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2017 StarCraft® II World Championship Series![[image loading]](http://d299ks0j9y7dbf.cloudfront.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/WCS-2017-Announcement_SC_WCS-Header_DSP_897x280_v2.jpg) As 2016 comes to a close, we reflect on a year of great StarCraft® II matches and compelling esports stories. From Dark’s and Zest’s dominance in Korea in the early part of 2016, to Neeb’s and Byun’s storybook triumphs, we hope to continue building on those successes in StarCraft II esports, as well as take on new opportunities heading into 2017.
In Korea, we maintain our commitment to the highest level of StarCraft II and supporting the world’s best players. We are pleased to work with our partners at AfreecaTV, who will continue running the Global StarCraft II League (GSL), as well as some weekend tournaments to help supplement the competitive calendar and offer more opportunities for players to compete. The seasons and tournaments are also scheduled more linearly throughout 2017 compared to 2016.
To serve the rest of the world’s competitors, we will maintain the WCS Circuit, simplifying the structure to offer four championship events with direct seeds into the year-end WCS Global Finals. Each of these events will have straightforward paths to qualification via open brackets or regional challenger events that can be qualified into easily, with ladder qualification returning in in certain regions.
Overall, the structure we put in place for 2017 will largely remain unchanged in 2018. Additionally, we’re pleased to present a calendar of all planned events for 2017. Our hope is that presenting a multiyear plan as well as the entirety of next year’s schedule this early can help players better manage their schedules and pursue opportunities with certainty and confidence.
2017 WCS Highlights
$2 Million Prize Pool
For WCS events alone, pro players will have over two million reasons to get involved and compete in 2017.
Three Global Events
This year, we heard the clamor for more global events and opportunities for Korean and Circuit players to clash as we hoped. This time around we are committed to supporting at least three global events where players from both the Korea and Circuit side can qualify and compete. Each event will have its own unique style and flavor.
IEM Katowice – As the yearly flagship event from ESL, IEM Katowice in Poland will present an early opportunity for Korean and Circuit players to size each other up and compete. As one of the world’s largest esports events, it also promises to be the biggest gathering of StarCraft II pro players for the year. WCS will offer qualifiers with paid travel to the event for both Circuit and Korean players, as well as an open bracket and deep prizing. And like GSL championships and WCS Circuit event titles, the winner of this event gets a ticket punched straight to the WCS Global Finals.
GSL vs. the World – At mid-year in Korea, we will host a very special all-star event for your favorite Circuit and Korea pros to compete against each other. Stay tuned for details on the selection process and the structure of the event.
WCS Global Finals – Of course, no year of StarCraft II esports is complete without an exciting year-end world championship. As with last year, we will collect the year’s champions and top performers to battle it out. Three foreigners made the quarterfinals in 2016. Can they continue to make strides for the ultimate title? Or will Korean players maintain their dominance?
Support From StarCraft War Chest
At this past BlizzCon, we announced the War Chest, a seasonal treasure map that StarCraft II players can purchase to gain access to special content like unit skins, decals, and more. A portion of the proceeds from War Chest will go to support WCS!
Korea — GSL is Back; Linear Scheduling; Weekend Tournaments . . .
The longest running StarCraft II esports brand is back in 2017, hosted by AfreecaTV. With three seasons scheduled to run straight through the year, plus weekend events like IEM Gyeonggi and two additional AfreecaTV Super Tournaments to run in between seasons, players and fans can expect a more regular stream of StarCraft II esports out of Korea. Players will find more consistent opportunities to compete.
. . . and Better Viewing Times for Global Fans
And finally, some good news for NA viewers. We are planning to run Wednesday GSL broadcasts at the usual 6:30 p.m. KST time, which is also evening/night time in SEA/ANZ, and mornings in EU. Friday night broadcasts will move to 1:00 p.m. KST Saturday (8:00 p.m./11:00 p.m. Friday Pacific/Eastern), which will allow for easier viewing for North American audiences. While no one time is perfect for everyone, we hope these timeslots offer better opportunities for a wider viewership of GSL around the globe.
WCS Circuit – Keeping It Simple
Last year included a number of different events tied to the WCS system, some of which included a seed into the WCS Global Finals, while others merely awarded points. TRUE’s run through Montreal last year catapulted him straight to BlizzCon. But Ptitdrogo’s earlier win at Leipzig only got him points. Was one win better than the other? This year we’re keeping it simple. Four WCS events will run at DreamHack stops: Austin, Summer, Valencia, and Montreal. Win and you’re in the WCS Global Finals. Players will gain WCS points from competing in these events as well as in regional Challengers.
Residency Requirements Stay the Same
The residency requirements for WCS Circuit remain the same as last year. Players will need proof of citizenship, permanent residency, or an appropriate visa in order to compete and earn points in the WCS Circuit. A minimum number of ladder games in the home region will also be required. The full details will be forthcoming in the WCS 2017 Rules. And on the WCS Korea side, any player can compete.
Ladder Challenger
Last year, we experimented in using the ladder as a qualification method for European and North American Challenger tournaments. After getting positive results and feedback from that process, this year we’re looking to refine and expand on this concept. Ladder and regional Challengers will be the only way to earn a guaranteed berth at a Circuit event, with the number of spots offered doubling to 16 as well.
Stability and Commitment
We intend to retain the same format for WCS 2018 as in 2017. While the exact events and timings for 2018 are up in the air, we are committed to supporting this structure and prizing over the next two years for WCS Korea and the WCS Circuit.
2017 WCS Highlights
WCS Korea Standings
Just like last year, WCS Korea will be open to all players globally, and we expect that it will continue to represent the most competitive region, where only the very best players will compete. The majority of sanctioned events will take place within Korea.
Three GSL seasons will take place in 2017, scheduled linearly through the year. These GSL seasons will form the backbone of WCS Korea competition. Three other weekend tournaments will also be sprinkled throughout the year to provide additional opportunities for players to compete. The first of these will be IEM Gyeonggi in December.
GSL – operated by AfreecaTV
Three seasons
₩170M per season
1st Place – WCS Global Finals seed
Awards WCS Korea points
Three weekend tournaments
Single weekend format
At least ₩30M+ per event
Award WCS Korea points
The three GSL season champions and the top players from the WCS Korea Standings will get direct slots into the WCS Global Finals at the end of the year, for a total of eight players from WCS Korea.
GSL Season 1 Champion (1)
GSL Season 2 Champion (1)
GSL Season 3 Champion (1)
WCS Korea Standings (5)*
*if the winner of the IEM Katowice event is a WCS Korea competitor, then only four players will be drawn from the WCS Korea Standings to fill out the complement of eight WCS Korea players at the WCS Global Finals.
WCS Circuit Standings
The WCS Circuit will continue to be the home for StarCraft II pro players from North America (NA), Europe (EU), Latin America (LATAM), China (CN), Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau (TW), and Australia/New Zealand/Southeast Asia (ANZ/SEA). To compete in WCS Circuit, players must be citizens or residents in one of these eligible regions. Residency rules remain largely the same as last year. Non-citizen and non-resident players will need an appropriate visa, and must compete regularly on the local ladder of their chosen region. Other guidelines and full residency rules will be outlined in a later Requirements blog.
The core of the WCS Circuit are four championship events, hosted by DreamHack. These events will take place in Austin, USA; Jönköping, Sweden (DH Summer); Valencia, Spain; and Montreal, Canada. For NA and EU players, the first stop to qualification for these events will be online cups or the ladder. High performance there will feed into Challenger Finals, where top performers will earn prize money and a chance at a qualifying spot and paid travel to the associated DreamHack event. Qualification methods for the other regions (LATAM, CN, TW, ANZ/SEA) may vary and will be announced later per region. For players able to manage their own travel, DreamHack will offer a number of open sign-up slots for each event. Stay tuned to DreamHack and WCS communication channels for details.
WCS Circuit event – four per year, operated by DreamHack
DreamHack Austin, Summer, Valencia, Montreal
$100,000 prize pools
96 players
1st Place – WCS Global Finals seed
Awards WCS Circuit points
Challenger seeds
(4) NA, (4) EU, (2) LATAM, (2) CN, (2) TW, (2) ANZ/SEA
WCS Regional Challenger (NA, EU, LATAM, CN, TW, ANZ/SEA)
Feeds into WCS Circuit events
Online
One per WCS Circuit stop
$10,000 prize pools
Formats and qualifiers are region-specific
Awards WCS Circuit points
The champions of the four official WCS Circuit events, and the top players from the WCS Circuit Standings will earn a spot at the WCS Global Finals.
WCS Austin Champion (1)
WCS Jönköping Champion (1)
WCS Valencia Champion (1)
WCS Montreal Champion (1)
WCS Circuit Standings (4)*
*if the winner of the IEM Katowice event is a WCS Circuit competitor, then only three players will be drawn from the WCS Circuit Standings to fill out the complement of 8 WCS Circuit players at the WCS Global Finals.
What’s next?
IEM Gyeonggi will kick off WCS 2017 with GSL following soon after in Korea! The first Circuit stop will land after Katowice, and we’ll have a packed schedule after that. We’re working with IEM, AfreecaTV, and DreamHack to finalize exact details on qualifications, awards, and compiling detailed Official Rules for the year. Expect that in your newsfeeds and inboxes very soon.
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United States1804 Posts
And the plot to destroy Korean Starcraft continues................................
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Deleted.
The system is alright.
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No SSLs I see. No surprise indeed.
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South Korea2105 Posts
GSL vs the world? goodbye SSL i guess? + region locking the season with just 3 gsls for them to compete in?
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With the advantage of the korean infrastructure gone is there any logical reason to ban koreans from tournaments anymore?
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There will be 3 GSLs. That alone makes me really happy!
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China6327 Posts
$1.7 million in total prize money, Korea gets $520K. I assume this excludes everything else, like the IEMs, Dreamhacks, misc WCS stops, etc.
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United States23455 Posts
Honestly this is garbage for Korea but it's better than I expected lol
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Why are koreans still banned from the foreigner circuit?
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Canada8988 Posts
Oh come on why the fuck do they keep the regional lock, at least lock gsl in that case... Did they not watch sc in the last 5 month, there is no more team in korea, they lost 2 pro league, player retire left and right, foreigner beat them every day, let them play where they want...
Well I guess we still have WCS so I can't realy complain.
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On December 10 2016 02:25 Darkness2k11 wrote:
Why are koreans still banned from the foreigner circuit?
They are not banned, they can obtain visas to play in the foreign circuit.
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Fiddler's Green42661 Posts
On December 10 2016 02:25 Darkhorse wrote:
Honestly this is garbage for Korea but it's better than I expected lol
How dare you, Korean SC2 is healthy as fuck. With Proleague, hot6ix Cups, SSLs, Kespa Cups and Globals it'll almost be too much.
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China6327 Posts
For the love of god, if IEMs and Dreamhacks are a thing, please be global.
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Expect a lot of retirements now.
I hoped blizzard cared for their careers but apparently not.
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Italy3204 Posts
...what's the point of keeping the "dividing line" between Korean WCS and Foreigner WCS if Korean Sc2 is basically no more? this is just stupid, it seems almost they did it without taking into count the last 2 months events...
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Well, to be fair, Korea now gets more money than the Foreign Circuit. Which is a plus compared to 2016, isn't it?
... the bad part is though that this is not because Korea gets more money, but because pretty much everyone seems to have dropped StarCraft II now.
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On December 10 2016 02:27 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 02:25 Darkness2k11 wrote:
Why are koreans still banned from the foreigner circuit? They are not banned, they can obtain visas to play in the foreign circuit.
Yes but why are only koreans not allowed. Why not germans or french or whatever? The argument always was that it's because koreans have the advantage of their infrastruscture but with that advantage gone I don't see what separates them from other countries so much that they can't compete together?
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don't know what to think right now, gonna wait for more info
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On December 10 2016 02:29 CynicalDeath wrote:
...what's the point of keeping the "dividing line" between Korean WCS and Foreigner WCS if Korean Sc2 is basically no more? this is just stupid, it seems almost they did it without taking into count the last 2 months events...
werent IEM and DH heads the guys that didnt want to have koreans and prefered AM/EU players? if thats the case sc2 status in Korea means nothing to them so why change it 
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I get that many people will not like the specifics, but can someone be really disappointed by this? I mean, I was honestly expecting the "no WCS in 2017" news to pop up any time soon, so the very existence of WCS 2017 with actual global finals and a dozen tournaments through they year, is strictly positive news to me and a cause for celebration.
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On December 10 2016 02:32 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 02:27 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 02:25 Darkness2k11 wrote:
Why are koreans still banned from the foreigner circuit? They are not banned, they can obtain visas to play in the foreign circuit. Yes but why are only koreans not allowed. Why not germans or french or whatever? The argument always was that it's because koreans have the advantage of their infrastruscture but with that advantage gone I don't see what separates them from other countries so much that they can't compete together?
When WCS France has its own circuit and WCS Germany has its own circuit maybe we can region lock them out?
We have a pretty good amount of Korean tournaments with 3 GSLs, IEM, and whatever the other thing is. We have IEM Katowice being a global event, and whatever GSL vs the World is. Having a region locked foreigner circuit isn't denying Koreans the money to have a stable scene, if it wasn't region locked do you think all these teamless Koreans are going to fly out all over the world to have a chance to earn the money back? This doesn't help the lower tier of Koreans players at all, and they're the ones who will struggle.
There's also nonWCS events like SHOUTcraft and Olimoleague.
I still can't see a more detailed announcement, but I don't think it's reasonable to be upset by what we know so far.
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On December 10 2016 02:28 Charoisaur wrote:
Expect a lot of retirements now.
I hoped blizzard cared for their careers but apparently not.
Honestly, though, it's not Blizzard's responsibility to keep esports careers alive. That's up to the esports community that's been built around Starcraft. The only thing Blizzard is actually responsible for is making the game, any support they give to the esports scene is a bonus.
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On December 10 2016 02:35 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 02:32 Charoisaur wrote:On December 10 2016 02:27 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 02:25 Darkness2k11 wrote:
Why are koreans still banned from the foreigner circuit? They are not banned, they can obtain visas to play in the foreign circuit. Yes but why are only koreans not allowed. Why not germans or french or whatever? The argument always was that it's because koreans have the advantage of their infrastruscture but with that advantage gone I don't see what separates them from other countries so much that they can't compete together? When WCS France has its own circuit and WCS Germany has its own circuit maybe we can region lock them out? We have a pretty good amount of Korean tournaments with 3 GSLs, IEM, and whatever the other thing is. We have IEM Katowice being a global event, and whatever GSL vs the World is. Having a region locked foreigner circuit isn't denying Koreans the money to have a stable scene, if it wasn't region locked do you think all these teamless Koreans are going to fly out all over the world to have a chance to earn the money back? This doesn't help the lower tier of Koreans players at all, and they're the ones who will struggle. There's also nonWCS events like SHOUTcraft and Olimoleague. I still can't see a more detailed announcement, but I don't think it's reasonable to be upset by what we know so far.
would be great of olimoleague could give some wcs points
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Russian Federation54 Posts
I am very glad to see region lock again. Korea is good like its now.
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On December 10 2016 02:27 stuchiu wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 02:25 Darkhorse wrote:
Honestly this is garbage for Korea but it's better than I expected lol How dare you, Korean SC2 is healthy as fuck. With Proleague, hot6ix Cups, SSLs, Kespa Cups and Globals it'll almost be too much.
stuchiu is Apollo
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Great to see another year of WCS, I was a bit worried. Prizepool looks healthy enough.
For all the stupid conspiracy blizzard haters:
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Could have been much, much worse, all things considered I'm okay with this. Though I hope to god this isn't every tournament.
