EPTBlizzard Reportedly Radically Overhauling WCS - Page 20
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zealotstim
United States455 Posts
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HsDLTitich
Italy830 Posts
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Kerence
Sweden1817 Posts
On December 12 2015 22:42 Arvendilin wrote: Nowadays the VODs for the Korean events are up pretty early, so I just don't get myself spoilered and watch them while reading the LR thread, and on PL final days aswell as if a final for a GSL sooo thats fun :D Back when GSL had their own homepage I used to watch every single game (Code A, Code S and GSTL) on VOD and read the LR threads while doing so, I basically spent 90% of my free time watching Starcraft VODs. I stopped subscribing after they switched to Twitch since at that point I was watching less and koreans played in WCS anyway and that was at a convenient time for watching live rather than VODs. Since I spent my time watching only Koreans they were mostly the only ones I cared about and most of the interesting foreigners have long since left the scene. As such I can probably count the number of foreigners I care about on one hand and that's why I no longer watch tournaments without Koreans. Watching VODs is just not the same thing and I don't really feel like going back to doing that (insert joke about lost passion here) so as I said I'll just probably stop watching. But until official word is out I'm going to hope this isn't the entire story. On December 13 2015 00:36 HsDLTitich wrote: https://twitter.com/LiquidTLO/status/675621590239965184 Shoutout to TLO for being one of the likable foreigners (actually, Team Liquid is pretty likable in general). Let's hope he's right. | ||
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FueledUpAndReadyToGo
Netherlands30548 Posts
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Wrath
3174 Posts
On December 13 2015 00:36 HsDLTitich wrote: https://twitter.com/LiquidTLO/status/675621590239965184 Yeah... Healthy because of the charity money as no more real challenge after removing Koreans from it. ~_~ | ||
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Kerence
Sweden1817 Posts
On December 13 2015 00:42 WrathSCII wrote: Yeah... Healthy because of the charity money as no more real challenge after removing Koreans from it. ~_~ I may be wrong, but from what I can remember I don't think that's TLOs point of view. | ||
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Solar424
United States4001 Posts
On December 13 2015 00:40 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: So from TBs podcast it seems he thinks Blizzard wanted to, and had plans to continue WCS, and if they would actually stop it the reason would lie with ESL. Why would ESL not want to continue with WCS? Too costly? Next to zero return on investment, using the studio costs money. Why do you think MLG bailed after one season? NASL literally bankrupted themselves from the cost. | ||
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Incognoto
France10239 Posts
how is that healthy, LOL?! | ||
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Kaizor
Singapore909 Posts
On December 13 2015 00:40 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote: So from TBs podcast it seems he thinks Blizzard wanted to, and had plans to continue WCS, and if they would actually stop it the reason would lie with ESL. Why would ESL not want to continue with WCS? Too costly? Come on.... They are a company not a charity. They don't provide a service just to break even. They are definitely not going to do it if it is losing money. They will only do it if it is bringing in the dough. Realistically speaking, can anyone say for sure SC2 is going to bring in the money for ESL compared to the other games they are doing or they can otherwise do if they dropped SC2? I am not surprised at all if ESL dropped SC2. | ||
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MaCRo.gg
Korea (South)860 Posts
On December 13 2015 00:17 Kaizor wrote: There are basically 2 camps here. One believes that forbidding Koreans from participating will lower the quality of foreign tournaments ( Reasonably true ) and thus lower the viewership and interest in SC2 in the foreign scene ( only time can tell on this ). While the other believes that having a strict region lock will attract newer people into the scene who might not be interested in watching koreans dominate the whole damn time. And there actually is real life proof of it. Let's just look at football ( not the US version ) and Rugby. First, I would like to praise the length and thought in the post. However this type of example has been beaten to death on these forums. The soccer analogy has been hashed and rehashed for multiple years already. I find the soccer example a bad one that lacks deep perspective. The world qualifying system for the World Cup most likely helped development of soccer in Japan, South Korea, and South Africa. How much have this system really helped the growth of Soccer? China has a terrible soccer team, one that cannot even compete on an Asian qualifying level and one that has disappointed the country so much that it considers it one of its biggest shame. Soccer in China has been relatively unaffected by World Cup interests, if not been negatively influenced by their lack of national results. While the popularity of the sport remains high, the corruption of their domestic league has turned "professional" scene into a joke. Only South Korea and Japan field teams that have a semblance of competitiveness against top tier teams and even then the results are often not exciting. The SK vs Japan game gets way more attention in their countries than their results or lack of results against top tier competition. Soccer's popularity has much more to do with its accessibility than the works of FIFA has done. To play soccer all you need is a ball, in many countries a net is a luxury and most street ball I've played was with 4 hats or rocks to mark the goal. Compare that to how much resource is needed to play rugby, rugby is astronomically more expensive and many do not have access to resources to play it. | ||
