Blizzard Reportedly Radically Overhauling WCS - Page 35

On December 15 2015 03:23 Sapphire.lux wrote:
If Koreans are no longer competing in US/EU tournaments this might greatly increase the popularity of GSL and SSL. Not sure how IEM, DH and the rest will do though.

On December 15 2015 03:42 Topdoller wrote:


I think that will depend on time zones. GSL is usually played on the Korean Evening and thus for most of the other side of the hemisphere the viewing times are pretty bad.

Watching it Live is always the best experience, even if they make the VODs freely available

On December 15 2015 05:11 Clonester wrote:


There are major problems in this system:
If you do 250/500 Points tournaments online, the Federers and Nadals of Starcraft will still attend to them. You still had to use regional barriers (EU Server for example) to outlaw them. The natural barrier, which is a small tennis tournament in central Europe cant be compared to the non existing barrier that online tournaments would give.
If you do them offline, you allready had such system:
WCS, GSL, SSL have been the 2000 points tournaments.
75k+ weekenders (only IEM this year) are your 1000 points tournaments
25k+ weekenders are your 500 points tournaments
10k+ tournaments are your 250 points tournaments

The WCS system was theoretical very close to the ATP system. But there are major flaws:
Not enough money:
Since 2013 every year blizzard reduced its spend money for WCS system. The weekenders have reduced either prize pool or reduced their pure amount, Red Bull cut off its circuit, IEM has cut the amount of tournaments where SC II is played, MLG dropped the game completly, DH has dropped the game half the way. Coppenhagengames did the same. Only Gfinity came new and I will write about them next.
Gfinity is a special case and shows more major flaws then money: All their tournaments could be used as WCS 10k+ tournaments (your 250 tournaments) which gave in total 1800 points and 300 for the winner. But Gfinity needed viewers and players. They couldnt pay trips for qualificated players and also sheduled to the same time other tournaments have been sheduled. Therefore they could not find the needed 16 player roaster and had to reduce the amount of players to 8, which was not enough to give WCS points. Also their viewer count was very low and I doubt they will do SC II tournaments next year.
While in ATP/tennis you have millions of tennis players, clubs everywhere (in the developed countries), which leads to a large amount of strong players which are willing to try to compete in lower tournaments and still give watchable games for a solid amount of viewers which finances the tournaments. In SC II you dont have this. Viewers dont come for locals only (I dont the foreigner korean talks, but the GM100 or better against Mid Masters and better). As there are not enough "good enough" players to fill those small tournaments, you have to try to get them from all over the world. And thus you will have top of the world again there, as even the top of the world does not earn enough money to just left out one of these tournaments.
Money for players: While in Tennis even lower ranked players can make a living from the game (or at least buy tickets for flights), this is not the case in SC II. Tournaments without payed qualifiers have serious problems to not just plain invite as much people as possible (from which they know they will come), because alot of players just cant pay for the flights or do not get them payed. When you play at Dreamhack and not get into top 8, your trip will have taken more money from your pocket then it gave you. Same goes for HSCs and even more forCoppenhagengames/Gfinity, where you have to be at least in Top4 to not lose money. So tournaments keep being empty and only invite people they know they will come. And these players will allways be the same, at every event. Just like the 2014 Jaedong.

So all in all, we allready had such a ATP system with different points for different "important" events. On Top the foreigner WCS which was there to give money and exposure for foreigners with all payed trips and zero invites. But the system was sick and it was sick of the lack of money. With such low prize pools we are talking about, the pools are not high enough for enoug players to force their way into professional starcraft, as they cannot live from it. So you will allways see the same players (no difference if these are koreans or foreigner), as these are the guys who find solid organisation or got enough skill to find their way in the fight for income. Also tournament organisations have so little room that they cant flight people (so also only the people who can pay for themselfs fly over and thats allways the same), but tournaments cant work only with the locas who can drive by car, as nobody watches them and thus the tournament cant make enough money to keep existing. What is missing in competitive Starcraft: MONEY. And at this very point there is only one organisation that could change something about that, Blizzard. But Blizzard is not willing to invest high sums (like 2013) into Starcraft and we have to live with this.

What Blizzard does now, is the worst. Reducing their spend money while trying to keep foreigners in the eyes of western viewers relevant. That cannot work and will never work in a form, that SC II will survive very long or even grow again. I cannot see how this system can reach a point, where foreigners imrpove their skill (or even new ones will make a impact), where more then 10 foreigners can make enough money to make a living from the weekend circuit, where fans from all over the world can watch the best players live without traveling for 2000$ to korea and where the best players earn the most.