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On December 10 2016 02:34 Topin wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 02:29 CynicalDeath wrote:
...what's the point of keeping the "dividing line" between Korean WCS and Foreigner WCS if Korean Sc2 is basically no more? this is just stupid, it seems almost they did it without taking into count the last 2 months events... werent IEM and DH heads the guys that didnt want to have koreans and prefered AM/EU players? if thats the case sc2 status in Korea means nothing to them so why change it
Well, not exactly. Blizzard paid money for DreamHack and IEM to exclude Koreans. We can assume that IEM and DH wanted a Korean-Ban, not gonna argue about that. But Blizzard supporting only the WCS Circuit Events and not the WCS Globel Events definitely didn't help neither.
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Seems like there are still too many koreans playing Sc2 for blizzards taste. Another season of region locking will probably take care of that though.
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Fiddler's Green42661 Posts
I don't know what he's expecting as a normal casual has no idea what goes into keeping SC2 in the tournament circuit. At the same time we push the idea that SC2 is always on the up and up as a scene building false expectations, so I can't really blame fans for being irrationally angry since they've been told everything is fine and dandy.
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Looks cool. So far it's 6 tournaments in Korea and 4 Tournaments outside of Korea. I hope there will be more when all the info is out.
Really hyped about GSL vs The World!
Only 1 global event makes me said, but I think there will be a lot of online competition in 2017. Shoutcraft is already confirmed and TB has even more planned.
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Deleted.
The system is alright.
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On December 10 2016 02:47 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 02:35 opisska wrote:
I get that many people will not like the specifics, but can someone be really disappointed by this? I mean, I was honestly expecting the "no WCS in 2017" news to pop up any time soon, so the very existence of WCS 2017 with actual global finals and a dozen tournaments through they year, is strictly positive news to me and a cause for celebration. I'm not sure this is better for me. Of course it's good that WCS is still there but with continuing the region-lock for no reason I feel like it's very discriminating. Before the disbandment of the teams the region-lock supporters could argue that it's not fair to compete with people that have such superior infrustructure but now is there any other reason to ban koreans other than "I don't want to see asians win"? I mean we can see now more sc2 but watching such a system kinda feels like supporting racism. I mean obviously nothing will drive me away from sc2 but this is disgusting to say the least and if I wouldn't love sc2 so much I'd boycott this system. I'd honestly prefer no WCS over racist WCS.
It's not racist. Don't be stupid.
You'd prefer no WCS and no tournaments over having regional tournaments? Talk about spite...
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All of the circuit events look like they're DHs, I hope that's because IEM hasn't announced next seasons schedule and not that they've pulled out of SC2.
I know the global event is an IEM but that's the end of this seasons not next seasons
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On December 10 2016 02:48 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 02:47 Charoisaur wrote:On December 10 2016 02:35 opisska wrote:
I get that many people will not like the specifics, but can someone be really disappointed by this? I mean, I was honestly expecting the "no WCS in 2017" news to pop up any time soon, so the very existence of WCS 2017 with actual global finals and a dozen tournaments through they year, is strictly positive news to me and a cause for celebration. I'm not sure this is better for me. Of course it's good that WCS is still there but with continuing the region-lock for no reason I feel like it's very discriminating. Before the disbandment of the teams the region-lock supporters could argue that it's not fair to compete with people that have such superior infrustructure but now is there any other reason to ban koreans other than "I don't want to see asians win"? I mean we can see now more sc2 but watching such a system kinda feels like supporting racism. I mean obviously nothing will drive me away from sc2 but this is disgusting to say the least and if I wouldn't love sc2 so much I'd boycott this system. I'd honestly prefer no WCS over racist WCS. It's not racist. Don't be stupid.
Then tell me what the reason is for only excluding koreans from tournaments other than "I don't want to see asians win"
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looks good to me !
keep in mind that this is the WCS circuit (supporter by BlizzMoney and they don't have to)
nothing is stopping tournament organizers to make events, that give extra competition and cash prizes to the players (Shoutcraft is an exemple, it could also be any kind of online or LAN tournaments) and ofc they would be mostly open to anyone aka koreans too.
edit: if we don't see that much extra tournaments it's because sc2 is not bankable anymore, you guys should be grateful and show a little bit more optimism towards the support Blizzard shows to the game
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I think this is great! Starcraft 2 may be declining in viewers but Blizzard still supports the game with both prize money and huge patches.
This is why I love Blizzard.
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On December 10 2016 02:51 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 02:48 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 02:47 Charoisaur wrote:On December 10 2016 02:35 opisska wrote:
I get that many people will not like the specifics, but can someone be really disappointed by this? I mean, I was honestly expecting the "no WCS in 2017" news to pop up any time soon, so the very existence of WCS 2017 with actual global finals and a dozen tournaments through they year, is strictly positive news to me and a cause for celebration. I'm not sure this is better for me. Of course it's good that WCS is still there but with continuing the region-lock for no reason I feel like it's very discriminating. Before the disbandment of the teams the region-lock supporters could argue that it's not fair to compete with people that have such superior infrustructure but now is there any other reason to ban koreans other than "I don't want to see asians win"? I mean we can see now more sc2 but watching such a system kinda feels like supporting racism. I mean obviously nothing will drive me away from sc2 but this is disgusting to say the least and if I wouldn't love sc2 so much I'd boycott this system. I'd honestly prefer no WCS over racist WCS. It's not racist. Don't be stupid. Then tell me what the reason is for only excluding koreans from tournaments other than "I don't want to see asians win"
They are not excluded, they can play if they have a visa. The winner of the main WCS circuit events last year were Polt, Showtime, and TRUE.
The existence of WCS Korea also gives Koreans who don't want to do this tournaments to play in and a way to qualfiy for global competitions.
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On December 10 2016 02:50 chipmonklord17 wrote:
All of the circuit events look like they're DHs, I hope that's because IEM hasn't announced next seasons schedule and not that they've pulled out of SC2.
I know the global event is an IEM but that's the end of this seasons not next seasons
I think those circuit events are all the seasonal championships (aka our modern day equivalent of WCS Premier) and not all WCS tournaments that happen next year.
At least I hope so.
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On December 10 2016 02:47 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 02:35 opisska wrote:
I get that many people will not like the specifics, but can someone be really disappointed by this? I mean, I was honestly expecting the "no WCS in 2017" news to pop up any time soon, so the very existence of WCS 2017 with actual global finals and a dozen tournaments through they year, is strictly positive news to me and a cause for celebration. I'm not sure this is better for me. Of course it's good that WCS is still there but with continuing the region-lock for no reason I feel like it's very discriminating. Before the disbandment of the teams the region-lock supporters could argue that it's not fair to compete with people that have such superior infrustructure but now is there any other reason to ban koreans other than "I don't want to see asians win"? I mean we can see now more sc2 but watching such a system kinda feels like supporting racism. I mean obviously nothing will drive me away from sc2 but this is disgusting to say the least and if I wouldn't love sc2 so much I'd boycott this system. I'd honestly prefer no WCS over racist WCS.
Are you sure there would be GSL without the whole WCS system in place? I do not know much about it, but can we really assume that? And I am pretty sure you'd be upset without any big Korean tournaments. I mean MKGA, Olimoleague and stuff are insanely cool nowadays when everyone plays in them, but it still does not beat having and actual big GSL. Then, in general, we want to watch SC2, right? What else is there left outside Korea, besides WCS, really? Even fucking Take, the messiah of SC2, has financial problems running SC2 events.
I am not thrilled with the region lock either, you know I am not, but still, is there more we could realistically wish for?
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IEM and DH probably don't want the region lock gone. Which I'm ok with; however I will hold my opinion until we get more information and not a picture. Austin Hype~
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Keep in mind that GSL is not region locked (tho it is kinda residency locked since you have to be there to play it)
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Maybe I was a bit harsh with my initial criticism, I apologize.
I just don't really understand why it's still needed to separate koreans and foreigners but looking at this it doesn't look that bad for koreans. But at least they should make the region-lock go both ways so that foreigners can't play in korean tournaments, doesn't sound really fair like it is.
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WCS 2018 confirmed 
"Overall, the structure we put in place for 2017 will largely remain unchanged in 2018"
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They're changing the broadcast times for GSL on Fridays to be more NA friendly, RIP EU
GSL qualifiers should happen pretty soon then.
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On December 10 2016 03:00 Musicus wrote:WCS 2018 confirmed "Overall, the structure we put in place for 2017 will largely remain unchanged in 2018"
That's really amazing news actually. At least two more years!
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Katowice25012 Posts
Excited 
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On December 10 2016 03:01 Elentos wrote:
They're changing the broadcast times for GSL on Fridays to be more NA friendly, RIP EU
I've woken up at 2 a.m. for like five years now in order to watch GSL.
It's become my norm. I was fine with it. Now I can't watch on Fridays, lol.
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Filthy NA scum taking away mah GSL.
5 in the morning that's gonna seriously do some passion-testing
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On December 10 2016 02:58 Charoisaur wrote:
Maybe I was a bit harsh with my initial criticism, I apologize.
I just don't really understand why it's still needed to separate koreans and foreigners but looking at this it doesn't look that bad for koreans. But at least they should make the region-lock go both ways so that foreigners can't play in korean tournaments, doesn't sound really fair like it is.
I agree that WCS Korea events should have the same region lock, this has always been a weird quirk.
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Australia18228 Posts
WCS Circuit is nice.
I think it's inevitable we'll see mass retirement from mid-tier Koreans though
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Wow, GSL is so early on the weekends now .
Also only 4 WCS Circuit events is really not that much, but I hope there will be more smaller events announced. It's like WCS Korea in 2016 lol. 4 Championships is good, but I hope there will at least 1 HSC and maybe 2 or 3 more events. Katowice will also be awesome of course.
I guess online events will become very important.
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On December 10 2016 03:01 Elentos wrote:
They're changing the broadcast times for GSL on Fridays to be more NA friendly, RIP EU
GSL qualifiers should happen pretty soon then.
haha yea worst news for me
given the current state of sc2, these WCS2017 are better than nothing
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South Korea2105 Posts
I wonder if we're going to get an official statement regarding SSL soon.
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Fiddler's Green42661 Posts
"support more globals"
Only have 1 additional event that's an all-star event.
And did they just say TRUE's WCS win wasn't legit?
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Mute City2363 Posts
On December 10 2016 03:01 Elentos wrote:
They're changing the broadcast times for GSL on Fridays to be more NA friendly, RIP EU
GSL qualifiers should happen pretty soon then.
Good luck getting a KR studio audience at 1pm on a Friday then
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On December 10 2016 03:13 stuchiu wrote:
"support more globals"
Only have 1 additional event that's an all-star event.
And did they just say TRUE's WCS win wasn't legit?
Well, they said it was not more legit than Nerchio's or Drogo's wins. And they are right.
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On December 10 2016 03:13 stuchiu wrote:
And did they just say TRUE's WCS win wasn't legit?
Where did they say anything close to that?
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On December 10 2016 03:01 Elentos wrote:
They're changing the broadcast times for GSL on Fridays to be more NA friendly, RIP EU
GSL qualifiers should happen pretty soon then.
Fuuuuuuuuuck why change it T_T
It's bad for Koreans too...
EDIT : ah nevermind, it's on saturday, not friday
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South Korea2105 Posts
On December 10 2016 03:14 munch wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 03:01 Elentos wrote:
They're changing the broadcast times for GSL on Fridays to be more NA friendly, RIP EU
GSL qualifiers should happen pretty soon then. Good luck getting a KR studio audience at 1pm on a Friday then
No1 was coming, that's probably the main reason they're changing the time. Just some fancy PR to hide the fact.
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On December 10 2016 03:14 munch wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 03:01 Elentos wrote:
They're changing the broadcast times for GSL on Fridays to be more NA friendly, RIP EU
GSL qualifiers should happen pretty soon then. Good luck getting a KR studio audience at 1pm on a Friday then
It's only friday night for NA, but it will be 1pm Saturday in Korea.
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Okay whatever I just realized that this means that SC2 is not gonna be dead in Korea when I finally visit this glorious country next July. Fingers crossed for live GSL around the days I will be available ...
Hell yeah!
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What I read in that huge wall of text is that IEM practically has given up on SC2, right?
We get the IEM in Korea, the global IEM and that's it.
I guess they gave us global for the last SC2 IEM ever.
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Mute City2363 Posts
On December 10 2016 03:15 ZiggyPG wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 03:14 munch wrote:On December 10 2016 03:01 Elentos wrote:
They're changing the broadcast times for GSL on Fridays to be more NA friendly, RIP EU
GSL qualifiers should happen pretty soon then. Good luck getting a KR studio audience at 1pm on a Friday then No1 was coming, that's probably the main reason they're changing the time. Just some fancy PR to hide the fact.
I went this year, they were getting 30-40 people for GSL Ro.32 / SSL, and more for Proleague
I wonder how your broadcast's gonna look when there's literally no audience
edit: Ohh right, missed that GSL moves to Saturday. Fixes that problem then
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nice to see Montreal get some love. montreal deserves it. best big event city in Canada.
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Fiddler's Green42661 Posts
My bad, i meant to say they admitted TRUE's win isn't any more legit than another DH/IEM.
Which I agree with, but thought they'd never admit.
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Thanks Blizzard - looking forward to all the tournaments in 2017 (and 2018!)
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On December 10 2016 03:17 sharkie wrote:
What I read in that huge wall of text is that IEM practically has given up on SC2, right?
We get the IEM in Korea, the global IEM and that's it.
I guess they gave us global for the last SC2 IEM ever.
I think so, this coming IEM and Katowice are still part of this IEM season. Next season sc2 will most likely be replaced by Overwatch.
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On December 10 2016 03:17 sharkie wrote:
What I read in that huge wall of text is that IEM practically has given up on SC2, right?
We get the IEM in Korea, the global IEM and that's it.
I guess they gave us global for the last SC2 IEM ever.
There really aren't that many events in the IEM circuit. For example this year there is Shanghai SC2, Oakland LoL/CSGO, Gyeonggi LoL/SC2/OW and Katowice CSGO/LoL/SC2.
SC2 will have a global event at Katowice, I wouldn't label it as giving up.
We don't know about the next IEM season, but that will fold into WCS 2018 more likely since it's centred around Katowice.
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On December 10 2016 03:16 Musicus wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 03:14 munch wrote:On December 10 2016 03:01 Elentos wrote:
They're changing the broadcast times for GSL on Fridays to be more NA friendly, RIP EU
GSL qualifiers should happen pretty soon then. Good luck getting a KR studio audience at 1pm on a Friday then It's only friday night for NA, but it will be 1pm Saturday in Korea.
Oh fuck that's Saturday 5 am morning in Europe then? That is completely screwed! The great thing about GSL was always that it was on on weekdays, not hogging the weekends!
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Australia18228 Posts
On December 10 2016 03:17 sharkie wrote:
What I read in that huge wall of text is that IEM practically has given up on SC2, right?
We get the IEM in Korea, the global IEM and that's it.
I guess they gave us global for the last SC2 IEM ever.
It's possible they're still hosting non-WCS events.
The WCS events are pretty much Circuit Championships only and IEMs production doesnt really match up to that.
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Fiddler's Green42661 Posts
On December 10 2016 03:19 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 03:17 sharkie wrote:
What I read in that huge wall of text is that IEM practically has given up on SC2, right?
We get the IEM in Korea, the global IEM and that's it.
I guess they gave us global for the last SC2 IEM ever. There really aren't that many events in the IEM circuit. For example this year there is Shanghai SC2, Oakland LoL/CSGO, Gyeonggi LoL/SC2/OW and Katowice CSGO/LoL/SC2. SC2 will have a global event at Katowice, I wouldn't label it as giving up. We don't know about the next IEM season, but that will fold into WCS 2018 more likely since it's centred around Katowice.
No, I think this is all tournaments announced for this year. That's what the wording suggests. IEM is out of here after Katowice?
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On December 10 2016 03:21 stuchiu wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 03:19 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 03:17 sharkie wrote:
What I read in that huge wall of text is that IEM practically has given up on SC2, right?
We get the IEM in Korea, the global IEM and that's it.
