uThermal sounds off on WCS "If you’re stuck in the Ro32 be…

On August 30 2016 07:12 ROOTFayth wrote:
yours would qualify as laughing, which one wins I wonder, must be 50/50

On August 29 2016 22:58 catabowl wrote:


Wow... Way to politicize it... Your world view is dangerous and should be ridiculed till the end of time. See how dumb that sounds when you attack? Focus on the argument/opinion... stupid Liberal... Ha, see, doesn't help the debate. Now, back to the topic at hand.

The event felt more special (even if the Koreans were 2-0, 3-0 all competition). Something tells me, Blizzard wants that again. If I have seen Parting vs (insert Foreigner) 5 times in 2016 already and Parting is 5-0, watching the Blizzcon match has no appeal. However, if they haven't played all year, it makes the match more exciting/interesting.

Actually if you count the number of Korean friendly tournaments to foreigner only tournaments, the numbers go to about 7 Korean friendly and 9 foreigner only tournaments. (This includes proleague)

On August 30 2016 08:05 Eiltonn wrote:
Idk how u counted, but the allocation of money is fairly onsided

On August 30 2016 11:54 Brutaxilos wrote:

This right here is the most compelling piece of evidence. Justify WCS all you want, but it just ISN'T RIGHT that foreigners are making more than Koreans. This is such bullshit.

On August 30 2016 11:54 Brutaxilos wrote:

This right here is the most compelling piece of evidence. Justify WCS all you want, but it just ISN'T RIGHT that foreigners are making more than Koreans. This is such bullshit.

On August 30 2016 12:58 FrkFrJss wrote:




Well first, I opened teamliquid Wikipedia and counted the premier tournaments.

Ok, so I decided to look at Snute's earnings, and what I found was very interesting. All told everything that was not region locked or was an invitational accumulated about $6745. Add $2000 if you think that Homestory was a non-region locked tournament. This amount is only $8400, which isn't that much. However, another non-region locked tournament (though heavily invitationals) was the Chinese Neo star league, which netted him $22,500.

Now what I'm trying to count is the money he made in non WCS tournaments. So, what might he made if WCS wasn't region locked. If you NSL as a non-WCS tournament (which I don't believe it was), then that take off 31,245 dollars (us) which leaves him around 41,000 dollars from WCS tournaments.

Now, that may or may not be compelling with regards to Snute and his global skill level and how much he really would have made otherwise, but it does lower the amount significantly that he made over Koreans.

For other players, the disparity might be greater (Like Neeb), what I am trying to say is that Koreans often do not take part in all the online tournaments that foreigners do, and their participation in Proleague has always limited what they can participate in.

Doing a quick once over, Nerchio made about $53,000 (or so) from WCS tournaments.

Ok, now for the WCS premier prize pool so far, it's been $750,000 dollars.
For the premier Korean events, it comes to 621,000 dollars.

But here's where things get strange. The WCA is not region locked, and a number of Koreans have already qualified. The same will occur for WESG as well. Blizzcon is also another event where Koreans are not locked out.

The collective prize pool for these events is $1,100,000. The collective premier events (Korean and WCS) total to around $1,371,000.

So, the prize pool of tournaments to come is almost that of all premier tournaments to date. I imagine that the Koreans should dominate and come back with the majority of that 1.1 million dollars.

Furthermore, aligulac only tracks money that has been awarded regardless of the player's participation in active tournaments. Dark, who earned $42,000, actually has $59,000, and if he wins, that number jumps to $77,000. Also keep in mind that he doesn't play in any of the other tournaments that Snute did.

Almost half of the potential prize pool is yet to be given out (for premier tournaments). So are the numbers really that bad?

Obviously, the Korean earnings did take a hit from the lock out, but at the higher levels, the numbers are not so bad. It really isn't wise to call something awful based off of earnings that do not take into account 44.5% of the total premier earnings.

If you want to say the earnings demonstrate something, do it at the end of the year.

On August 30 2016 13:10 Brutaxilos wrote:

You seem to have done good research. I'm still convinced that the current WCS system isn't healthy for the Korean players, but I appreciate the well written comment.

On August 30 2016 06:39 ROOTFayth wrote:
all I know is I was there and the crowd was cheering a LOT MORE when Scarlett was winning games than anybody else, it was not even close, also they weren't faceless koreans, even True who had pretty limited english tried his very best to talk in english during interviews, Polt has been a fan favorite among foreigners for quite a while now... he's part of the foreigners now much more than he is a faceless korean as you would say

On August 29 2016 11:41 kaykoose wrote:
I still don't understand why we couldn't simply region lock the old WCS system. That way we would still have foreigners and Koreans competing in Dreamhacks and IEMs

On August 30 2016 00:09 VHbb wrote:



I'm not sure I agree with this argument.
Pro players may be the ones that benefit from region lock, but they are also the people that would MOST benefit from a popular and successful game. I'm quite sure they are all pretty smart people, and know that the more SC2 is doing better, the more their careers can move forward and keep going.

