WCS
uThermal is one of 2016's biggest breakout stars, winning IEM Shanghai to become the first foreigner Terran to win a major title in years. He's also one of the biggest beneficiaries of the drastic changes in WCS 2016. I talked to him about the pros and cons of the new, region-locked WCS, and how it could be improved going forward.*Interview has been edited for clarity.
uthermal: Well for me, it’s good. The thing is, it feels kind of extreme in a way, because the WCS players make a lot more money than the Koreans now. I looked at the Aligulac.com earlier, and I think the top five earners of 2016 are all WCS (link to rankings).
I think they went from another extreme to this extreme. Because before, it was pretty much impossible to be a progamer as a foreigner. I think I made around $10,000 a year before, which was pretty terrible. And now I make over $50,000, so it’s a really big difference. I think it’s good, but they messed up some stuff in the process.
The worst thing is they had events for Koreans for so long, and then they region locked it after five years. So there are a bunch of Koreans who were living off foreign tournaments, and suddenly their careers just died.
So even besides the one big championship you got at IEM, you’re saying in general there’s a lot more chances to pick up money from high finishes.
Yeah, because last year and the years before, going to a DreamHack was like, you go because you’re a progamer and it’s your duty. But in reality you knew it was pretty much a waste of time. There’s like thirty-five Koreans and you’re probably going to lose to one of them in the Ro32 or something. There was almost no point in going, except for team exposure and the off chance you get a lucky bracket and get top eight.
And now, every foreigner is super tryhard to get to every event. Not everyone can win, but everyone has a chance at top four, top eight. There’s actually a point in going to events now.
If everyone is trying hard, do you think everyone has become better? Do you notice people practicing harder and getting better?
Yeah, I’m sure people are better. You can also see a lot of the players who weren’t that motivated before—Nerchio is a good example. He was really not that good in HotS, and then in LotV the game became better and the system allowed him chances. Now he’s trying pretty hard and he’s gone really far.
It’s kind of similar with me. Last year, I had been trying really hard for a long time. When all your effort results in a single top eight, and some Ro32s and whatever... ...it really felt like it was pointless to practice back then.
Now, for example, Elazer and Drogo and all the players who have a chance for BlizzCon—and me and all the top players—are trying really hard. I do think we’re better than ever, for sure.
Like, I read Harstem’s interview (link to interview), and I talked about the interview with some other progamers, and everyone thought it was complete bullshit what he said. Made more money even though he was worse? But everyone thinks he’s like ten times better than he ever was. Maybe he feels that way himself, but he was just a Ro32 player like me, previously, and now he’s a double champion. He’s so much better, it shocked all of us that he had that perception. Really, all of us think everyone is better pretty much, except for like a select few like Harstem.
If you look at the main, Blizzard WCS tournament itself, it’s not THAT different from the previous WCS Premier Leagues in terms of the number of Koreans competing. Do you think the main WCS tournament has changed much?
No, definitely not. That’s what’s surprised me the most out of the comments. Because I read Reddit and TeamLiquid a lot, and I read all the comments. There's a comment I see sometimes. For example, when ShowTime won in Tours(link to bracket)—a lot of people acted like it wasn’t that big of a deal compared to previous years, because it’s region locked now. I feel the tournaments are exactly the same.
Yes, there was one point when WCS was harder, it was when the six Koreans were living in Germany, MC, YoDa, First, etc. That’s when it was a bit harder.
But for example, when Lilbow won WCS (link to bracket), it was the same, or even a bit easier than now. Because Polt and Hydra were already there, and the other Koreans in that season were Stardust and Jaedong, who were basically like foreigners in level. They were not seen as top players the last year.
And I think now, it's a little bit harder with the addition of TRUE. So I think the WCS main tournaments are pretty much exactly the same.
So what the region lock has really changed for you guys, is your chances at third party tournaments like IEM, DreamHack, etc.
Last year, it was literally… let me pull up my results (link to results).