I guess they gave us global for the last SC2 IEM ever. There really aren't that many events in the IEM circuit. For example this year there is Shanghai SC2, Oakland LoL/CSGO, Gyeonggi LoL/SC2/OW and Katowice CSGO/LoL/SC2. SC2 will have a global event at Katowice, I wouldn't label it as giving up. We don't know about the next IEM season, but that will fold into WCS 2018 more likely since it's centred around Katowice. No, I think this is all tournaments announced for this year. That's what the wording suggests. IEM is out of here after Katowice?
Katowice is the end of the IEM season, nothing is announced after that. I don't think we'll see news about that until next year. There may be another WCS2017 event when IEM announces their plans for example.
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I'm very happy to see WCS alive and kicking. I know that SC2 is not in a best spot, but it sure ain't dead yet
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Australia18228 Posts
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Germany3367 Posts
Ugh, hate the changed time for GSL broadcasts. As a EU person I have to be egoistic in this regard.
Now we have a Wednesday broadcast early in the day when everyone's at school/university/work (which can be... worked around, as it happened in all the past years. :D) and a Saturday broadcast when everyone's sleeping. Not optimal. T_T
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I'm regretting for the time that I'd been waiting for this.
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On December 10 2016 03:11 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 02:58 Charoisaur wrote:
Maybe I was a bit harsh with my initial criticism, I apologize.
I just don't really understand why it's still needed to separate koreans and foreigners but looking at this it doesn't look that bad for koreans. But at least they should make the region-lock go both ways so that foreigners can't play in korean tournaments, doesn't sound really fair like it is. I agree that WCS Korea events shoudl have the same region lock, this has always been a weird quirk.
Besides from neeb, how many foreigners have gone to korea and won a tournament?
And to all the people who do not understand why they want koreans to have a proper visa instead of allowing koreans to go to all the tournaments and winning every single one of them.
I remember seeing a photo of ALL the olympics representatives for table tennis. Guess what, they were all chinese.
I am sure the respective countries like my country had the same excuse of, having chinese players will improve our own player's skills. They have had that excuse for years and years and years. And the number of chinese players representing different countries for table tennis have just keep increasing. You know what, table tennis just isn't that popular. Not that many people are interested in watching table tennis fought between chinese. Sure it might be highest skill level available, but most people just don't give a damn when it's some random chinese mercenary playing for their country.
Blizzard is likely following the same train of thought. Having koreans just come in and win tournaments left and right and then just go home, does nothing for the foreigner scene. It doesn't improve the foreigner's skills neither does it attract more people to watch SC2.
I have had people say they should appeal more to the core base of fans who are still around, who just wanna watch the highest level of play instead of trying to appeal to a crowd that probably doesn't exist.
Guess what, i am part of the group of people who is sticking around for SC2, but i have absolutely zero interest in watching Koreans win everything and destroy the foreigner scene.
Visa requirement is a good compromise. If the said korean is really intent on winning the foreigner money, stay there as well, play in the NA/EU ladder and help push the foreigner skill level up.
We have had many pros state that they felt their training on ladder were much better when there were koreans staying around playing on the same ladder.
You cannot just go for the highest skill level and ignore the foreigner scene.
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it is nice they announced WCS for 2018 already, but it makes me worried that it ends there
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Mute City2363 Posts
Well, dropping from 9 WCS events to 4 Circuit events is hardly ideal either
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Last year in foreignerland there was 3 WCS championships and 6 WCS circuit events, now it's 4 chamionships annnnnnnnnd nothing?
Doesn't seem like the War Chest fundings are planned to be added to any of those tournaments, so where will they go?
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This is honestly a lot better for koreans in comparison to last year. Happy to see that blizzard still want to support the game in this way even if it basically has only an hardcore playbase/spectator-pool also for 2018. I think warchest and new contents will be a great way for fans to continue supporting the game.
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Why keep Koreans from competing in the west when they don't have team infrastructure anymore?
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Fiddler's Green42661 Posts
On December 10 2016 03:27 munch wrote:
Well, dropping from 9 WCS events to 4 Circuit events is hardly ideal either
Healthy as
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Does (basically) banning Korean from Circuit make the scene any better at this stage? Does Blizz ask themselves that question?
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why does korea have so many events while the rest of the world has more viewership and less events.
TBH it seems unfair that the koreans get so much.
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On December 10 2016 03:31 Arceus wrote:
Does (basically) banning Korean from Circuit make the scene any better at this stage? Does Blizz ask themselves that question?
Considering that the 4 tournaments they listed for the Circuit are apparently all there will be this year - yes, 4 WCS Circuit tournaments total - I'd say making sure the non-Korean players still have tournaments where they have the opportunity to earn a good amount of money doesn't make the scene worse.
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On December 10 2016 03:27 munch wrote:
Well, dropping from 9 WCS events to 4 Circuit events is hardly ideal either
They sound like DH tournaments. We can hope there are more IEM tournaments besides the 2 announced.
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On December 10 2016 03:34 Dingodile wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 03:27 munch wrote:
Well, dropping from 9 WCS events to 4 Circuit events is hardly ideal either They sound like DH tournaments. We can hope there are more IEM tournaments besides the 2 announced.
They do say that the calendar is meant to be the full WCS schedule for 2017.
![[image loading]](http://d299ks0j9y7dbf.cloudfront.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/WCS_2017_Calendar_rev3_Lightbox_600w.jpg)
Is all we're getting for WCS relevant tournaments.
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On December 10 2016 03:31 stuchiu wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 03:27 munch wrote:
Well, dropping from 9 WCS events to 4 Circuit events is hardly ideal either Healthy as
The prize money is the same as last year, but it's balanced differently. Katowice is a $250,000 tournament. That's 5 DreamHacks.
The extent to which Blizzard pays production costs is another question though.
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On December 10 2016 03:28 Lunareste wrote:
Why keep Koreans from competing in the west when they don't have team infrastructure anymore?
Well hopefully there will be some local Korean sponsors who will pick up GSL players. I'm happy to see that GSL continues instead of only weekend tournaments that are open for everybody. At least 1 ongoing league will be left this way and it is extremely needed to keep sc2 alive in Korea.
Sure Koreans can't compete in the 4 DHs (without visas and living outside of Korea), but they have 6 events themselves, so I think it's okay.
If there was an ongoing WCS Circuit studio league for foreigners, obviously Koreans should be allowed to compete in the DHs, but as the system is now, it seems fair.
In theory it is unfair that foreigners can compete in GSL without a Visa, but in practice we will see more Koreans with visas competing in the WCS Circuit than foreigners competing in WCS Korea.
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Wow what a bunch of garbage for Korean SC2. They really must think nobody outside of Korea wants to watch them. Such a tragedy.
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On December 10 2016 03:34 Dingodile wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 03:27 munch wrote:
Well, dropping from 9 WCS events to 4 Circuit events is hardly ideal either They sound like DH tournaments. We can hope there are more IEM tournaments besides the 2 announced.
Considering they said it was "unfair" that not all circuit winners got a global finals seed despite all tournaments having the same difficulty I don't think there will be more.
Which is fine. 4 tournaments are enough for foreigner-only tournaments.
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Is it a good time to start rioting or are we still gonna still lick blizzard´s ass? A lot of people have dedicated insane amounts of time for this game and in return they are getting nothing out of it. This really pisses me off.
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China6327 Posts
IEM doesn't start their season till about July, and if past seasons are any indication the first stop will be in Asia, specifically China which SC2 do have a sizable audience.
But yeah, the amount of tournaments announced here, does not strike any confidence at all.
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On December 10 2016 03:42 Espartaquen wrote:
Is it a good time to start rioting or are we still gonna still lick blizzard´s ass? A lot of people have dedicated insane amounts of time for this game and in return they are getting nothing out of it. This really pisses me off.
You have a strange idea of nothing.
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On December 10 2016 03:42 Raskit wrote:
RiP Team Salmon
Good point, I sure hope they will joing the GSL casting team.
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I'm not a fan of region lock given Koreans and foreigners are much more aligned in term of skills nowadays. I don't see the point of keeping that restriction. I think it is just anti-competition. However, that is how Blizzard wants it to be. So be it.
My big complaint is the lacking of Global events. There are only two, IEM Katowice and All-Star (Global Finals doesn't count). The big part of be a fan of SC2 is to see top players, Korean and foreigners, compete in Global stage. I would prefer to have about 3 Global events.
Anyway, my feeling about today news is that it is not too rosy but not too dim either. I really hope Korean SC2 remains positive. I just don't want to see many of them give up and retire. Stay strong, guys!
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On December 10 2016 03:46 Musicus wrote:Good point, I sure hope they will joing the GSL casting team.
I don't think there is a demand for that many casters.
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On December 10 2016 03:42 Espartaquen wrote:
Is it a good time to start rioting or are we still gonna still lick blizzard´s ass? A lot of people have dedicated insane amounts of time for this game and in return they are getting nothing out of it. This really pisses me off.
They are investing a ton of money into a game which brings little profit. Korea gets more tournaments than the rest. Katowice is a global event.
I don't know a better reason to lick blizzard's ass
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Good:
Katowice is back and it is great.
Bad:
-4 Dreamhacks make up the complete circuit?
-1 less Starleague in Korea
Neutral:
2M is slightly lower then last years money by Blizzard, but Battlechests can increase it, overall more then I expected.
But only 4 WCS Events is a joke and shows that not only Korean SC II is almost dead, but also nobody in the foreign scene wants to invest into starcraft. Even on the 2016 terms.
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I am just thankful Flash, Bisu, Stork, and Jaedong are playing in the ASL. It gives me hope for 2017.
For me, ASL is like a loaf of bread and SC2 tournaments with Koreans are like bread crumbs. If I can have the bread, that's great. If I can't, at least bread crumbs are better than nothing.
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On December 10 2016 03:47 Vutalisk wrote:
I'm not a fan of region lock given Koreans and foreigners are much more aligned in term of skills nowadays.!
They're not aligned in skill per se just nobody in Korea plays the game anymore
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I really wonder how much money Blizzard is giving Dreamhack to keep doing SC2 events. It can't be profitable for them, especially with the prize pool at 100k now.
All in all at least the "WCS Apartheid" crowd will be quiet now that foreigners have as few tournaments to play in as Koreans
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I'm just happy that there is SC2 to watch. WCS is a good foundation because it can encourage players to keep competing, community members to stay active, etc. Glad to see more SC2 in 2017
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On December 10 2016 03:46 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 03:42 Espartaquen wrote:
Is it a good time to start rioting or are we still gonna still lick blizzard´s ass? A lot of people have dedicated insane amounts of time for this game and in return they are getting nothing out of it. This really pisses me off. You have a strange idea of nothing.
Sorry, maybe I get a bit carried away, but seeing people that have given up the safety of a normal job, have devoted their lives to this game, sacrificed friends, health and education ir order to become the best and in the end don´t get rewarded because of a company´s bullshit policy, it really makes me angry.
Most of these retired pros were good enough, it was not their fault that Blizzard decided to screw the WCS System and tournaments so much. In the end, they have been forced to leave, they have not done so willingly.
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On December 10 2016 03:48 Clonester wrote:
Good:
Katowice is back and it is great.
Bad:
-4 Dreamhacks make up the complete circuit?
-1 less Starleague in Korea
Neutral:
2M is slightly lower then last years money by Blizzard, but Battlechests can increase it, overall more then I expected.
But only 4 WCS Events is a joke and shows that not only Korean SC II is almost dead, but also nobody in the foreign scene wants to invest into starcraft. Even on the 2016 terms.
Yeah, 4 DHs is not much of a circuit. This does not give me too much hope for an exiting 2017.
Battle chests, for what? Again it is not explained. I'm not buying this at all.
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On December 10 2016 03:25 Kaizor wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 03:11 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 02:58 Charoisaur wrote:
Maybe I was a bit harsh with my initial criticism, I apologize.
I just don't really understand why it's still needed to separate koreans and foreigners but looking at this it doesn't look that bad for koreans. But at least they should make the region-lock go both ways so that foreigners can't play in korean tournaments, doesn't sound really fair like it is. I agree that WCS Korea events shoudl have the same region lock, this has always been a weird quirk. Besides from neeb, how many foreigners have gone to korea and won a tournament? You cannot just go for the highest skill level and ignore the foreigner scene.
The most hyped tournaments are the Koreans vs foreigner ones. This is what most people were talking about during Kespa cup, shoutcraft, and blizzcon. People want to see NErchio, neeb, snute, scarlett etc go up against byun, inno, zest etc.
Koreans historically win because they had better infrastructure for competing. That's now gone and they are on the same level as foreigners, or even worse considering most don't have teams.
Blizzard probably can't have any global cups because DH etc don't want them. Simple as. I just hope that more korean cups pop up throughout the year (kespa or hot6ix cups would be a dream)
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Sc2 is saved! Blizzard played its role for 2017. Now its our turn. We should support sc2 in any way, and financially ofc. We must show them there's still a large community behind sc. Not everything is lost.
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On December 10 2016 03:48 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 03:46 Musicus wrote:On December 10 2016 03:42 Raskit wrote:
RiP Team Salmon Good point, I sure hope they will joing the GSL casting team. I don't think there is a demand for that many casters.
Well, there was more casters then players at Blizzcon
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I hope Blizzard contacts Take and they do a WCS Krefeld. 4 events is just not enough for the WCS Circuit, just like it was not enough in WCS Korea last year.
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I'll take 1 season of GSL over 2 seasons of SSL anytime. Pretty bad news for lower tier pros tho.
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*if the winner of the IEM Katowice event is a WCS Korea competitor, then only four players will be drawn from the WCS Korea Standings to fill out the complement of eight WCS Korea players at the WCS Global Finals.
and still more welfare region lock
sigh
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On December 10 2016 04:06 Musicus wrote:
I hope Blizzard contacts Take and they do a WCS Krefeld. 4 events is just not enough for the WCS Circuit, just like it was not enough in WCS Korea last year.
Well there are 5 events if you add in Katowice. I don't know I don't think it's unreasonable for a circuit.
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On December 10 2016 04:06 Musicus wrote:
I hope Blizzard contacts Take and they do a WCS Krefeld. 4 events is just not enough for the WCS Circuit, just like it was not enough in WCS Korea last year.
Yeah but HSC wouldn't be as fun if it has to be PG, which I'm sure Blizzard would require for a WCS event.
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On December 10 2016 04:06 Musicus wrote:
I hope Blizzard contacts Take and they do a WCS Krefeld. 4 events is just not enough for the WCS Circuit, just like it was not enough in WCS Korea last year.
Yeah, I don't get this either. They are going to get the 8 best EU players from 4 events only? 6-8 events would make much more sense.
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On December 10 2016 03:45 digmouse wrote:
IEM doesn't start their season till about July, and if past seasons are any indication the first stop will be in Asia, specifically China which SC2 do have a sizable audience.
But yeah, the amount of tournaments announced here, does not strike any confidence at all.
Yeah so far this seems a WCS where W stands for "Western", I'd like to see at least a couple of tournaments in China/Taiwan/SEA...
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On December 10 2016 04:10 Solar424 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 04:06 Musicus wrote:
I hope Blizzard contacts Take and they do a WCS Krefeld. 4 events is just not enough for the WCS Circuit, just like it was not enough in WCS Korea last year. Yeah but HSC wouldn't be as fun if it has to be PG, which I'm sure Blizzard would require for a WCS event.
There have been HSCs which gave WCS points. I dont think thats the problem.
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On December 10 2016 04:10 Solar424 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 04:06 Musicus wrote:
I hope Blizzard contacts Take and they do a WCS Krefeld. 4 events is just not enough for the WCS Circuit, just like it was not enough in WCS Korea last year. Yeah but HSC wouldn't be as fun if it has to be PG, which I'm sure Blizzard would require for a WCS event.
Nono, I mean completely seperate from HSC. A real WCS event at Take's location.
It's perfect, Take has the people, the location and the experience. Blizzard just has to give the money . I can understand if IEM does no longer want to do sc2 next seaon and go with OW instead, but Take will always be willing to do sc2 I think.
Sure, HSC could become a WCS event again too. But I'd rather HSC stays fun, mostly based on invites and open to Koreans.