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Silvana
3713 Posts
On December 13 2015 00:17 Kaizor wrote: There are basically 2 camps here. One believes that forbidding Koreans from participating will lower the quality of foreign tournaments ( Reasonably true ) and thus lower the viewership and interest in SC2 in the foreign scene ( only time can tell on this ). While the other believes that having a strict region lock will attract newer people into the scene who might not be interested in watching koreans dominate the whole damn time. And there actually is real life proof of it. Let's just look at football ( not the US version ) and Rugby. Football and its World Cup are probably the most popular and most watched sport in the world. It generates so much interest and hype because countries from all over the world try to qualify and there is basically representation from all regions. More importantly, even though there might only be a handful of favorites every time, it is not certain they would win. Does it mean that Japan or South Africa is going to win the World Cup anytime soon? Probably not but it does attract the interest of their people who might otherwise not give a damn about it. Compare it to Rugby. Sure a lot of people play it all over the world. And it got a lot of attention with the recent Rugby World Cup, but in terms or interest or popularity, i think we can all agree that it is no where near Football and one of the reasons i think is because of representation and come on, even though i don't watch rugby, even i know that the odds of New Zealand winning is about the same as a Korean winning a foreign tournament. Like it or not, that does not help in getting New people into the sport. Hey wanna watch the rugby world cup? And ya New Zealand is going to win. I strongly believe that Blizzard is in the second camp. I know that alot of people in tl forums are in the first camp. But i also believe that people like us who comes to tl forums are already part of the core group of SC2 community. We are here because we are interested in the SC2 competitive scene. But the scene is not going to get any bigger just based on us. At this point in the game, yes even with the release of LOTV, if no changes are made, then i doubt there will be a huge increase in people interested in the competitive scene. Blizzard wants to attract people other than us. People that do not come to tl forums. People who might not even play SC2. People who would not be interested at all if its always Koreans winning. Whether their way works or not, is of course up for debate, but i am of the view that the scene is not going to get bigger because we only want to watch the Best play. Only the Elite koreans should win. We are of course entitled to our opinion but that just isn't what Blizzard wants. Any company wants their service or product to become more popular. Unless we can convince Blizzard that a Only-Koreans-Win scenario is going to make the scene bigger. For me, i have been watching since 2011. I have never been able to convince anyone around me to be interested in the competitive SC2 scene. That of course is not just due to only koreans winning, but if blizzard wants to grow the scene, maybe it is time for a change. I think the analogy you used is wrong. The explanation would be basically what OtherWorld here mentioned earlier: On December 12 2015 20:04 OtherWorld wrote: most sports/eSports have a low casual fans to hardcore fans ratio : they are based on a small but strong core of enthusiasts, they are "niche" sports to some extent, as opposed to mass-viewership sports. Thus their growth is not made in the same way as mass-viewership sports : their growth is made by making new people become strong enthusiasts, not casual viewers who watches because there's a French/German/Russian/whatever flag on the screen. That's the big flaw in Blizzard's reasoning. People have to accept that SC2 is a niche eSport, that it will never have viewer numbers similar to LoL/DotA, that the winner of BlizzCon will never earn 1 million dollars for his win. People - and Blizzard - have to accept that SC2 is not made for mass-viewership - and that's why it's beautiful. And that means catering to the small but strong core of hardcore fans instead of to the chimerical "casual viewer". And that means seeking for tournaments to have the best possible games with the best possible players, independantly of their nationality. (whole post is in page 17) | ||
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Incognoto
France10239 Posts
"who wants to watch koreans be the best? ew". this just proves that people don't rally behind the game itself. i think it's time to kill off the foreigner scene completely now. end this racist farce | ||
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JokerAi
Germany142 Posts
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JokerAi