Also, something we may be missing/forgetting: I'm very sure that all progamers (and casters / community people for what it matters) are very passionate about SC2. I/we are all random fans of the game, I may care about it but not at the level of someone who made it his/her career and professional occupation. I don't think anybody went into starcraft, to become a progamer, because they wanted the money (there are more stable / higher rewarding careers for sure, following more standard paths).

I'm much more inclined to listen to the opinion of someone who care about this game enough to make it its main occupation, rather than the opinion of a fan (of course I'm just a fan as well): that's why I like these interviews very much, and I think we should give progamers their credit and listen to what they say with less suspicion (I'm not saying to take everything without critical sense, but also not suspecting them to talk just to their own benefit).



p.s. about moving to korea vs moving from korea to europe/NA
I see a huge difference between an accomplished progamer (like MC to name one) who moves to Europe knowing that he already earned a lot of money and that he is moving there to bring his *huge* skill and experience in a different tournament system, versus someone that moves from Europe to Korea without having prior results, and who is moving to be in a system where i can improve.
Koreans don't move to Europe/NA to improve, but to compete in a different system. Foreigners would have to move to Korea to improve and, only then, reap the benefit of their improvements. It's a much higher bet, it takes much more time and it's more difficult.
I see a parallel (with all the caveats) in what happens in other sports, where athletes at the end of their careers move to regions where their sport is less developed / competitive to play for a few more years: this is not *that* difficult, see rugby players from NZ/SA/AUS playing their last years in Japan.
The opposite is much much much more unlikely, you almost never see a European rugby player moving to NZ to compete in their championship

On August 30 2016 11:45 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:

you're not the boss of us

On August 30 2016 15:09 Topdoller wrote:
It be fascinated to know who many foreigner sc2 pros speak Korean , especially from the NA continent. Are you bi lingual ?

On August 30 2016 16:03 RKC wrote:
I also found uThermal's complaints about single elimination tournaments somewhat amusing, ironic, and maybe even hypocritical:

- "TRUE got lucky, he had an easier run."
- The only tourney he has ever won is a single elim tourney
- In the past, he has never made a deep run into WCS, IEM or DH which employs double elim format (he has problems even passing the group stages full of foreigners, while other foreigners like Snute and Lilbow can make it far)

The irony is that he likely won also because of the luck of the single elim format.

Also, such facts just don't gel with the 'tournament so stacked with Koreans, foreigners no motivation' theory either. He cites examples where he gets knocked out by top and mid-tier Koreans in the past, but that's conveniently ignoring the many opportunities he was well-positioned to go far in the past (due to the luck of the draw) but never took it. And there are plenty of foreigners going far in such stacked tourneys.

I don't doubt that players, including him, may have motivational issues when they feel like 'they don't stand a chance'. But I question as to whether the old WCS/IEM/DH tourneys really carried such a gloom and doom amongst foreigners. Maybe we need to hear more from other foreigners.

But in any case, I feel it's not the right competitive mindset for any sportsmen to have. Just do your best. Ignore the odds, as Han Solo would say. Look at Leicester City last season. If their players carried such a negative mentality, they would never have won the Premier League. But they just kept believing, fighting, and winning. Were they promised wages and sponsorship deals that would make them on par with Messi and Ronaldo if they had won? No. They just wanted to win, and win they did.

(Ultimately, the feeling I get is that uThermal got lucky with his win, and is trying to justify his win by reasons of 'not motivated before but now training harder'. Well, maybe with more wins under his belt through his 'new found motivational drive and training regime', then he has a case. Until then, we can never be sure.)

On August 30 2016 17:04 FrkFrJss wrote:


I do think he was a bit lucky in his win (Neeb crumbling), and he really hasn't been a standout foreigner in the past. Also, I can't speak for foreign pros, but just looking at WCS America and Europe for 2014, in America 2/24 ro8 spots were Korean (those two were Canadians by the way).

In Europe, as the stronger region, they had 7/24 foreigners in the ro8. And sometimes this was due to a whole group or three quarters of a group having foreigners.

Going deeper, very few Koreans in either America or Europe lost in the ro16, and there were a number of knockouts in the ro32, but those were the outliers.

Suffice to say, as a fan, I usually expected no foreigners in America ro8 and very few foreigners in Europe. Thing is, these weren't even the highest level Koreans, but they still managed to dominate.

This is only WCS, and I don't really remember many IEMs or Dreamhacks where foreigners made that deep of a run except for outstanding performances by a few select players like Stephano, Scarlett, Snute, and Scarlett.

Actually, I just briefly read through most of the non-league tournaments in 2014, and most of the time there might be one or two foreigners in the ro8 if that. Most of the time one of those foreigners was Snute.

Koreans hard core dominated 2014.