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Do not fuck this up. This is your last chance, do it well.
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On December 10 2016 04:16 LongShot27 wrote:
Do not fuck this up. This is your last chance, do it well.
Well they confirmed for 2018 as well
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On December 10 2016 04:09 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 04:06 Musicus wrote:
I hope Blizzard contacts Take and they do a WCS Krefeld. 4 events is just not enough for the WCS Circuit, just like it was not enough in WCS Korea last year. Well there are 5 events if you add in Katowice. I don't know I don't think it's unreasonable for a circuit.
The WCS pentagram confirmed. Now is the time for Diabolique to come back from his ban and tell us he is the actual devil and it was his plan all along.
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. . . and Better Viewing Times for Global Fans
And finally, some good news for NA viewers. We are planning to run Wednesday GSL broadcasts at the usual 6:30 p.m. KST time, which is also evening/night time in SEA/ANZ, and mornings in EU. Friday night broadcasts will move to 1:00 p.m. KST Saturday (8:00 p.m./11:00 p.m. Friday Pacific/Eastern), which will allow for easier viewing for North American audiences. While no one time is perfect for everyone, we hope these timeslots offer better opportunities for a wider viewership of GSL around the globe.
Like the fact that we got big, bold headline to announce better times for (all) global fans and then the text just goes to speak to NA audiences while playing down how much EU is getting screwed over. <3 Not like the 11:30am/12:30pm starting time was the greatest here in Finland, but at least it's bearable as a university student. However 6am at the weekend, nope. Guess it's just one day of Starcraft/week from now on for me then. Wonder if this means that NA audience is bigger than EU, or did they just screw up something in Korea and not getting exclusive time slot for Friday night.
Overall, good that we finally got some news regarding WCS 2017, though the loss of one GSL day each week is a quite big hit.
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51456 Posts
6 Korean tournaments for prizes vs 4 foreigner tournies and a global Katowice this system is much fairer, 5 tournaments from January > November is the issue though but still im happy.
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anyone know how many War Chests will be available for purchase between now and BlizzCon 2017? 3? 4? some other #?
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well thats seems intriguing , maby this wcs system turns out to be not that bad
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On December 10 2016 04:18 LefaLefa wrote:Show nested quote +
. . . and Better Viewing Times for Global Fans
And finally, some good news for NA viewers. We are planning to run Wednesday GSL broadcasts at the usual 6:30 p.m. KST time, which is also evening/night time in SEA/ANZ, and mornings in EU. Friday night broadcasts will move to 1:00 p.m. KST Saturday (8:00 p.m./11:00 p.m. Friday Pacific/Eastern), which will allow for easier viewing for North American audiences. While no one time is perfect for everyone, we hope these timeslots offer better opportunities for a wider viewership of GSL around the globe.
Like the fact that we got big, bold headline to announce better times for (all) global fans and then the text just goes to speak to NA audiences while playing down how much EU is getting screwed over. <3 Not like the 11:30am/12:30pm starting time was the greatest here in Finland, but at least it's bearable as a university student. However 6am at the weekend, nope. Guess it's just one day of Starcraft/week from now on for me then. Wonder if this means that NA audience is bigger than EU, or did they just screw up something in Korea and not getting exclusive time slot for Friday night. Overall, good that we finally got some news regarding WCS 2017, though the loss of one GSL day each week is a quite big hit.
Well...at least you got it at a more reasonable time to begin with. Think of like ALL NA audiences who had to wait until like 2 or 3 AM to watch GSL. Most of the times I couldn't even watch it live because I'd be asleep. 6AM in the morning is a lot more preferable to 2 or 3 AM in the morning.
Also, I'm really hyped for the new WCS 2017 tournaments. Of course, SSL and Proleague not being there sucks, but I'm excited for the new season.
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Thing about this community is that overwhelmingly many more people are interested about the tournaments as bystanders rather than participants, even if they complain about the game not being fun or playable for them. That's why the game doesn't grow.
I'm really happy for the ongoing support.
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I think this looks pretty cool.
The tournament plan and the warchest will help a lot. The deep mind integration might help wiht popularity.
Now Blizzard just has to continue patching until the game is fun for all three races..
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I don't like the idea of winning a Dreamhack automatically gets you into Blizzcon. Instead of seeding players like that, it should be like before where you are only awarded points. Too often we see a player win a tournament but that was because they were lucky more than anything else. The region locking isn't very good either. This means Koreans cannot play in Dreamhack and IEM, which completely defeats the purpose of being a SC2 progamer in Korea. Might as well retire now and move on with their life..
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Now to see who else in Korea retire from SC2...
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On December 10 2016 04:33 geokilla wrote:
I don't like the idea of winning a Dreamhack automatically gets you into Blizzcon. Instead of seeding players like that, it should be like before where you are only awarded points. Too often we see a player win a tournament but that was because they were lucky more than anything else. The region locking isn't very good either. This means Koreans cannot play in Dreamhack and IEM, which completely defeats the purpose of being a SC2 progamer in Korea. Might as well retire now and move on with their life..
Lucky? Give me an example
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I like how people are negative when Blizzard is already doing this out of kindness, cause I can guarantee you, they are not making ANY profit from this. This is all charity.
So, even though Korea isn't in super great health, it's also not really dead. That's a lot of money in tournaments. It's not CS:GO levels, but it's pretty generous.
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Im just incredibly excited for the warchest!
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On December 10 2016 04:37 Blargh wrote:
I like how people are negative when Blizzard is already doing this out of kindness, cause I can guarantee you, they are not making ANY profit from this. This is all charity.
So, even though Korea isn't in super great health, it's also not really dead. That's a lot of money in tournaments. It's not CS:GO levels, but it's pretty generous.
I mean it's pretty hard to compete financially with a scene that flourished because of illegal (super shady at least, if not just illegal) practices like gambling. Not saying that CS:GO is a bad game of course, on the contrary.
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On December 10 2016 03:55 lastride wrote:
Sc2 is saved! Blizzard played its role for 2017. Now its our turn. We should support sc2 in any way, and financially ofc. We must show them there's still a large community behind sc. Not everything is lost.
+1 yes!
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Lastride, u are right, Guys its our time now to show how much we love sc2 to show blizz that they should put more attention into sc2, koreans too :D
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On December 10 2016 04:30 JimmyJRaynor wrote:
anyone know how many War Chests will be available for purchase between now and BlizzCon 2017? 3? 4? some other #?
They're planning on doing two seasons of War Chests per year, so basically two per year. Since next year will be the first time that they're doing it and that it's still in active development, it's possible that we may only get one next year and two every year after.
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United States97276 Posts
On December 10 2016 02:35 opisska wrote:
I get that many people will not like the specifics, but can someone be really disappointed by this? I mean, I was honestly expecting the "no WCS in 2017" news to pop up any time soon, so the very existence of WCS 2017 with actual global finals and a dozen tournaments through they year, is strictly positive news to me and a cause for celebration.
I was feeling the same way
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On December 10 2016 04:39 aQuaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 04:37 Blargh wrote:
I like how people are negative when Blizzard is already doing this out of kindness, cause I can guarantee you, they are not making ANY profit from this. This is all charity.
So, even though Korea isn't in super great health, it's also not really dead. That's a lot of money in tournaments. It's not CS:GO levels, but it's pretty generous. I mean it's pretty hard to compete financially with a scene that flourished because of illegal (super shady at least, if not just illegal) practices like gambling. Not saying that CS:GO is a bad game of course, on the contrary.
well, if you think about it, gambling was the rise and fall of Starcraft in both incarnations, be it with ma jae yoon's circle of doom or life/prime thrown games.
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On December 10 2016 04:12 HsDLTitich wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 03:45 digmouse wrote:
IEM doesn't start their season till about July, and if past seasons are any indication the first stop will be in Asia, specifically China which SC2 do have a sizable audience.
But yeah, the amount of tournaments announced here, does not strike any confidence at all. Yeah so far this seems a WCS where W stands for "Western", I'd like to see at least a couple of tournaments in China/Taiwan/SEA...
The NetEase tournaments unfortunately never get exposure/support on these type of announcements.
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The real question is, will they have a lan open bracket for the dreamhacks. Cause 2016 it was 50/50.
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On December 10 2016 04:47 Shellshock wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 02:35 opisska wrote:
I get that many people will not like the specifics, but can someone be really disappointed by this? I mean, I was honestly expecting the "no WCS in 2017" news to pop up any time soon, so the very existence of WCS 2017 with actual global finals and a dozen tournaments through they year, is strictly positive news to me and a cause for celebration. I was feeling the same way
My beef with this new system is that there 4 WCS tournaments for 4 direct seeds to blizzcon and another 4 players will go there on WCS points from those 4 tournaments alone as far as I understand. This year there were 10 WCS tournaments where players fought for point up until the very last to qualify for blizzcon. 10 tournaments is a circuit. 4 tournaments is basically some grand slam tournaments without the circuit. Please tell me I have misunderstood something here.
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On December 10 2016 04:58 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 04:47 Shellshock wrote:On December 10 2016 02:35 opisska wrote:
I get that many people will not like the specifics, but can someone be really disappointed by this? I mean, I was honestly expecting the "no WCS in 2017" news to pop up any time soon, so the very existence of WCS 2017 with actual global finals and a dozen tournaments through they year, is strictly positive news to me and a cause for celebration. I was feeling the same way My beef with this new system is that there 4 WCS tournaments for 4 direct seeds to blizzcon and another 4 players will go there on WCS points from those 4 tournaments alone as far as I understand. This year there were 10 WCS tournaments where players fought for point up until the very last to qualify for blizzcon. 10 tournaments is a circuit. 4 tournaments is basically some grand slam tournaments without the circuit. Please tell me I have misunderstood something here.
WCS points can also be derived from the Challenger events, but yeah basically.
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I hope this isn't a final list of all tournaments that qualify for WCS points. IEM seems absent aside from IEM Katowice and IEM Korea. I hope this doesn't mean that IEM can't have one or two more tournaments that qualify for WCS points.
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Because Im from Montreal - advantage for me to have WCS again at DH.
Overall - I like it a lot.
I work early - so I don't get a chance to see GSL anymore and sometimes catching them afterwards might escape me.
Setting all the DH to be sc2 driven events for WCS Circuit is a nice plus. Its not as good as the hype era of IPL, MLG, NASL, etc but at least you get to attend a Lan here and there for the region you are closest. You can plan a nice drive/flight etc if the dates are given a head.
War Chest being part of the Prize pool is a nice incentive but i think thats more in tune to beef up HOTS rather to compete against prizes of LoL and DOTA2. However an official support from Blizzard via War Chest is still a welcome considering how many classic events couldnt sustain itself without sponsors and therefore medium/big tournaments was no longer possible.
I will be ok for KR to be able to travel like the old days however with the big Proleague disband flying players out might be hard. I also wouldn't mind a restrictive KR invite in the western region. AS much as I would love to have KR play so that WCS Circuit players can have a challenge, if we have a total stomp of KR in each tournament it might discourage NA/EU player to keep going.
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On December 10 2016 05:04 ZigguratOfUr wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 04:58 BaneRiders wrote:On December 10 2016 04:47 Shellshock wrote:On December 10 2016 02:35 opisska wrote:
I get that many people will not like the specifics, but can someone be really disappointed by this? I mean, I was honestly expecting the "no WCS in 2017" news to pop up any time soon, so the very existence of WCS 2017 with actual global finals and a dozen tournaments through they year, is strictly positive news to me and a cause for celebration. I was feeling the same way My beef with this new system is that there 4 WCS tournaments for 4 direct seeds to blizzcon and another 4 players will go there on WCS points from those 4 tournaments alone as far as I understand. This year there were 10 WCS tournaments where players fought for point up until the very last to qualify for blizzcon. 10 tournaments is a circuit. 4 tournaments is basically some grand slam tournaments without the circuit. Please tell me I have misunderstood something here. WCS points can also be derived from the Challenger events, but yeah basically.
Yeah, we had those this year as well for the Winter, Spring and Summer championships. I'm all for qualifiers rather than direct seeds of any kind, but the point still stands. We go from 10 WCS events to 4. This is outrageous.
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On December 10 2016 05:04 eviltomahawk wrote:
I hope this isn't a final list of all tournaments that qualify for WCS points. IEM seems absent aside from IEM Katowice and IEM Korea. I hope this doesn't mean that IEM can't have one or two more tournaments that qualify for WCS points.
These are the only IEM events remaining in the current IEM season, they haven't announced their plans for next year yet. I have no idea how likely it is but it's always possible that we can see another WCS event at Shanghai/Taipei, or wherever IEM ends up next season.
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Sick nice to see WCS in 2017! go go go GSL best league in the world!
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On December 10 2016 02:23 Charoisaur wrote:
With the advantage of the korean infrastructure gone is there any logical reason to ban koreans from tournaments anymore?
if you look at other eSports and sports in general, one of the things that pulls people in are local teams/players. Just look at soccer, even those shitty teams who never win have a significant fan base. Region locking is not just about keeping koreans from getting eveything, but allowing for growth of all regions. People complain about koreans not getting enough tournaments, but do they take into account how little opportunities forteigners had before region locking? Sure they could compete in many tournaments but realistically they weren't going to win. Last year saw a massive growth in the scene, and though it is hurting korean sc2, the playing field is actually starting to balance a lot.
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On December 10 2016 05:18 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 05:04 eviltomahawk wrote:
I hope this isn't a final list of all tournaments that qualify for WCS points. IEM seems absent aside from IEM Katowice and IEM Korea. I hope this doesn't mean that IEM can't have one or two more tournaments that qualify for WCS points. These are the only IEM events remaining in the current IEM season, they haven't announced their plans for next year yet. I have no idea how likely it is but it's always possible that we can see another WCS event at Shanghai/Taipei, or wherever IEM ends up next season.
Yeah, they always take longer to announce stuff because their seasons are off from WCS seasons. They are most probably going to do similar stuff to this year with a few circuit events and maybe a korean one. I really hope that last one happens.
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Wow, you lot are never happy aren't you? This is a lot better than I was expecting. An extra GSL season and 2 extra weekend tournaments compared to last year. That's great. Being disappointed about things that were never realistically in the cards anyway, is your own fault for having ridiculous expectations. (like the Korean region lock disappearing is not going to happen because 1) the reasons it was instated are still there. 2) it worked.)
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On December 10 2016 05:44 Thax wrote:
Wow, you lot are never happy aren't you? This is a lot better than I was expecting. An extra GSL season and 2 extra weekend tournaments compared to last year. That's great. Being disappointed about things that were never realistically in the cards anyway, is your own fault for having ridiculous expectations. (like the Korean region lock disappearing is not going to happen because 1) the reasons it was instated are still there. 2) it worked.)
1. Which reasons?
2. How did it work? The tournaments didn't have more viewers 2016 than before. Yes, the foreigners are closer to the Koreans than before '16, but that's also partly because the entire Korean scene fell apart.
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Meh. No more SSL is sad ._.
Guess we'll never see that dual-starleague winner after all. ByuL came close though as the only dual-finalist.
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Just 3 premier tournaments for Kr feels bad, altho I thought it was going to be a lot worse... like a LOT
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tbh this is better than what I expected. I was expecting 3 GSL and that's it. It's not much but at least we are guarantee for another 2 years of SC2. The schedule announcement for the whole year is good too, this is what they should have done a long time ago. I'll be buying the warchest for sure to support the price pool for players even tho I don't really play anymore
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You would have thought 100% after the announcement of discontinuation of ProLeague, the Korea and Circuit division would have been removed. So motivating for Korean players. They don't play this game for the money. You know how many disappointing games I saw in Blizzcon qualifiers because Circuit players were going against the most elite in korea? That Blizzcon qualifier game Elaser played on Dasan, that was one of the most embarrassing games I've ever seen. If the top 16 in the world are all Koreans, then that's that. I don't want to see players who wouldn't even qualify for GSL RO32 in the circuit league compete vs those players who consistenly make top 8 GSL. So many low quality games this past year, looks like it will be the same this year
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On December 10 2016 06:17 dr3am_b3ing wrote:
You would have thought 100% after the announcement of discontinuation of ProLeague, the Korea and Circuit division would have been removed. So motivating for Korean players. They don't play this game for the money. You know how many disappointing games I saw in Blizzcon qualifiers because Circuit players were going against the most elite in korea? That Blizzcon qualifier game Elaser played on Dasan, that was one of the most embarrassing games I've ever seen. If the top 16 in the world are all Koreans, then that's that. I don't want to see players who wouldn't even qualify for GSL RO32 in the circuit league compete vs those players who consistenly make top 8 GSL. So many low quality games this past year, looks like it will be the same this year
Yeah, you know, it's about players and giving them opportunities first, not paying them to be monkeys for your entertainment. Keep cherrypicking your arguments too
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Just read the reactions to the announcement that you posted so far. Here are three I agree with.
On December 10 2016 02:35 opisska wrote:
I get that many people will not like the specifics, but can someone be really disappointed by this? I mean, I was honestly expecting the "no WCS in 2017" news to pop up any time soon, so the very existence of WCS 2017 with actual global finals and a dozen tournaments through they year, is strictly positive news to me and a cause for celebration.
On December 10 2016 02:52 MockHamill wrote:
I think this is great! Starcraft 2 may be declining in viewers but Blizzard still supports the game with both prize money and huge patches.
On December 10 2016 04:33 geokilla wrote:
I don't like the idea of winning a Dreamhack automatically gets you into Blizzcon. Instead of seeding players like that, it should be like before where you are only awarded points.
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2017 #yearofharstemC o m m u n i t y d r i v e n c o n t e n t.
again another year without even a tip of the hat to the community for all the grassroots driven tournies/cups.
TIME Magazine quote
The road to hell, they say, is paved with good intentions. So too, apparently, is the road to corporate wrongdoing. At least that’s the conclusion to be drawn from a new study that asks what happens when companies (and their CEOs) engage in socially responsible behavior (and posturing). Short answer: Firms that are focused on pursuing a socially responsible agenda are more likely than other businesses to behave in a socially irresponsible ways.
....conclusion: CSR is measurably related to subsequent CSiR. Their rough assessment, in fact, is that for every five CSR actions a firm takes, you can expect it to commit one-act of CSiR. Moreover, the researchers write, there is a secondary connection worth noting between the self-stylings of bosses and their firms subsequent record: “The relationship is stronger for CEOs who are high on moral identity symbolization rather than low on moral identity symbolization.”
....that is, CEOs who behave or speak publicly in a way that enhances their reputation for moral behavior are even more likely than the average head honcho to oversee a company whose actions turn out to be at least in part socially irresponsible.
....This will not surprise anyone familiar with Enron, the once-high-flying energy company whose bosses were not only responsible for one of the great acts of corporate fraud in history but also an almost unprecedented level of corporate philanthropy in the years leading up to their unmasking. Likewise, just two years before the Deepwater Horizon fiasco knocked the stuffing out of British Petroleum in 2010, CEO Tony Hayward announced that the firm’s safety record was among the industry’s best, reflecting a culture of conscientiousness meant to satisfy internal and external stakeholders.
Again, the study authors are not suggesting that CSR leads to willful CSiR. Rather, the implications from their research suggests that non-conscious self-licensing comes into play on group and individual levels to such an extent that the reaction to corporate do-gooding ought to be the opposite of what it generally is,
Whilst they continue touting the commitment rhetoric,
the bus is arriving,
quickly.
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So while I still think that 4 WCS Circuit events are not quite enough, the challenger tournaments are great.
It's 10k per region (6 regions) per DH. That means there is 240k just for the Challenger tournaments. Not bad not bad.
That would also mean that the prize pool for the Korea vs The World tournament is roughly 100k.
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It's better than I expected.
It's still a disaster ridden farce, but it's better than I expected.
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The way I look at it...at least WCS is still around...
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On December 10 2016 06:47 LtCalley wrote:
The way I look at it...at least WCS is still around...
And will be next year!
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We intend to retain the same format for WCS 2018 as in 2017. While the exact events and timings for 2018 are up in the air, we are committed to supporting this structure and prizing over the next two years for WCS Korea and the WCS Circuit.
2 more years at least then.
It's not too bad considering
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On December 10 2016 05:34 JuanDi wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 02:23 Charoisaur wrote:
With the advantage of the korean infrastructure gone is there any logical reason to ban koreans from tournaments anymore? if you look at other eSports and sports in general, one of the things that pulls people in are local teams/players. Just look at soccer, even those shitty teams who never win have a significant fan base. Region locking is not just about keeping koreans from getting eveything, but allowing for growth of all regions. People complain about koreans not getting enough tournaments, but do they take into account how little opportunities forteigners had before region locking? Sure they could compete in many tournaments but realistically they weren't going to win. Last year saw a massive growth in the scene, and though it is hurting korean sc2, the playing field is actually starting to balance a lot.
i agree with the logic here, but woah you say "last year saw a massive growth in the scene"? what do you mean by this
man what i would do to see sc2 grow.............
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On December 10 2016 07:02 ilililililililiii wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 05:34 JuanDi wrote:On December 10 2016 02:23 Charoisaur wrote:
With the advantage of the korean infrastructure gone is there any logical reason to ban koreans from tournaments anymore? if you look at other eSports and sports in general, one of the things that pulls people in are local teams/players. Just look at soccer, even those shitty teams who never win have a significant fan base. Region locking is not just about keeping koreans from getting eveything, but allowing for growth of all regions. People complain about koreans not getting enough tournaments, but do they take into account how little opportunities forteigners had before region locking? Sure they could compete in many tournaments but realistically they weren't going to win. Last year saw a massive growth in the scene, and though it is hurting korean sc2, the playing field is actually starting to balance a lot. i agree with the logic here, but woah you say "last year saw a massive growth in the scene"? what do you mean by this man what i would do to see sc2 grow.............
People trying to compete with the best is what making a scene grow, not some mantras, bronze-platinum balance whine, braindead memes and pleas to Blizzard. This community wants the people playing for a long time now to constantly be their actors in a neverending show while ridiculing and not supporting players that want to commit to the game. See recent thread about NonY for instance. So many people that this community does not need.
I've never followed any other competitive game closely, but even without it I guess that this community is among the whiniest and most demanding of all.
If you support SC2 take part in next year's WCS.
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I understand the emotional side to it Aqua, but you and Juan say the exact opposite. Do we have any statistics to back up the improvement for last years region lock? Did the decline slow up a bit? Priority #1 is stabilizing the scene
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i find it so funny that people were crying for region locks 2012-2015 because koreans just took all the money and now are crying that koreans are getting screwed. I mean they are getting screwed but this is was everyone was crying for and we got it. same with balance and everything else you get what you ask for and can never be happy about it.
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On December 10 2016 07:32 starslayer wrote:
i find it so funny that people were crying for region locks 2012-2015 because koreans just took all the money and now are crying that koreans are getting screwed. I mean they are getting screwed but this is was everyone was crying for and we got it. same with balance and everything else you get what you ask for and can never be happy about it.
Most that cried for region lock dont even watch the game anymore imo.
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Just glad to see we have another 2 years of a great eSport!
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On December 10 2016 07:35 sharkie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 07:32 starslayer wrote:
i find it so funny that people were crying for region locks 2012-2015 because koreans just took all the money and now are crying that koreans are getting screwed. I mean they are getting screwed but this is was everyone was crying for and we got it. same with balance and everything else you get what you ask for and can never be happy about it. Most that cried for region lock dont even watch the game anymore imo.
I'd dare to say that most of the people here don't play it. It's all about giving them entertainment.
I would be really happy to be terribly wrong on that though.
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On December 10 2016 07:35 sharkie wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 07:32 starslayer wrote:
i find it so funny that people were crying for region locks 2012-2015 because koreans just took all the money and now are crying that koreans are getting screwed. I mean they are getting screwed but this is was everyone was crying for and we got it. same with balance and everything else you get what you ask for and can never be happy about it. Most that cried for region lock dont even watch the game anymore imo.
Nah, we're still here.
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8748 Posts
i don't understand the angle the negative comments are taking. you want more from blizzard but how are you justifying it? such disappointment that there isnt more but why do you think there would be more? i think it's a lot as it is, given the size of sc2 esports community. like what exactly is your business/economic reasoning for there being more events? i just dont understand how it seems like such a given to so many people that there ought to be more tournaments, and more korean tournaments. im surprised by how many there actually are and other people are disgusted at how few there are. can you give the broad strokes of how you figure it would work out for blizzard and these tournament hosting companies etc to support more sc2 events?
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Can't wait for the all kill during Korea v World. Can't hide behind stephano and naniwa anymore.
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United States23455 Posts
Korea got fucked.
I know it probably took a lot of hard work to get this done and I appreciate that Incontrol highlights that and I'm happy there will be a WCS in 2017, but I'm still gonna call a spade a spade. Korea got fucked.
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incontrol doesn't care one bit about Korea
he's just happy he gets another year of work, just like Apollo before 2016
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United States23455 Posts
Btw I'm looking forward to sometime mid 2017/early 2018 DH and other "region locked events" creating an exchange program identical to the MLG one with Korea in 2011 and the cycle repeating lel
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On December 10 2016 08:22 Darkhorse wrote:Korea got fucked. I know it probably took a lot of hard work to get this done and I appreciate that Incontrol highlights that and I'm happy there will be a WCS in 2017, but I'm still gonna call a spade a spade. Korea got fucked.
In what way did Korea get fucked?
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United States23455 Posts
On December 10 2016 08:33 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 08:22 Darkhorse wrote:Korea got fucked. I know it probably took a lot of hard work to get this done and I appreciate that Incontrol highlights that and I'm happy there will be a WCS in 2017, but I'm still gonna call a spade a spade. Korea got fucked. In what way did Korea get fucked?
Pro league is gone. S2SL is gone. Nothing done to offset this (ie allowing Koreans to enter DH, other weekend events again) so yay for oversaturation in GSL with far fewer established teams to pay players
But like I said in my original post in this thread, it's better than I expected
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On December 10 2016 08:37 Darkhorse wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 08:33 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:22 Darkhorse wrote:Korea got fucked. I know it probably took a lot of hard work to get this done and I appreciate that Incontrol highlights that and I'm happy there will be a WCS in 2017, but I'm still gonna call a spade a spade. Korea got fucked. In what way did Korea get fucked? Pro league is gone. S2SL is gone. Nothing done to offset this (ie allowing Koreans to enter DH, other weekend events again) so yay for oversaturation in GSL with far fewer established teams to pay players
And by nothing done to offset this what you actually mean is
3 GSLs instead of 2, super tournaments, and money shifted from the foreign scene into global events (which Korea will take.)
I mean is the only way Korea doesn't get fucked to you if Blizzard comes out and funds 6 teams and a teamleague? You have pretty unrealistic expectations. Yes, without proleague and KeSPA teams the Korean scene is in a worse state than last year but in no way did it get fucked by WCS.
And of course this goes without mentioning the countless number of online tournaments we have.
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Yeah, Korea got fucked... with 6 tournaments and more than 600k in prize pools. I don't know what do you expect...
Right now I'm looking at the Dota 2 tournaments. Guess how many tournaments Valve held in China this year - "to support the chinese scene"... 1 and it was open for the entire world. Everything else is independent initiative. Where is the independent initiative in Korean SC2 ? They need smaller local tournaments created(AND FUNDED) by korean organisations. Or even bigger tournaments like WESG sponsored by huge corporations.
I'm happy with WCS... And at least 2 more years of great SC2 action.
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I agree with Nony. This is good news. With all the recent negativity, I was expecting SO much worse. Now we know what the scene will be like for a year. I am looking foward to it
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On December 10 2016 08:24 sharkie wrote:
incontrol doesn't care one bit about Korea
he's just happy he gets another year of work, just like Apollo before 2016
I don't care either apparently, look at me not bitching about both scenes having a guaranteed stable system for next two years.
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United States23455 Posts
On December 10 2016 08:41 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 08:37 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:33 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:22 Darkhorse wrote:Korea got fucked. I know it probably took a lot of hard work to get this done and I appreciate that Incontrol highlights that and I'm happy there will be a WCS in 2017, but I'm still gonna call a spade a spade. Korea got fucked. In what way did Korea get fucked? Pro league is gone. S2SL is gone. Nothing done to offset this (ie allowing Koreans to enter DH, other weekend events again) so yay for oversaturation in GSL with far fewer established teams to pay players And by nothing done to offset this what you actually mean is 3 GSLs instead of 2, super tournaments, and money shifted from the foreign scene into global events (which Korea will take.) I mean is the only way Korea doesn't get fucked to you if Blizzard comes out and funds 6 teams and a teamleague? You have pretty unrealistic expectations. And of course this goes without mentioning the countless number of online tournaments we have.
Super tournaments replace Kespa cup, something Korea lost that I didn't mention in my previous post (because I knew super tournaments offset them) also the IEM WC in Katowice has always been global unless I'm mistaken so it's not like Korea was "given something" there although I'll concede that the prize pool is higher this year.
I'll concede that Blizzard shouldn't be expected to save PL on their own but Stork's recent interview seems to suggest they didn't even really try. That's most of my disappointment with Blizzard atm. Also I've never been a fan of splitting the global finals 50/50 (biggest prize pool of the year) when given an even playing field Koreans could easily qualify for more of those spots. But that last bit is all preference and I understand if you disagree
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Great overall, maybe somethings could be better but it's in our natura to bitch and hope for more!
Anyways GSL still on, Koreans will still get something and the foreign scene will also get some more action!
Like incontrol said it's been 7 years and it will probably go for two more, thank you.
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About as good as i could have hoped for for the Korean scene. I'm happy with it .
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On December 10 2016 08:52 Darkhorse wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 08:41 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:37 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:33 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:22 Darkhorse wrote:Korea got fucked. I know it probably took a lot of hard work to get this done and I appreciate that Incontrol highlights that and I'm happy there will be a WCS in 2017, but I'm still gonna call a spade a spade. Korea got fucked. In what way did Korea get fucked? Pro league is gone. S2SL is gone. Nothing done to offset this (ie allowing Koreans to enter DH, other weekend events again) so yay for oversaturation in GSL with far fewer established teams to pay players And by nothing done to offset this what you actually mean is 3 GSLs instead of 2, super tournaments, and money shifted from the foreign scene into global events (which Korea will take.) I mean is the only way Korea doesn't get fucked to you if Blizzard comes out and funds 6 teams and a teamleague? You have pretty unrealistic expectations. And of course this goes without mentioning the countless number of online tournaments we have. Super tournaments replace Kespa cup, something Korea lost that I didn't mention in my previous post (because I knew super tournaments offset them) also the IEM WC in Katowice has always been global unless I'm mistaken so it's not like Korea was "given something" there although I'll concede that the prize pool is higher this year. I'll concede that Blizzard shouldn't be expected to save PL on their own but Stork's recent interview seems to suggest they didn't even really try. That's most of my disappointment with Blizzard atm. Also I've never been a fan of splitting the global finals 50/50 (biggest prize pool of the year) when given an even playing field Koreans could easily qualify for more of those spots. But that last bit is all preference and I understand if you disagree
Well there was 1 KeSPA cup and it was a global event not a WCS Korea event, so that's not strictly true. IEM Katowice last season was a WCS Circuit event.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2016_WCS_Winter_Circuit_Championship
I understand people not liking the way WCS final spots are allocated but I personally have no issues with it, and it's fairer than we see in most other games.
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It could be far worse and what we are about to have is probably reliant on Blizzard bleeding cash.
I'm fine with this system, it's the best bad system we can get
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United States23455 Posts
On December 10 2016 08:41 Pr0wler wrote:
Yeah, Korea got fucked... with 6 tournaments and more than 600k in prize pools. I don't know what do you expect...
