EPTThe World Championship Series shall now be divided into two parts, WCS Global, which shall incorporate the South Korean Global StarCraft League (GSL) and StarCraft 2 StarLeague (SSL), and the WCS Circuit, which shall have events run by Red Bull, Intel Extreme Masters, and DreamHack. Players will only be allowed to compete in the WCS Circuit component if they have a work or P1 athletic visa that is valid in Europe or North America. A tourist visa will not be sufficient to compete. The top eight players from WCS Global and the top eight from the WCS circuit will go on to make the final sixteen that compete at the WCS Finals at Blizzard’s annual convention, Blizzcon.
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2015/12/11/blizzard-reportedly-radically-overhauling-world-championship-series-of-starcraft-2/Mod Edit: Some relevant comments from prominent members of the community.
TotalBiscuit: https://soundcloud.com/totalbiscuit/wcs-2016-rumours-and-na-ladder
Catz:
On December 12 2015 21:36 NarutO wrote:
In a long time I can say that this gives a reason to be ashamed working in eSports. I question how Blizzard can name Blizzcon the very best 16 players in the world when they are preventing Koreans to qualify through it also decreasing competition in nearly all major EU and NA tournaments.
While not every agreed and liked that Koreans come to foreign tournaments and dominate them, I believe LOTV was a chance for a fresh start - while I believe personally that the game favors Koreans more than HOTS I still believe that it was exciting to see how foreign players did vs Koreans even when they lost. Now Dreamhack , IEM and other tournaments (dont forget qualifiers as well) are "a better Go4Sc2 Sunday". Makes me very sad.
I am aware that Koreans could move over and that is the intention but lets be honest - how many Koreans will leave KeSPa and move over? You need a team, financial support and most important of all: I guess most are not comfortable with giving up their life to move into a foreign country.
In a long time I can say that this gives a reason to be ashamed working in eSports. I question how Blizzard can name Blizzcon the very best 16 players in the world when they are preventing Koreans to qualify through it also decreasing competition in nearly all major EU and NA tournaments.
While not every agreed and liked that Koreans come to foreign tournaments and dominate them, I believe LOTV was a chance for a fresh start - while I believe personally that the game favors Koreans more than HOTS I still believe that it was exciting to see how foreign players did vs Koreans even when they lost. Now Dreamhack , IEM and other tournaments (dont forget qualifiers as well) are "a better Go4Sc2 Sunday". Makes me very sad.
I am aware that Koreans could move over and that is the intention but lets be honest - how many Koreans will leave KeSPa and move over? You need a team, financial support and most important of all: I guess most are not comfortable with giving up their life to move into a foreign country.
TLO:
