreigners don't really have either.

On October 17 2015 01:19 The_Red_Viper wrote:
I didn't say they aren't allowed to, but these options aren't really all that viable.
You guys simply have this mindest of "hurr durr, foreigners just need to get better!!"
Well yes they need to improve, but right now it's simply way too hard to do so, is that really so hard to understand?

On October 17 2015 02:14 Clonester wrote:
With Guild Wars 2 getting a 400.000$ ESL Pro League, maybe it is also time for a SC II ESL Pro League here in Europe

On October 17 2015 06:25 Elentos wrote:

And the solution to it being too hard is to give up on it entirely and seperate foreign and Korean competition, why exactly? What is gained from that? A bigger foreign community? Maybe, but the gap's not gonna get any smaller from that so we might aswell have Blizzcon KR and Blizzcon WCS at that point, to make it fair. And a league for Korean WCS rejects who were willing to leave their home country and culture behind to play in WCS but got kicked out.

On October 17 2015 06:36 The_Red_Viper wrote:

The idea is to build a foreign scene from the ground, this is a long term solution, not a short term one (like some mediocre koreans playing on the eu/na ladder)

On October 17 2015 06:31 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:

Unless it's online, in which case no one would care about just like ATC and SC2ITL, then it's absolutely impossible given the current state of SC2. Most teams don't even have enough members to play a team league, and the ones that do don't have them together outside of TL.

On October 17 2015 01:19 The_Red_Viper wrote:The idea is to build a foreign scene from the ground, this is a long term solution, not a short term one (like some mediocre koreans playing on the eu/na ladder)

On October 17 2015 06:47 Elentos wrote:

I think that one's so long-term that it's too late for that, being a pessimist for once. At least I don't think it's a realistic way to ever decrease the skill gap by the amount that's "necessary". The Koreans weren't just playing ladder either, they helped with tournament practice, too, and they were on average still better than the high level foreigners (especially Hydra in-form is a landslide above pretty much everyone in WCS and his results in Korea never went past average).

So you probably have long-term gain for the scene/the fans/the teams outside of Korea, but the individual players I'm not so sure. I guess the best ones go practice in Korea if they feel they can't improve here? Because I doubt we ever establish KeSPA-like training regiments and a Proleague system.

On October 17 2015 07:00 The_Red_Viper wrote:


Well yes maybe it is already too late, that might be the case, but i still would rather try that than say "fk it not worth it".
The idea is that more people are actually motivated to go fulltime/tryhard into sc2. Right now players with potential probably won't do that because there really isn't ANY noteworthy competition without koreans.
If you have to play vs a korean your chances to get any money are pretty low. Why even bother then to try hard?
This isn't about lazyness or anything, it's about having a fair chance to develop as a player/scene.
I don't know if enough people would be interested in a foreign only wcs, but at that point it is also part of the production, we need hype foreigner content, build some stars, people will get interested in it imo.
That also would probably help weekend tournaments, because foreigners wouldn't play koreans all the time, it would be more hype (if used correctly)
But yeah, maybe we are already too late for it, but LOTV is the last sc2 instalment, when we don't try it now when then? :D

On October 17 2015 07:11 Elentos wrote:

Yeah sure, but I think Koreans aren't really just ahead in their general skill. They already have all the infrastructure set up. A "random" GM that gets picked up by a Korean team has an better chance of going pro successfully than a random GM on EU/NA I think. Even the public reception of successful players. Flash and Boxer became national heroes by playing SC. sOs's image is on an airplane. They're celebrities. And I think we're pretty far away from that point.

On October 17 2015 06:50 Clonester wrote:


Why should nobody care? Does nobody care about the over 9000 CS:GO leagues (which are all played online?)