Right now I'm looking at the Dota 2 tournaments. Guess how many tournaments Valve held in China this year - "to support the chinese scene"... 1 and it was open for the entire world. Everything else is independent initiative. Where is the independent initiative in Korean SC2 ? They need smaller local tournaments created(AND FUNDED) by korean organisations. Or even bigger tournaments like WESG sponsored by huge corporations.
I'm happy with WCS... And at least 2 more years of great SC2 action.
To suggest that nobody in Korea has taken independent initiative or that no tournament in Korea has been funded by Korean orgs is way wrong btw
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On December 10 2016 08:55 corydoras wrote:
It could be far worse and what we are about to have is probably reliant on Blizzard bleeding cash.
I'm fine with this system, it's the best bad system we can get
Yeah the whole SC2 scene is reliant on big daddy Mikes passion.
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United States23455 Posts
On December 10 2016 08:55 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 08:52 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:41 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:37 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:33 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:22 Darkhorse wrote:Korea got fucked. I know it probably took a lot of hard work to get this done and I appreciate that Incontrol highlights that and I'm happy there will be a WCS in 2017, but I'm still gonna call a spade a spade. Korea got fucked. In what way did Korea get fucked? Pro league is gone. S2SL is gone. Nothing done to offset this (ie allowing Koreans to enter DH, other weekend events again) so yay for oversaturation in GSL with far fewer established teams to pay players And by nothing done to offset this what you actually mean is 3 GSLs instead of 2, super tournaments, and money shifted from the foreign scene into global events (which Korea will take.) I mean is the only way Korea doesn't get fucked to you if Blizzard comes out and funds 6 teams and a teamleague? You have pretty unrealistic expectations. And of course this goes without mentioning the countless number of online tournaments we have. Super tournaments replace Kespa cup, something Korea lost that I didn't mention in my previous post (because I knew super tournaments offset them) also the IEM WC in Katowice has always been global unless I'm mistaken so it's not like Korea was "given something" there although I'll concede that the prize pool is higher this year. I'll concede that Blizzard shouldn't be expected to save PL on their own but Stork's recent interview seems to suggest they didn't even really try. That's most of my disappointment with Blizzard atm. Also I've never been a fan of splitting the global finals 50/50 (biggest prize pool of the year) when given an even playing field Koreans could easily qualify for more of those spots. But that last bit is all preference and I understand if you disagree Well there was 1 KeSPA cup and it was a global event not a WCS Korea event, so that's not strictly true. IEM Katowice season was a WCS Circuit event. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2016_WCS_Winter_Circuit_ChampionshipI understand people not liking the way WCS final spots are allocated but I personally have no issues with it, and it's fairer than we see in most other games.
True on Kespa cup. I will say that there is only one IEM circuit event available to Korea this season as opposed to last season (gyeonggi this year as opposed to Shenzhen, gamescon, and Taipei last year)
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On December 10 2016 08:22 Darkhorse wrote:Korea got fucked.
2016 - 2 GSL (~194,000$ each), 2 SSL (~113,000$ each), 2 Cross Finals (~25,750$ each), KeSPA Cup (~50,000$)
Means ~725,000$ prize money available in total in Korean/Global WCS Events
2017 - 3 GSL (~145,000$ each), 2 Super Tournaments (~25,500$ each), IEM Gyeonggi (35,000$), IEM Katowice (250,000$), Korea vs World (unknown)
Means ~770,000$ + prize money available in total in Korean/Global WCS events
As you'll quickly realize the amount of tournaments also appears to be the same, but because the Cross Finals are hardly a tournament - only 4 players play - there are more WCS related tournaments for Koreans next year even though SSL is dropped. And because of the 3rd season, if you drop out of GSL in May you no longer have nothing major to play in until Autumn.
There's only 4 region locked tournaments in 2017 which will make sure the foreign scene doesn't take huge steps back after all the good work non-Korean players did this year. Removing the lock will hurt more than it will heal.
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On December 10 2016 09:00 Darkhorse wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 08:55 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:52 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:41 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:37 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:33 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:22 Darkhorse wrote:Korea got fucked. I know it probably took a lot of hard work to get this done and I appreciate that Incontrol highlights that and I'm happy there will be a WCS in 2017, but I'm still gonna call a spade a spade. Korea got fucked. In what way did Korea get fucked? Pro league is gone. S2SL is gone. Nothing done to offset this (ie allowing Koreans to enter DH, other weekend events again) so yay for oversaturation in GSL with far fewer established teams to pay players And by nothing done to offset this what you actually mean is 3 GSLs instead of 2, super tournaments, and money shifted from the foreign scene into global events (which Korea will take.) I mean is the only way Korea doesn't get fucked to you if Blizzard comes out and funds 6 teams and a teamleague? You have pretty unrealistic expectations. And of course this goes without mentioning the countless number of online tournaments we have. Super tournaments replace Kespa cup, something Korea lost that I didn't mention in my previous post (because I knew super tournaments offset them) also the IEM WC in Katowice has always been global unless I'm mistaken so it's not like Korea was "given something" there although I'll concede that the prize pool is higher this year. I'll concede that Blizzard shouldn't be expected to save PL on their own but Stork's recent interview seems to suggest they didn't even really try. That's most of my disappointment with Blizzard atm. Also I've never been a fan of splitting the global finals 50/50 (biggest prize pool of the year) when given an even playing field Koreans could easily qualify for more of those spots. But that last bit is all preference and I understand if you disagree Well there was 1 KeSPA cup and it was a global event not a WCS Korea event, so that's not strictly true. IEM Katowice season was a WCS Circuit event. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2016_WCS_Winter_Circuit_ChampionshipI understand people not liking the way WCS final spots are allocated but I personally have no issues with it, and it's fairer than we see in most other games. True on Kespa cup. I will say that there is only one IEM circuit event available to Korea this season as opposed to last season (gyeonggi this year as opposed to Shenzhen, gamescon, and Taipei last year)
The IEM and WCS seasons don't line up.
There are only 2 events left on the IEM circuit this year, Gyeonggi and Katowice. We won't know more about IEM until they announce their plans for next season, it's possible they host more events though I don't know how likely this is.
In any case I don't think Korea got fucked is a reasonable conclusion to draw from all of this. As an aside I hope people support online tournaments more this year, especially things like Olimoleague.
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Last year of decent Sc2 pro scene. Sad bad true
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On December 10 2016 08:56 Darkhorse wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 08:41 Pr0wler wrote:
Yeah, Korea got fucked... with 6 tournaments and more than 600k in prize pools. I don't know what do you expect...
Right now I'm looking at the Dota 2 tournaments. Guess how many tournaments Valve held in China this year - "to support the chinese scene"... 1 and it was open for the entire world. Everything else is independent initiative. Where is the independent initiative in Korean SC2 ? They need smaller local tournaments created(AND FUNDED) by korean organisations. Or even bigger tournaments like WESG sponsored by huge corporations.
I'm happy with WCS... And at least 2 more years of great SC2 action. To suggest that nobody in Korea has taken independent initiative or that no tournament in Korea has been funded by Korean orgs is way wrong btw
I didn't suggest that. I'm saying that they are not doing it enough. You can't expect Blizzard to fund the entire scene... It's not realistic.
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On December 10 2016 09:05 Lgnarrow wrote:Last year of decent Sc2 pro scene. Sad bad true
I appreciate how you read an announcement that outlined the same level of commitment to SC2 for the next two years and then decided to come to this conclusion. It's a remarkable feat.
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On December 10 2016 09:07 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 09:05 Lgnarrow wrote:Last year of decent Sc2 pro scene. Sad bad true I appreciate how you read an announcement
I appreciate how you think everyone bothers with reading the whole thing.
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Let's hope VSL kicks off and Leifeng Cup continues on.
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United States23455 Posts
On December 10 2016 09:05 Pr0wler wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 08:56 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:41 Pr0wler wrote:
Yeah, Korea got fucked... with 6 tournaments and more than 600k in prize pools. I don't know what do you expect...
Right now I'm looking at the Dota 2 tournaments. Guess how many tournaments Valve held in China this year - "to support the chinese scene"... 1 and it was open for the entire world. Everything else is independent initiative. Where is the independent initiative in Korean SC2 ? They need smaller local tournaments created(AND FUNDED) by korean organisations. Or even bigger tournaments like WESG sponsored by huge corporations.
I'm happy with WCS... And at least 2 more years of great SC2 action. To suggest that nobody in Korea has taken independent initiative or that no tournament in Korea has been funded by Korean orgs is way wrong btw I didn't suggest that. I'm saying that they are not doing it enough. You can't expect Blizzard to fund the entire scene... It's not realistic.
It's funny you say that because the foreign scene probably would have died tbh if Blizzard hadn't stepped in and region locked a bunch of tournaments.
But I do agree with you to an extent. I think Olimoleague is a great example of someone taking it into their own hands
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141 Posts
On December 10 2016 08:22 Darkhorse wrote:Korea got fucked..
the Korean community is definitely looking quite delighted from what I've seen so far /s
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Hello everyone, this is actually my first post on TL and my Englisch is not the best, but i want to show you my thoughts about WCS 2017.
I don´t understand why so many of you are disappointed, I think the new WCS System is better than the one from 2016.
It´s the same over all WCS prizepool than last year, a little bit less for WCS korea and WCS Circuit and much more for global events.
It´s obviously sad but, after the proleague thing, I´m not very surprised that there is no SSL next year in korea.
On the other side the korean progame now have 8 tournaments to compete in, compared to 5 in 2016 wich is better for midtear pros.
No Crossfinals is also a good thing I think because only the two champions and runner-ups had a chance to win more monney.
the new WCS Circuit on the one side is bad for the European scene because it´s the biggest and now they have only 6 big tournaments(and two of them are global) and 4 very little ones to compete.
One the other side it´s better for the players from LATAM, CN, TW and ANZ/SEA because they become 4 little tournaments per region for there own.
well thats my thoughts
grtz
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I never liked the PL format. Don't get me wrong, the games played were amazing, but trying to make a 1v1 game into a team format just seemed wrong, like putting a square peg into a round hole.
I always felt that SC2 should be all about the individual player, not about an individual playing 1 match in a set of 5 or 7.
Team format SC2 doesn't showcase the individual's skills. It does show the brilliance of the coach though, and the team's ability to create sniper builds for specific opponents. But as I said earlier, it seems weird for the coach's planning ability to be the focus, instead of the player's skills.
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On December 10 2016 09:13 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote:
I never liked the PL format. Don't get me wrong, the games played were amazing, but trying to make a 1v1 game into a team format just seemed wrong, like putting a square peg into a round hole.
I always felt that SC2 should be all about the individual player, not about an individual playing 1 match in a set of 5 or 7.
Team format SC2 doesn't showcase the individual's skills. It does show the brilliance of the coach though, and the team's ability to create sniper builds for specific opponents. But as I said earlier, it seems weird for the coach's planning ability to be the focus, instead of the player's skills.
I enjoyed proleague the most, all-kill was always the better format for me though.
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On December 10 2016 09:13 Jett.Jack.Alvir wrote:
Team format SC2 doesn't showcase the individual's skills. It does show the brilliance of the coach though, and the team's ability to create sniper builds for specific opponents. But as I said earlier, it seems weird for the coach's planning ability to be the focus, instead of the player's skills.
Every time a snipe build in Proleague worked people were talking about the players, not the teams. Also first you say you never liked the PL format, then you say you don't like team formats in general. But what about all-kill format? That's all about showcasing the individuals on the team isn't it?
Never mind that though, replacing Proleague can't be on Blizzard. Maybe VSL can establish itself properly and become the "new" Proleague.
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So the SSL is deded ? Did I miss the announcement or something ?
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OK all kills are cool, I forgot about it.
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Mute City2363 Posts
On December 10 2016 09:08 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 09:07 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 09:05 Lgnarrow wrote:Last year of decent Sc2 pro scene. Sad bad true I appreciate how you read an announcement I appreciate how you think everyone bothers with reading the whole thing.
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On December 10 2016 09:22 Lightrush wrote:
So the SSL is deded ? Did I miss the announcement or something ?
This is the announcement, you're looking at it right now.
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United States23455 Posts
On December 10 2016 09:02 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 09:00 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:55 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:52 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:41 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:37 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:33 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:22 Darkhorse wrote:Korea got fucked. I know it probably took a lot of hard work to get this done and I appreciate that Incontrol highlights that and I'm happy there will be a WCS in 2017, but I'm still gonna call a spade a spade. Korea got fucked. In what way did Korea get fucked? Pro league is gone. S2SL is gone. Nothing done to offset this (ie allowing Koreans to enter DH, other weekend events again) so yay for oversaturation in GSL with far fewer established teams to pay players And by nothing done to offset this what you actually mean is 3 GSLs instead of 2, super tournaments, and money shifted from the foreign scene into global events (which Korea will take.) I mean is the only way Korea doesn't get fucked to you if Blizzard comes out and funds 6 teams and a teamleague? You have pretty unrealistic expectations. And of course this goes without mentioning the countless number of online tournaments we have. Super tournaments replace Kespa cup, something Korea lost that I didn't mention in my previous post (because I knew super tournaments offset them) also the IEM WC in Katowice has always been global unless I'm mistaken so it's not like Korea was "given something" there although I'll concede that the prize pool is higher this year. I'll concede that Blizzard shouldn't be expected to save PL on their own but Stork's recent interview seems to suggest they didn't even really try. That's most of my disappointment with Blizzard atm. Also I've never been a fan of splitting the global finals 50/50 (biggest prize pool of the year) when given an even playing field Koreans could easily qualify for more of those spots. But that last bit is all preference and I understand if you disagree Well there was 1 KeSPA cup and it was a global event not a WCS Korea event, so that's not strictly true. IEM Katowice season was a WCS Circuit event. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2016_WCS_Winter_Circuit_ChampionshipI understand people not liking the way WCS final spots are allocated but I personally have no issues with it, and it's fairer than we see in most other games. True on Kespa cup. I will say that there is only one IEM circuit event available to Korea this season as opposed to last season (gyeonggi this year as opposed to Shenzhen, gamescon, and Taipei last year) The IEM and WCS seasons don't line up. There are only 2 events left on the IEM circuit this year, Gyeonggi and Katowice. We won't know more about IEM until they announce their plans for next season, it's possible they host more events though I don't know how likely this is. In any case I don't think Korea got fucked is a reasonable conclusion to draw from all of this. As an aside I hope people support online tournaments more this year, especially things like Olimoleague.
You've turned me around to some extent here. I think Korea is getting slightly fucked and not all of it from Blizzard. Just the loss of PL really hurts them
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On December 10 2016 09:12 r_gg wrote:the Korean community is definitely looking quite delighted from what I've seen so far /s
hopefully, a lot of war chests will be purchased and a funding drive is undertaken by the pillars of the korean community.
once 10 million war chests are purchased by korean SC2 fans Blizzard will get the message.