At offline events, I would pretty much lose in the first or second round of everything. I went to gfinity, lost to sacri twice in the group stage, the first round of the tournament. At DreamHack Tours, I lost in the group stages to PartinG, and in the Ro32 against TRUE. In IEM I lost in the Ro8 against PartinG. And in the gfinity after that I lost in the first round to MyungSiK.
It’s pretty important that you build results to be better. It’s kind of hard to explain that part, but if you’re stuck in the Ro32 because of the Koreans, you can’t grow to become a better player. You need to be able to get further in tournaments to learn more and do better. If you just lose in the Ro32 all the time, there’s no room to grow ever. Before, pretty much all the foreigners who did well were the people who played in WoL early on, and already had experience from when tournaments weren’t as hard. But for new people, it was super hard to break out. Every time you lose in the Ro32, even against a Korean, it doesn’t feel like you’re a good player. All you did was lose in the first or second round. And now, a lot of the players that were just Ro32 players got better and are now champions like me, Drogo and Harstem.
Once you get that level of results, I think you can put up a fight against Koreans, because you feel like you’ve achieved something and you know how to play further in tournaments, under pressure.
How has this year changed your outlook on progaming going forward?
I always felt like I could continue progaming. I probably would have started my studies a bit earlier if it was the same story. If you’re like seventeen—I think that was the first year I got into WCS—and all your friends are just working in the supermarket and you make $10,000 in one year, it’s nice. Once you’re like twenty, twenty-one and you’re still making like $10,000 a year, you’re like "I guess I’m gonna have to do something else." And now we’re actually making money, it doesn’t feel bad to continue progaming for a bit.
What could have been better about WCS 2016? What changes should be made next year?
We actually all had a long chat with Blizzard about this at DreamHack Montreal. I think the biggest thing was that the formats of tournaments were absolutely terrible.
The single elimination Ro32?
Yeah. Here’s a good example.
TRUE won a single elimination tournament, beating two players who were top eight in WCS points. And I won a single elimination tournament beating four players who were in the top eight. His format wasn’t harder, it wasn’t a harder tournament. But his just happened to have more points points and money. I think I actually won a harder tournament than TRUE did, but he just got lucky and won the right tournament.
I think that was the biggest problem. There has to be some way to distinguish the tournaments. Everything is single elimination. We told Adrian (of Blizzard esports) that if you had that format at IEM or DreamHack Open, it wouldn't be that big of a deal. But what does a WCS tournament even mean if it’s a single elimination bracket? So first of all, we suggested they take a different format for sure. Most of us—I think twenty of the thirty-two players, including the Chinese players, were there—most of us agreed, the DreamHack Winter format was really good, the six man round robin groups.
Just imagine—there’s only three WCS tournaments a year—imagine if a Dota Major had a single elimination bracket, or the International. Just imagine how dumb that would be. That was really the biggest problem everyone had.
Besides that we talked a bit about player conditions. Some events don’t even have food for the players, some events the chairs are terrible, just general stuff like that. Blizzard has requirements regarding player conditions if you want to hold a WCS tournament like DH, and we told them they could require better conditions. For example, at DreamHack Montreal, if you played on the B-stream, you were kinda fucked because the chairs there were so low your wrists would just hurt all the time. On the main stream, and also the B-stream, the tables were super shaky and the conditions were not that good for most of the tournament. It wouldn’t be as bad if it was a DH open, but for a WCS tournament, stuff like that has to be on point.
But in terms of the big picture, you’re happy with this year.
I guess so. I think it’s pretty good. Like, the idea of WCS is good, but the execution was not that great, I think. There’s a lot of small issues here and there. The planning of the events is always pretty bad. Blizzard knows dates of qualifiers and stuff like that way before we get to know. It’s not like they know one month before and we find out three weeks before. Blizzard has a schedule with all their events and qualifiers and stuff. For example, for the qualifiers for the last WCS in Montreal, Blizzard knew the dates three months before, and they told us like one week before. The scheduling is really not that good.
Okay I think we're reaching the end of most reader's attention span. Final comments? Anything funny?
I can’t really think of anything, I woke up not long ago and my brain is kind of fried right now.
Always nice talking to you.