If we say, Blizzard would finance a ESL ProLeague like ArenaNet with Guildwars 2, so 400k per Season, maybe 2 Seasons a year, Teams all over Europe would invest heavy into the Scene. To get SC II pro players is not that expensive, it is online played and only the playoffs are played over a time. Bo7 ProLeague Format. Strickt play-days, penaltys for missing players and so on what makes a league professionel.
It is not compareable to ATC or SC2ITL: ATC was 20k, 20 times less then the Guild Wars 2 Pro League, SC2ITL even less. And both with less strict rules, smaller finals and so on.
You dont need to have your teams togeather to practice. Hell most strong CS:GO Teams just meet during bootcamps and tournaments and do not live togeather. Thats not a problem at all. It is the money that was allways missing for such a move. But money shouldnt be an option when you can share down over 600k for WCS Europe+someothers.

Why would nobody watch? Because XYZ Foreigner against ABC Foreigner? They also meet at WCS and people watch it.
No teams? With so much money on the line, teams could easily pick up players left and right and even give them some sort of (small payment).

Companys like Valve, ArenaNet, 343Industries/Microsoft dump money after money in Leagues to obtain a healthy scene and market their games, while Blizzard was allways shy about it. Yes, they sponsort WCS with over 1M per year for the complete year: (3 Seasons WCS, GSL, SSL + Global Finals). But thats much less then other companys investet into their game per year, LoL, Dota, CS:GO (yes they have more viewers and players) but it still stands.
A serious made SC II Europeen ProLeague would bring the strong structure for the foreigner, the constant money flow the foreigners would need (not only some tournamentmoney, but a possible (low) monthly income) and the practice arena with strong team structures. It was a missplay to not intro

On October 17 2015 07:19 The_Red_Viper wrote:


Well yeah but that is exactly my point. Why should teams try to set up infrastructure for sc2 when it is much easier to just get a korean on the team? Look at the LCS, i hate riot, but the lcs gave teams the chance to slowly build their infrastructure, etc.
Which is why i think some kind of weekly league would actually be the best thing which could happen for foreign sc2, but WCS is the next best bet.
It's also a lot about players who are actualy marketable though, WCS can improve a lot in that department, build storylines and with it star players.
Maybe sc2 is already too small for this step, who knows.

On October 17 2015 07:34 wjat wrote:
Teamliquid DRG
Millenium DRG would please me.

On October 17 2015 07:32 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:

CSGO can have 9000 leagues because CSGO is over 9000 more times popular than SC2 is right now and that's just reality. WCS already costs Blizzard a lot, and Blizzard isn't going to sell $400k worth of copies extra by having a EU Proleague on top of WCS which they already invest millions into. We have to keep in mind that WCS is a marketing tool and a crutch to keep the scene alive after Blizzard realized they fucked up massively and SC2 was dying. Over half of players who buy the game never touch multiplayer, it's for the campaign alone, so I just can't see it ever happening. And especially don't compare it to LoL. LoL makes over a billion dollars are year, any money they put into their scene is negligible to them.

And sadly, I don't believe teams all over Europe would invest heavily into the scene even if it did happen. C9 reportedly had plans to pick up some NA Starcraft players until they realized there were literally none worth picking up who weren't already on a team. There simply isn't enough talent in EU and NA to have more than 8 teams just like Proleague does. Even if 8 teams only had 4 players each, the bare minimum to run something like that, are there even 32 EU and NA players good enough to compete for $400k? WCS already brings money to the foreigner scene. Frankly, it brings way more than the foreign scene deserves. Ro32 at WCS gets you almost $1000 more Ro4 at GSL, despite the fact that no WCS player could ever hope to make Ro4 at GSL. And then we wonder why a guy like DRG wants to switch over hmmmmm I wonder?!

On October 17 2015 08:23 AWalker9 wrote:

This is precisely the problem unless you win the prize money for Korean leagues is awful and people will continue to leave unless it's resolved.

For example let's look at how much herO who was the most consistent player in WCS earned this year from it:
Season 1:
GSL Ro4: $3610
SSL Ro16: $902

Season 2:
GSL Ro16: $1354
SSL Ro4: $4061

Season 3:
GSL Ro16: $1354
SSL 1st: $36099

Total earnings: $47380

Without his win he would have nkt earned much and he has to battle through the best in the world to get it.

ByuL only made around $28,000 despite he made 3 second places and one Ro8.

When a player can make $4500 just for finishing Ro32 in WCS then ofc Koreans are going to want to play in it rather than loss to the best and only earn $902.