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so some WCS players will get their travel expenses paid and all the others better hope they are on teamliquid? o.O
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On December 10 2016 09:37 Darkhorse wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 09:02 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 09:00 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:55 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:52 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:41 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:37 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:33 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:22 Darkhorse wrote:Korea got fucked. I know it probably took a lot of hard work to get this done and I appreciate that Incontrol highlights that and I'm happy there will be a WCS in 2017, but I'm still gonna call a spade a spade. Korea got fucked. In what way did Korea get fucked? Pro league is gone. S2SL is gone. Nothing done to offset this (ie allowing Koreans to enter DH, other weekend events again) so yay for oversaturation in GSL with far fewer established teams to pay players And by nothing done to offset this what you actually mean is 3 GSLs instead of 2, super tournaments, and money shifted from the foreign scene into global events (which Korea will take.) I mean is the only way Korea doesn't get fucked to you if Blizzard comes out and funds 6 teams and a teamleague? You have pretty unrealistic expectations. And of course this goes without mentioning the countless number of online tournaments we have. Super tournaments replace Kespa cup, something Korea lost that I didn't mention in my previous post (because I knew super tournaments offset them) also the IEM WC in Katowice has always been global unless I'm mistaken so it's not like Korea was "given something" there although I'll concede that the prize pool is higher this year. I'll concede that Blizzard shouldn't be expected to save PL on their own but Stork's recent interview seems to suggest they didn't even really try. That's most of my disappointment with Blizzard atm. Also I've never been a fan of splitting the global finals 50/50 (biggest prize pool of the year) when given an even playing field Koreans could easily qualify for more of those spots. But that last bit is all preference and I understand if you disagree Well there was 1 KeSPA cup and it was a global event not a WCS Korea event, so that's not strictly true. IEM Katowice season was a WCS Circuit event. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2016_WCS_Winter_Circuit_ChampionshipI understand people not liking the way WCS final spots are allocated but I personally have no issues with it, and it's fairer than we see in most other games. True on Kespa cup. I will say that there is only one IEM circuit event available to Korea this season as opposed to last season (gyeonggi this year as opposed to Shenzhen, gamescon, and Taipei last year) The IEM and WCS seasons don't line up. There are only 2 events left on the IEM circuit this year, Gyeonggi and Katowice. We won't know more about IEM until they announce their plans for next season, it's possible they host more events though I don't know how likely this is. In any case I don't think Korea got fucked is a reasonable conclusion to draw from all of this. As an aside I hope people support online tournaments more this year, especially things like Olimoleague. You've turned me around to some extent here. I think Korea is getting slightly fucked and not all of it from Blizzard. Just the loss of PL really hurts them
Which is ultimately not their fault. Blizzard didn't run or organize the Proleague, that what Kespa did.
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On December 10 2016 09:48 ossavi09 wrote:
so some WCS players will get their travel expenses paid and all the others better hope they are on teamliquid? o.O
TL is not a guarantee for everything now, they had to move some resources to their new Civilization department
+ Show Spoiler +Just kidding, don't hate on me
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Thank you Elentos for your reasonable breakdown. I was very happy with 2016. Everyone who has been watching SC2 for years has seen that Proleague was going to break apart, it was just a matter of time. Hell, they even needed a "team 8" and needed a EGTL partnership to round out the league when it first started, it was never perfect.
Very excited that SC2 will be continuing in 2017. Also i'll be very happy if we don't return to the 2015 where foreigners may as well not of existed.
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On December 10 2016 09:51 aQuaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 09:48 ossavi09 wrote:
so some WCS players will get their travel expenses paid and all the others better hope they are on teamliquid? o.O TL is not a guarantee for everything now, they had to move some resources to their new Civilization department + Show Spoiler +Just kidding, don't hate on me
I had already forgotten about the Civ team. I still don't understand that one at all
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United States23455 Posts
On December 10 2016 09:51 lestye wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 09:37 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 09:02 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 09:00 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:55 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:52 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:41 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:37 Darkhorse wrote:On December 10 2016 08:33 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 08:22 Darkhorse wrote:
[quote]
Korea got fucked.
I know it probably took a lot of hard work to get this done and I appreciate that Incontrol highlights that and I'm happy there will be a WCS in 2017, but I'm still gonna call a spade a spade. Korea got fucked. In what way did Korea get fucked? Pro league is gone. S2SL is gone. Nothing done to offset this (ie allowing Koreans to enter DH, other weekend events again) so yay for oversaturation in GSL with far fewer established teams to pay players And by nothing done to offset this what you actually mean is 3 GSLs instead of 2, super tournaments, and money shifted from the foreign scene into global events (which Korea will take.) I mean is the only way Korea doesn't get fucked to you if Blizzard comes out and funds 6 teams and a teamleague? You have pretty unrealistic expectations. And of course this goes without mentioning the countless number of online tournaments we have. Super tournaments replace Kespa cup, something Korea lost that I didn't mention in my previous post (because I knew super tournaments offset them) also the IEM WC in Katowice has always been global unless I'm mistaken so it's not like Korea was "given something" there although I'll concede that the prize pool is higher this year. I'll concede that Blizzard shouldn't be expected to save PL on their own but Stork's recent interview seems to suggest they didn't even really try. That's most of my disappointment with Blizzard atm. Also I've never been a fan of splitting the global finals 50/50 (biggest prize pool of the year) when given an even playing field Koreans could easily qualify for more of those spots. But that last bit is all preference and I understand if you disagree Well there was 1 KeSPA cup and it was a global event not a WCS Korea event, so that's not strictly true. IEM Katowice season was a WCS Circuit event. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/2016_WCS_Winter_Circuit_ChampionshipI understand people not liking the way WCS final spots are allocated but I personally have no issues with it, and it's fairer than we see in most other games. True on Kespa cup. I will say that there is only one IEM circuit event available to Korea this season as opposed to last season (gyeonggi this year as opposed to Shenzhen, gamescon, and Taipei last year) The IEM and WCS seasons don't line up. There are only 2 events left on the IEM circuit this year, Gyeonggi and Katowice. We won't know more about IEM until they announce their plans for next season, it's possible they host more events though I don't know how likely this is. In any case I don't think Korea got fucked is a reasonable conclusion to draw from all of this. As an aside I hope people support online tournaments more this year, especially things like Olimoleague. You've turned me around to some extent here. I think Korea is getting slightly fucked and not all of it from Blizzard. Just the loss of PL really hurts them Which is ultimately not their fault. Blizzard didn't run or organize the Proleague, that what Kespa did.
...
Obviously
I also pointed out that not all of Koreas woes were Blizzatds fault. PL falls under the "not Blizzards fault necessarily" umbrella
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On December 10 2016 09:48 ossavi09 wrote:
so some WCS players will get their travel expenses paid and all the others better hope they are on teamliquid? o.O
$2 from each TL Winter Hat goes to pay for a fleet of TL private jets. a half dozen Boeing Business Jet 2s.
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On December 10 2016 10:00 JimmyJRaynor wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 09:48 ossavi09 wrote:
so some WCS players will get their travel expenses paid and all the others better hope they are on teamliquid? o.O $2 from each TL Winter Hat goes to pay for a fleet of TL private jets. a half dozen Boeing Business Jet 2s.
We will build our own plane with Snute on it
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On December 10 2016 09:55 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 09:51 aQuaSC wrote:On December 10 2016 09:48 ossavi09 wrote:
so some WCS players will get their travel expenses paid and all the others better hope they are on teamliquid? o.O TL is not a guarantee for everything now, they had to move some resources to their new Civilization department + Show Spoiler +Just kidding, don't hate on me I had already forgotten about the Civ team. I still don't understand that one at all
It's ok TL forgot about it too.
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The only qualm I have is looking at the schedule the first WCS Circuit event is in april-juli. That's 4 months+ from now, that's a very long break. Not sure how big/extensive the challenger events will be though, perhaps they can close the gap a bit.
Also with there being fewer tournaments in WCS Circuit hopefully we'll see double elimination and/or big round robin groups so players can play a bit more matches. Actually didn't quite realize reading the first time that this will be ALL there is for WCS. Besides it being sparse for the players I can imagine the caster life will also be way harder like this as they'll likely all have to work parttime. Wonder if we'll see caster retirements too.
I still think them already committing to 2018 as well is one of the best things ever. All these years with overly late info and formats changing every year haven't helped at all so I'm very glad there's a clear plan ahead plus less uncertainty for all the players.
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SC II prize pool is a joke.
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On December 10 2016 10:18 Antonidas wrote:
SC II prize pool is a joke.
Feel free to chip in.
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United States1804 Posts
I don't understand why people are hung up on tournaments when it comes to Korea. All that matters is team salary, the guaranteed money that allowed Koreans to hold off military service and forego a traditional education. It's fairly obvious that no Korean companies want to sponsor starcraft, so it's left to foreign teams to pick up the talented former kespa pros. Unfortunately, with the region lock, they have no impetus to. The super tournaments have miniscule prize pools, leaving 3 gsls for the entire scene to subsist upon. The region lock is what will drive players into retirement, not the number of tournaments. This is a 2 year plan, but it's hard to imagine many players sticking around that long.
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J..just... nay. I'd remain silent.
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On December 10 2016 10:23 mizenhauer wrote:
I don't understand why people are hung up on tournaments when it comes to Korea. All that matters is team salary, the guaranteed money that allowed Koreans to hold off military service and forego a traditional education. It's fairly obvious that no Korean companies want to sponsor starcraft, so it's left to foreign teams to pick up the talented former kespa pros. Unfortunately, with the region lock, they have no impetus to. The super tournaments have miniscule prize pools, leaving 3 gsls for the entire scene to subsist upon. The region lock is what will drive players into retirement, not the number of tournaments. This is a 2 year plan, but it's hard to imagine many players sticking around that long. Yes, that makes perfect sense. The region lock is the problem because all of those Koreans who can't make enough money from the current system will fly out to foreign tournaments at their own expense (because they still won't have teams) where they will lose to the same Koreans they lose to in GSL. Right?
On December 10 2016 10:18 Antonidas wrote:
SC II prize pool is a joke. I'm sure you have nothing meaningful to actually say, but StarCraft II awarded 3 million dollars to 385 players so far this year. How is that a joke? There is also the opportunity to increase the funding next year with the war chest.
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On December 10 2016 10:43 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 10:23 mizenhauer wrote:
I don't understand why people are hung up on tournaments when it comes to Korea. All that matters is team salary, the guaranteed money that allowed Koreans to hold off military service and forego a traditional education. It's fairly obvious that no Korean companies want to sponsor starcraft, so it's left to foreign teams to pick up the talented former kespa pros. Unfortunately, with the region lock, they have no impetus to. The super tournaments have miniscule prize pools, leaving 3 gsls for the entire scene to subsist upon. The region lock is what will drive players into retirement, not the number of tournaments. This is a 2 year plan, but it's hard to imagine many players sticking around that long. Yes, that makes perfect sense. The region lock is the problem because all of those Koreans who can't make enough money from the current system will fly out to foreign tournaments at their own expense (because they still won't have teams) where they will lose to the same Koreans they lose to in GSL. Right? I'm sure you have nothing meaningful to actually say, but StarCraft II awarded 3 million dollars to 385 players so far this year. How is that a joke? There is also the opportunity to increase the funding next year with the war chest.
I think the logic behind the region lock complaints is that if it's that difficult for Koreans to travel to international tournaments there's even less impetus for a foreign team to pick them up, who, if they had the incentive to invest in Koreans to travel to tournaments, would likely cover travel expenses. Not saying it's necessarily the way it'd shake out but you didn't seem to understand the point (which I'd say is reasonable) others were making.
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On December 10 2016 11:02 sparklyresidue wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 10:43 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 10:23 mizenhauer wrote:
I don't understand why people are hung up on tournaments when it comes to Korea. All that matters is team salary, the guaranteed money that allowed Koreans to hold off military service and forego a traditional education. It's fairly obvious that no Korean companies want to sponsor starcraft, so it's left to foreign teams to pick up the talented former kespa pros. Unfortunately, with the region lock, they have no impetus to. The super tournaments have miniscule prize pools, leaving 3 gsls for the entire scene to subsist upon. The region lock is what will drive players into retirement, not the number of tournaments. This is a 2 year plan, but it's hard to imagine many players sticking around that long. Yes, that makes perfect sense. The region lock is the problem because all of those Koreans who can't make enough money from the current system will fly out to foreign tournaments at their own expense (because they still won't have teams) where they will lose to the same Koreans they lose to in GSL. Right? On December 10 2016 10:18 Antonidas wrote:
SC II prize pool is a joke. I'm sure you have nothing meaningful to actually say, but StarCraft II awarded 3 million dollars to 385 players so far this year. How is that a joke? There is also the opportunity to increase the funding next year with the war chest. I think the logic behind the region lock complaints is that if it's that difficult for Koreans to travel to international tournaments there's even less impetus for a foreign team to pick them up, who, if they had the incentive to invest in Koreans to travel to tournaments, would likely cover travel expenses. Not saying it's necessarily the way it'd shake out but you didn't seem to understand the point (which I'd say is reasonable) others were making.
I don't believe foreign teams would pick up Koreans much more than they currently do if the region lock was lifted, and the Koreans who might get picked up because of this change are likely the ones who would have no trouble earning money in tournaments.
If foreign teams were dedicated to picking up Korean players, they are allowed to compete in the WCS circuit like Polt and TRUE did. Region locking is a poor excuse, and removing it will cause more damage than it will solve problems.
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On December 10 2016 10:43 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 10:23 mizenhauer wrote:
I don't understand why people are hung up on tournaments when it comes to Korea. All that matters is team salary, the guaranteed money that allowed Koreans to hold off military service and forego a traditional education. It's fairly obvious that no Korean companies want to sponsor starcraft, so it's left to foreign teams to pick up the talented former kespa pros. Unfortunately, with the region lock, they have no impetus to. The super tournaments have miniscule prize pools, leaving 3 gsls for the entire scene to subsist upon. The region lock is what will drive players into retirement, not the number of tournaments. This is a 2 year plan, but it's hard to imagine many players sticking around that long. Yes, that makes perfect sense. The region lock is the problem because all of those Koreans who can't make enough money from the current system will fly out to foreign tournaments at their own expense (because they still won't have teams) where they will lose to the same Koreans they lose to in GSL. Right? I'm sure you have nothing meaningful to actually say, but StarCraft II awarded 3 million dollars to 385 players so far this year. How is that a joke? There is also the opportunity to increase the funding next year with the war chest.
not every Korean is willing to flight oversea. More than that, many Koreans who already joined foreign teams like Byun, Solar or some are also looking for team like Soo, those amazing guys will not be able to play in foreign tournaments even though they would love to.
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On December 10 2016 11:18 ParksonVN wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 10:43 Ansibled wrote:On December 10 2016 10:23 mizenhauer wrote:
I don't understand why people are hung up on tournaments when it comes to Korea. All that matters is team salary, the guaranteed money that allowed Koreans to hold off military service and forego a traditional education. It's fairly obvious that no Korean companies want to sponsor starcraft, so it's left to foreign teams to pick up the talented former kespa pros. Unfortunately, with the region lock, they have no impetus to. The super tournaments have miniscule prize pools, leaving 3 gsls for the entire scene to subsist upon. The region lock is what will drive players into retirement, not the number of tournaments. This is a 2 year plan, but it's hard to imagine many players sticking around that long. Yes, that makes perfect sense. The region lock is the problem because all of those Koreans who can't make enough money from the current system will fly out to foreign tournaments at their own expense (because they still won't have teams) where they will lose to the same Koreans they lose to in GSL. Right? On December 10 2016 10:18 Antonidas wrote:
SC II prize pool is a joke. I'm sure you have nothing meaningful to actually say, but StarCraft II awarded 3 million dollars to 385 players so far this year. How is that a joke? There is also the opportunity to increase the funding next year with the war chest. not every Korean is willing to flight oversea. More than that, many Koreans who already joined foreign teams like Byun, Solar or some are also looking for team like Soo, those amazing guys will not be able to play in foreign tournaments even though they would love to.
ByuN, Solar, and soO are not the ones who will struggle to place well in tournaments in Korea. They won't be forced into retirement from this system.
They might want to play in foreign tournaments, and they can with Katowice and whatever other global tournaments we might have, but what does that have to do with anything? Allowing them won't change that low tier Korean players will struggle, it will make most foreigners struggle with them. It's better to have a deep scene than to let a few players fly around until no one is left to play against.
StarCraft doesn't need to be more top heavy than it already is.
I mean it doesn't really matter what people think region lock is here to stay. It won't be the death of Korean StarCraft but if you need an excuse feel free to use it I guess.
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well it s good that there is a WCS system in 2017, we ll see how it goes.
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In my opinion this looks pretty good. I am surprised by the all the criticism.
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Happy about this! I don't think there was more to ask. Happy that people try to be optimistic and realistic. Maby TL can finally be a place where some discussions can take place instead of the endless whining and blizzard bashing.
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whilst dh is correct in that Korea got fucked, the fact that korea is getting anything at all is a complete shock to me
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This is really great news and I'm glad Blizzard and Afreeca will keep GSL running, SC2 wouldn't be the same without the top Korean talent.
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Honestly, I wouldn't mind just one more global event. I'm happy with 3, but a 4th would be fuckin awesome.