Germany142 Posts
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Incognoto
France10239 Posts
absolutely disgusting. wcs and the foreign scene is now a joke and i will be watching korea only | ||
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Kaizor
Singapore909 Posts
On December 13 2015 00:52 MaCRo.gg wrote: First, I would like to praise the length and thought in the post. However this type of example has been beaten to death on these forums. The soccer analogy has been hashed and rehashed for multiple years already. I find the soccer example a bad one that lacks deep perspective. The world qualifying system for the World Cup most likely helped development of soccer in Japan, South Korea, and South Africa. How much have this system really helped the growth of Soccer? China has a terrible soccer team, one that cannot even compete on an Asian qualifying level and one that has disappointed the country so much that it considers it one of its biggest shame. Soccer in China has been relatively unaffected by World Cup interests, if not been negatively influenced by their lack of national results. While the popularity of the sport remains high, the corruption of their domestic league has turned "professional" scene into a joke. Only South Korea and Japan field teams that have a semblance of competitiveness against top tier teams and even then the results are often not exciting. The SK vs Japan game gets way more attention in their countries than their results or lack of results against top tier competition. Soccer's popularity has much more to do with its accessibility than the works of FIFA has done. To play soccer all you need is a ball, in many countries a net is a luxury and most street ball I've played was with 4 hats or rocks to mark the goal. Compare that to how much resource is needed to play rugby, rugby is astronomically more expensive and many do not have access to resources to play it. Actually i wanted to go even longer but that's probably not advisable. One of the points you brought up which i also wanted to discuss was ease of access. So how does ease of access to playing football translate to SC2? The entry bar of playing football is much simpler than playing SC2. Anybody can just kick a ball and play with friends on a court or field. Sure we might not be able to have the skills of professional but that doesn't mean we cant' play football. SC2 as a RTS is already inherently more difficult (i believe) than any genre of competitive esports. There are alot more skills to it, like learning to macro and micro, build orders, scouting, so on and so forth. So it is way less accessible to more popular esports that have a lesser learning curve. Just like Rugby which is also less accessible that Football in various ways. I doubt Blizzard is able or willing to change SC2 so much that it becomes easier for most people. So one of the ways they are trying to get more people to watch is by going the Nation Wars way. Creating storylines other than that of "koreans winning". Does it help in the development of the scene? Probably not. But i would argue that FIFA has no damn interest in developing the football scene of every damn country in the world, but have every interest in making sure that every damn person in the world watches the World Cup. That is what Blizzard is doing as well. | ||
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DwD
Sweden8621 Posts
I wanna watch the best Starcraft there is. I don't wanna watch a bunch of games with players who are only there because they are from a specific region. This is craaap. | ||
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FueledUpAndReadyToGo
Netherlands30548 Posts
On December 13 2015 00:49 Kaizor wrote: Come on.... They are a company not a charity. They don't provide a service just to break even. They are definitely not going to do it if it is losing money. They will only do it if it is bringing in the dough. Realistically speaking, can anyone say for sure SC2 is going to bring in the money for ESL compared to the other games they are doing or they can otherwise do if they dropped SC2? I am not surprised at all if ESL dropped SC2. I'm just wondering if they would drop it because they'd rather spend time on other games or because it's actually losing them money | ||
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REyeM
2674 Posts
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Kaizor
Singapore909 Posts
On December 13 2015 00:55 Silvana wrote: I think the analogy you used is wrong. The explanation would be basically what OtherWorld here mentioned earlier: (whole post is in page 17) See, thats my point. That is what people on tl forums want. NOT blizzard. It is not in their interest to keep SC2 a niche eSport. Because that doesn't make sense for any business. All companies want to see growth. That's why they want to make changes, they want to see if SC2 can grow to be as popular as other popular esports. And most of our suggestions here are never going to grow the scene in the way Blizzard wants. Is Blizzard's way correct? I don't know and time will tell, but i do know, being niche will not help the scene because if the scene is too small, there is absolutely no reason for Blizzard to stay invested in it. Why pour resources and money into a game that less than a million play and doesn't bring in any money, when let's say hearthstone is bringing in all the dough?? If Blizzard stops having a interest, i do think that would be even worse. | ||
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