But on the other hand, we cant know if this is the only way to keep weekend tournaments alive: Maybe ESL/IEM was about to drop SCII, Dreamhack was about to drop SC II for all future events, RB was stopping battlegrounds forever and Gfinity closed its doors. And as blizzard didnt want to throw money into financing the earnings of weekend tournament hosters as also pay for the complete WCS of ESL and their earnings, they just trashed down WCS and at least keep the weekend tournaments alive. We dont know, but I dont like it. I allways hoped that Blizzard would find a way to earn more money with SC II and thus would have a honest interest to keep competetive SCII alive. But it seems they are not able to do so and thus have no interest anymore in competetive SC II and will move out of it, every year a little bit.

PS: People saying ESL dropped WCS and thus Blizzard has no choice, cant be right: ESL hosts leagues for publishers, who askes them to do so: Guildwars/Arenanet, Halo (after MLG dropped it) / Microsoft, GearsofWar, MortalkombatX and many more. These leagues are the same comitement then WCS was. The only thing that could have happend, is ESL asking for more money (not infinite more, just more), but it is not ESL that droppes WCS from their side, but Blizzad not willing to pay what ESL askes for their services. While other publishers like Arenanet are willing to pay that amount of money for their leagues. And even so, there would be other possibilities. WCS Challanger and Qualifier have been online anyway, you need only 2 guys and a desk, Ro32 could be held in other locations easy. In Germany at TaKes bar (even bigger then ESL 20 man studio in cologne) or the freaks4you studio. In USA at MLGs studio or at blizzards basement. Ro16 and Playoffs have been anyway somewhere at an offline location. There are alternatives to ESL, even tho ESL gives you everything in a box, while you have to work a small puzzle without em. But Blizzard could have done it.
It is just a money thing.

On December 15 2015 06:05 Clonester wrote:



The funny thing is: While the community spends 16M+$ for the international, via buying compendiums, valve makes x3, so over 48M+$ from these sells, as only 25% of the money you pay for the compendiums goes into TI prize pool. So all of Valves prize money+production+whateverelse+earning come from just selling TI compendiums and on top they get a tournament, where even becoming 10th or so is enough to fully finance a complete dota team. Or in case of MVP 2 dota teams and a starcraft team.
In CS:GO, the prize money is only 250k at majors, but over 1,8M$ has been given to the 16 teams via selling stickers. And another 1,8M$ has been earned by valve. + over 1.000.000 viewers.
That's plain genious. Let your tournaments finance via the community, make even a big earning of it and have a solid healthy esport scene.

Valve found a way to finance their complete esports without much work and also make their game more popular with that. Blizzard couldnt find such way. Blizzard follows the Riot way, use esport to make your game more popular and thus invest heavy into esport. But while a f2p game gives Riot a everyday income and needs an consistent stream of new players and also hold old players, SCII doesnt work that way.

I only see 2 ways to make SC II scene either grow again or at least not become irrelevant sooner or later (more likely sooner): Find a way to get more people into SC II via new ways of selling stuff and gaining a reason to invest into esport (and get a return of investment from it). Or just throw money into it. Its all on blizzards hands, but they have no reason to do so acutally as long as they dont change the game till you can buy "Zergling marble fade FN" and "Marine Safari mesh FT". And even that maybe wount work, as its an RTS and not a MOBA or a shooter.

Next to "Blizzard please give MUCH MUCH MUCH more money for SC II competetive scene" I dont know a good answers. Seriously it is just heartbreaking how Blizzard moves out of SC II every year a little bit and every of these steps has a negative impact on the scene, on both scenes, foreign and korean, as the one scene lost competition and skill, the other one just lost money per player and thus loses players.

On December 14 2015 23:39 ZombieFrog wrote:
The tennis analogy truly sums up how SC2 tournaments are organized, but of course with one important difference in fan reactions. In Tennis a European has won basically every major for years except for the one time Del Potro won. It's almost unheard of for a non-European player to win, much like Koreans in tournaments. And you know what? People love players like Federer and Djokovic in the US and abroad, I have never heard anyone here complain about the fact that European wins every tournament. Not once have a I heard that Europeans should not be allowed to the US open or anything similar, and that is how it should be. The players skill and how they play the game should be the main draw, not the fact that they happen to by coincidence be born in the same part of the world

On December 15 2015 08:32 The_Red_Viper wrote:
When can we even expect blizzard to release some news on this?
It is getting really annoying -.-

On December 15 2015 13:48 The_Red_Viper wrote:
It's just that wcs is basically starting this week. If nobody has any clue what happens next year (this includes players and teams) then yeah, maybe just MAYBE blizzard kinda fucked up

On December 15 2015 13:58 Incognoto wrote:
Blizzard is breaking out in cold sweat upon reading this thread.