Kim Phan: "We are trying to make sure we are doing what’s…

On March 08 2016 00:34 kimaphan wrote:
To address the comments about Blizzard abandoning Korea and not caring about Korean players. We are still greatly supporting Korea and continue to invest significantly in GSL, SSL, and Proleague. They still exist today because of Blizzard's involvement and can still be enjoyed and appreciated by everyone.

The changes to WCS was to create a second system that can help support the rest of the regions and all of the players that don't have the same infrastructure as Korea. What is best for StarCraft does not mean what is only best for Korean players or only foreign players. It's trying to balance both.

The intention is not to have only one global event in the year but potentially others. We are still working on this with other partners.

Regarding the WCS 2012 system, it was changed because of the feedback from the community. Not only was it hard to follow, but people were not interested in watching it. The community as a whole was not watching or following all of the regional events. The interest was not there until the global finals.

The same happened with WCS as more and more Korean players who were not well-known entered the system. People were not interested in watching Korean players who had it easier or weren't the very best of the best (because the very best were competing in GSL/SSL). Foreign players also lost interest in competing and participation was dropping.

On March 08 2016 01:41 Musicus wrote:


Hi Kim, thanks for listening and replying to us. I've been following esports since wc3 and loved your content and casts back then!

First of all I am all for region locking and giving foreigners and local players more chances, I think the system does this well! We already have great storylines thanks to DH and IEM Katowice.
But can you tell us why you didn't just continue with WCS Premiere Season 1,2,3 with studio events and a big season final at a nice venue? Those were the easiest to follow by far.
You could've let IEM/DH untouched and they would be our global events, where Korean players earn Korean WCS points and foreigners their foreign WCS points for the 8/8 split at BlizzCon. If those had gotten extra prize money from Blizzard (possible since the money went from 1,6M to 2M), the hype around DHs and IEM would be really big, since we have the Foreigner vs Korean storyline back.

Was this solution ever discusses and if yes why did it not become reality? Because now it just feels like we lost the WCS Premiere League and IEM/DH got "stolen" from the scene and are now region locked. Many were looking forward to an IEM WC where the winners of the previous IEMs would compete.

In regards to the Korean scene, it just feels like they have too few opportunites to play in. 4 big qualifiers a year is not enough. A player like Parting or Jaedong and many others who are not on a Proleague team and didn't quaulify for/went out early in GSL/SSL might not be seen competing offline of 6 months? That's not cool, would you agree?

My last question is if the WCS Spring and Winter Championship will be standalone events, because I think that's a lot better. Not having a crowd at day 1 and day 2 of Katowice was kind of disappointing!

Thank for your time and all the hard work. Hopefully WCS can become something everybody can enjoy in the future .

On March 08 2016 01:27 JeffKim wrote:

Hi Kim, first off although I disagree with some of your responses and philosophies regarding e-sports in general, I have to give due respect for taking the time to connect with players/community members. I think SC2 really needs that, and I think it's something that it has lacked in the past, so please let the people at Blizzard know to definitely engage as much as they can as it is appreciated.

Secondly I have a quick question: You said this above --



Yet here: http://wcs.battle.net/sc2/en/articles/2016-starcraft-ii-world-championship-series

We can observe the following:







Now, I'm ALL FOR equality opportunity, engaging with other regions than your own, etc., but do you think restricting access so that Player A from Region A should only be able to compete in Region A, Player B from Region B should only be able to compete in Region B, etc.? I see this both appropriate from an architectural standpoint as well as logical for the quelling of region differences as well as scheduled play quotas.

Then, at the end, the top X from each region compete at a large tournament. Like other games that adapt this -- I'm sure you know it more than I do, as you have vast experience with tournament structuring.

I think at some point, eligibility to compete regardless of "fair play" needs to have restrictions to prune and efficiently progress. What say you?

On March 08 2016 00:41 The_Red_Viper wrote:


Good answer, thanks for that! I assume most tournament organizers aren't interested in the global events because it's harder for them to actually produce one (requirements).
I will be honest, i am a big 'korean sc2 elitist', that doesn't mean that i cannot see that some form of region locking was necessary though!
But one thing i cannot understand, why only 2 seasons of GSL/SSL? The money surely could have been spread out over 6 tournaments instead of 4. It's such a shame that korean players who fail to qualify for GSL/SSL season one have to basically wait half a year and only have proleague (if they actually are part of kespa)

This is basically my biggest complaint about the korean changes for wcs 2016 tbh, i hope you guys at blizzard will discuss this and maybe change it for next year (assuming there will be a next year, which we all hope for )

On March 08 2016 02:22 Diabolique wrote:
Well, Kim has guts :-) To face the beast, which is the TL community :-)
But it is good to know, she reads the ideas here.

On March 08 2016 02:10 feardragon wrote:
@Kim Phan: I know you mentioned you're trying to create more grassroots support in Korea but have you put any thought into encouraging some of your large event partners to simply run some global events in Korea?

I think something like an IEM or Dreamhack: Seoul as a global event would be something fairly unique since most korean tournaments have very different formats than the "weekend tournament" most foreign events have. These kind of events also allow up and coming koreans to cause upsets and make a name for themselves as we've seen it happen in foreign events.

Thanks for all the hard work you do!

On March 08 2016 02:29 Incognoto wrote:


Well the first thing that was answered is "I can't answer this question" and the second thing which she answered was "I don't understand this question".

Nonetheless, the fact that she's posting here at all is a good sign. I just hope that actual listening and communication takes place.

I am particularly interested in hearing the rationale behind creating big, false tournaments (everyone except for Korean is welcome) instead of leaving the big tournaments actually open and hosting smaller, region-locked tournaments. Right now, IEM is a fake joke. It's disgusting to watch an event which specifically makes sure that the best aren't allowed to participate just because they're the best.