Sorry to my European TLers, but I am balls happy with the weekend GSL schedule.
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All the negativity around here is so off putting. No wonder there is no new blood in the SC community. Who would want to join when they see such an atmosphere?
I for one think this is great news and more than I would have expected from Blizzard given the circumstances. Yes, the scene might shrink, but I don't believe the way it was structured was sustainable in the first place. Looking forward to the warchests, I believe that will clearly show how much this community is willing to back up e-sports. Right now it feels like the number one way in which people are involved in esports is as mere "armchair critics".
All in all, I'm looking forward to an interesting 2017 of SC2. Maybe if the warchest sales go well they will fund more events.
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On December 10 2016 14:12 iamho wrote:
This is really great news and I'm glad Blizzard and Afreeca will keep GSL running, SC2 wouldn't be the same without the top Korean talent.
Without teams the top korean talent will be weaker then ever.
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On December 10 2016 15:49 WidowMineHero wrote:
what about ssl?
Gone.
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I wonder what happens to Wolf and Valdes now with SSL and Proleague gone. I really love their casts, would be a shame if they had to leave the scene after all they've done for it.
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Wolf and Valdes were aight. Not greatest casters, but did a great job.
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On December 10 2016 16:48 Charoisaur wrote:
I wonder what happens to Wolf and Valdes now with SSL and Proleague gone. I really love their casts, would be a shame if they had to leave the scene after all they've done for it.
Wolf does Heroes and World of Tanks anyway, he's fine
Valdes....not so much. I guess he could go back to LoL with RapiD
Or maybe they'll both end up casting the OW Proleague
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On December 10 2016 08:02 NonY wrote:
i don't understand the angle the negative comments are taking. you want more from blizzard but how are you justifying it? such disappointment that there isnt more but why do you think there would be more? i think it's a lot as it is, given the size of sc2 esports community. like what exactly is your business/economic reasoning for there being more events? i just dont understand how it seems like such a given to so many people that there ought to be more tournaments, and more korean tournaments. im surprised by how many there actually are and other people are disgusted at how few there are. can you give the broad strokes of how you figure it would work out for blizzard and these tournament hosting companies etc to support more sc2 events?
I think what many people want is the removal of all measures that restrict participation of Korean players in WCS tournaments outside of South Korea. I think that people who call the current WCS system a charity league for foreigners have a point. I even recall an interview with someone who claimed that the lack of competition made him a better player. The result: five out of the top-8 slots at the WCS global finals went to ... Koreans. Top 4: 3 out of 4 players were Koreans.
The only result of soft banning Koreans from participating in WCS tournaments outside of South Korea is that the foreigners earned more cash. It did nothing to increase the overal skill level of foreign players of Stacraft 2. Quite on the contrary, why would they bother making the effort to go train with the best in South Korea when they can just stay in their safe spaces where Blizzard makes sure the competition isn't too stiff?
I still remember the first two or three years of Starcraft 2: you and several other foreigners moving to Korea to be able to train with and compete against the best of the best. I still fondly remember TSL season 2, where the underdog Thorzain worked himself into the finals, defeating many top Koreans along the way. He faced none other than MC in the finals, and somehow, some way came out on top. Thorzain then went on to compete in the GSL. Then there was Stephano's meteoric rise to Starcraft 2 fame.
Don't get me wrong, I love starcraft 2, even though I don't play anymore and I don't watch as much content as I used to. However, I also no longer get out of it as much as I did a few years ago. Apart from foreigner vs foreigners games not being nearly as good and cutthroat as Korean vs Korean games, there's a lack of interesting story lines, like the ones I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
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It's good they release everything upfront. Still a great time to be a pro outside Korea, at least.
Also, HOW exactly will the battle chest support WCS? What amount of profits will go towards it? Without details I couldn't care less about it.
All in all, pretty great news
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There should be a global event for the Apr-Jun period, this is a hole in the schedule.
The change in GSL viewing times is weird. For all WCS tournaments, they should just broadcast at the usual time and rebroadcast at primetime for the 2 other regions (e.g. NA, EU primetime for KR events, NA, KR/SEA primetime for EU events, etc.)?
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I think in a way the SC2 scene needs to die in order to be reborn again.
Now is the time to see who really cares about the game and who was only here to cash in while it was the king of esports.
The thing is, in my opinion Blizzard right now are placing their bets on Heroes of the Storm, but I think we can all see they are mistaken, as even a diminished SC2 is more popular.
SC2 still has potential to gain high viewership, it just needs the people who are truly passionate and care about the game to not give up. Because at the end of the day, it's still the most exciting game to watch at high level.
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"We intend to retain the same format for WCS 2018 as in 2017. While the exact events and timings for 2018 are up in the air, we are committed to supporting this structure and prizing over the next two years for WCS Korea and the WCS Circuit."
2018 and 2017???
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On December 10 2016 17:35 maartendq wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 08:02 NonY wrote:
i don't understand the angle the negative comments are taking. you want more from blizzard but how are you justifying it? such disappointment that there isnt more but why do you think there would be more? i think it's a lot as it is, given the size of sc2 esports community. like what exactly is your business/economic reasoning for there being more events? i just dont understand how it seems like such a given to so many people that there ought to be more tournaments, and more korean tournaments. im surprised by how many there actually are and other people are disgusted at how few there are. can you give the broad strokes of how you figure it would work out for blizzard and these tournament hosting companies etc to support more sc2 events? I think what many people want is the removal of all measures that restrict participation of Korean players in WCS tournaments outside of South Korea. I think that people who call the current WCS system a charity league for foreigners have a point. I even recall an interview with someone who claimed that the lack of competition made him a better player. The result: five out of the top-8 slots at the WCS global finals went to ... Koreans. Top 4: 3 out of 4 players were Koreans. The only result of soft banning Koreans from participating in WCS tournaments outside of South Korea is that the foreigners earned more cash. It did nothing to increase the overal skill level of foreign players of Stacraft 2. Quite on the contrary, why would they bother making the effort to go train with the best in South Korea when they can just stay in their safe spaces where Blizzard makes sure the competition isn't too stiff? I still remember the first two or three years of Starcraft 2: you and several other foreigners moving to Korea to be able to train with and compete against the best of the best. I still fondly remember TSL season 2, where the underdog Thorzain worked himself into the finals, defeating many top Koreans along the way. He faced none other than MC in the finals, and somehow, some way came out on top. Thorzain then went on to compete in the GSL. Then there was Stephano's meteoric rise to Starcraft 2 fame. Don't get me wrong, I love starcraft 2, even though I don't play anymore and I don't watch as much content as I used to. However, I also no longer get out of it as much as I did a few years ago. Apart from foreigner vs foreigners games not being nearly as good and cutthroat as Korean vs Korean games, there's a lack of interesting story lines, like the ones I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
You know what I happen to remember though? At Blizzcon, 3 of the top 8 were foreigners. Sure they got destroyed in that round or the ro4. But if they didn't really improve, then you would expect all the foreigners to get third or fourth or at the very most get second if they made it through.
Showtime beat Byun and Dear to make it through, Elazer beat Solar, Nerchio beat Solar, and Neeb beat Patience twice. In no way do I think that you can say the foreigners didn't improve. Did they close the gap? No, but they certainly made it smaller.
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On December 10 2016 17:41 True_Spike wrote:It's good they release everything upfront. Still a great time to be a pro outside Korea, at least. Also, HOW exactly will the battle chest support WCS? What amount of profits will go towards it? Without details I couldn't care less about it. All in all, pretty great news
That's a good question. It doesn't say if it goes directly to prizepool, is it to recoup costs of current events or help fund more events.
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I looked first at the announcement and thought: "Damned, region lock still in place, Korean ban from international competitions again, this is really bad, Blizzard did not learn anything and is continuing to destroy the Korean scene."
Well, I did not like the WCS 2016 system and am still strongly against what has been done against the most mid tier Koreans ... I liked quite a much the WCS 2015 system, where you had all the GSLs, SSLs, then you had the four seasons (four?) of "WCS Welfare" for foreigners only, which was perfectly fine, as I support the idea that some tournaments should give the foreigners the possibility to win reasonable money without the Koreans. And then you had all the great international tournaments, IEMs and DHs, many great events, where both the Koreans and foreigners could compete.
Then, I looked at the WCS 2017 again and realized something: Hey, the WCS 2017 is much more similar to WCS 2015 than to WCS 2016! There is only one exception - the international tournaments are gone (except Katowice). There are ONLY the four seasons of WCS Welfare in 2017 and this number is the same as in WCS 2015. Plus some regional challengers! So it is not the "active support" for tournament organisers to ban Koreans, in which case they receive a massive contribution. And a penalty to any tournament organisers, who would like to organize a global event (it would have to be a 50k tournament). Am I correct or did I read something wrong and these damaging incentives are still in place?
So the real message of the announcement should be - "SC2 is declining, we have less tournaments, but we still keep (pay) four (only four) events locked for foreigners. In Korea we cooperate with Afreeca to support three GSLs per year and a few new Korean small events. Plus Katowice is a global event (which is great!)."
So when comparing WCS 2016 and WCS 2017, the second seems to me to be better, with less events from which the Koreans are banned and no active incentives for eventual third party organizers to ban them from their events.
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Despite all the negativity, I'm personally thankful that Blizzard is still investing in SC2. It's easy to find things to criticize when every decision they make is looked at under a microscope (with the added help of hindsight), but it's hard to argue that the game would be better off without their continued effort. Hooray for the continuation of WCS =)
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On December 10 2016 18:15 Dumbledore wrote:
"We intend to retain the same format for WCS 2018 as in 2017. While the exact events and timings for 2018 are up in the air, we are committed to supporting this structure and prizing over the next two years for WCS Korea and the WCS Circuit."
2018 and 2017???
WCS = SC2 Advertising Budget.
For as much as those of us on the "ground" like to watch eSports, it's always too common to forget that eSports is supported by the developers because it's the most cost-effective advertising you can find, short of a major World Leader hyping your game up at random. (Sadly, this is also why Blizzard caused the downfall of "professional" SC:BW.)
So carrying on with a further 2 years makes sense. There has clearly been internal struggles inside Blizzard on the time/money/effort levels, as there always is with any "legacy" product, but the side that can frame this as a good marketing expenditure has won out for now. To our, as viewers, benefit.
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do we have any evidence of growth among the foreign scene?
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On December 10 2016 18:26 Diabolique wrote:
I looked first at the announcement and thought: "Damned, region lock still in place, Korean ban from international competitions again, this is really bad, Blizzard did not learn anything and is continuing to destroy the Korean scene."
Well, I did not like the WCS 2016 system and am still strongly against what has been done against the most mid tier Koreans ... I liked quite a much the WCS 2015 system, where you had all the GSLs, SSLs, then you had the four seasons (four?) of "WCS Welfare" for foreigners only, which was perfectly fine, as I support the idea that some tournaments should give the foreigners the possibility to win reasonable money without the Koreans. And then you had all the great international tournaments, IEMs and DHs, many great events, where both the Koreans and foreigners could compete.
Then, I looked at the WCS 2017 again and realized something: Hey, the WCS 2017 is much more similar to WCS 2015 than to WCS 2016! There is only one exception - the international tournaments are gone (except Katowice). There are ONLY the four seasons of WCS Welfare in 2017 and this number is the same as in WCS 2015. Plus some regional challengers! So it is not the "active support" for tournament organisers to ban Koreans, in which case they receive a massive contribution. And a penalty to any tournament organisers, who would like to organize a global event (it would have to be a 50k tournament). Am I correct or did I read something wrong and these damaging incentives are still in place?
So the real message of the announcement should be - "SC2 is declining, we have less tournaments, but we still keep (pay) four (only four) events locked for foreigners. In Korea we cooperate with Afreeca to support three GSLs per year and a few new Korean small events. Plus Katowice is a global event (which is great!)."
So when comparing WCS 2016 and WCS 2017, the second seems to me to be better, with less events from which the Koreans are banned and no active incentives for eventual third party organizers to ban them from their events.
I've been trying my damndest to be civil. I want to respect your opinion but the blatant way that you speak about "Foreigner welfare" is ridiculous.
Firstly, there is no such thing as region lock since 2015. In 2016 and 2017 you can complete anywhere you want to, all you gotta do is go FUCKING BE A PART OF THE COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PLAY IN. If you want to play in EU GO GET A VISA, go live there, go play on the ladder there, and you can play in any circuit tournament through regional qualifiers. Same with NA. Same with every other non-Korean region.
For years, YEARS, people on TL have exclaimed that "foreigners need to move to Korea to improve", expecting individuals to front the cost to go live in Korea on their own because it's the only way for them to get better.
Well now there is no Korean SC2 wellfare. That's right. All of Korean SC2 was WELLFARE FOR KOREANS.
They created a system, with the largest corporations in the country all being in on it with the Korean government (Kespa was a federal government organization, or do we all forget that?) to incentivize those that had the capitol to invest in a large infrastructure system and to disenfranchise all grassroots events.
If you wanted to make money as a Korean SC player, join a team, work your way through practice partner and through the team house rankings and maybe one day you'll be able to.
Well now that system is gone. And it's time those mid-tier Koreans that everyone is always so worried about to show some initiative, like everyone keeps telling foreigners, and if they want to continue to be lucrative inside of Starcraft, they need to leave Korea, find a foreign team that wants to pick them up, (Because as so many dissenting voices want to keep pointing out in this thread even a mid-tier Korean is miles better than every foreigner), go live in the region they want to be a part of and be profitable in, and get to work.
Polt did it. True did it. Violet did it. It's possible to be done. It may be difficult, but you know what, so is what Artosis and Tasteless did, so is what Nony did, so is what every foreigner that has been told "Move to Korea to get better at Starcraft" so they did it. Now, if Koreans want to get paid to play Starcraft, they need to get out of Korea.
Kespa, not Blizzard Korea or Activision-Blizzard, have made it painfully obvious that they give no shits about SC2. With an arm of the Federal government actively against creating more opportunities for Starcraft in the country what would Blizzard do? They can't do much. It's not on them to do it all anyway.
It makes me so sick to see all of the negativity instead of constructive brainstorming. How about this instead, let's try and think of ideas of incentives that we, as the community, can offer to foreign teams and to mid-tier Korean players to get them out of Korea, where they have no chance to compete against the titans that will be in the GSL every season.
Maybe we, as the community, can get together and get a "Move mid-tier koreans" fund together to help pay for visa fees and travel costs with moving players from Korea to another region to participate in the WCS Circuit. Maybe we can petition Blizzard for them to offer incentives to Foreign teams for acquiring mid-tier Korean players and helping them get their visas by paying their travel costs, not only to get moved but also to events they decide to go to, to help smaller esport organizations pick up bigger players, and let them focus all of their capitol on player salary and acquiring more sponsors. We need to think of ways to grow the scene.
You don't grow the scene by constantly talking about foreign welfare. Why would anyone want to pick up this game, as a non-korean, if they begin to become successful and the community just brushes them off, because "Oh it's just foreigner welfare, all the hard work that you did doesn't count for fucking anything because of how I feel about the way that Blizzard decided to organize something that neither you nor I had any power over"
SC2 isn't dying. The community is. Good riddance.
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On December 10 2016 08:02 NonY wrote:
i don't understand the angle the negative comments are taking. you want more from blizzard but how are you justifying it? such disappointment that there isnt more but why do you think there would be more? i think it's a lot as it is, given the size of sc2 esports community. like what exactly is your business/economic reasoning for there being more events? i just dont understand how it seems like such a given to so many people that there ought to be more tournaments, and more korean tournaments. im surprised by how many there actually are and other people are disgusted at how few there are. can you give the broad strokes of how you figure it would work out for blizzard and these tournament hosting companies etc to support more sc2 events?
People believe pizzagate, critical thinking went down the drain apparently
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I hope there is a gsl preseason like last year but it doesn't really look like it. Otherwise this is looking better than I expected. It seems like it's a little bit worse for foreigners than this year but quite a bit better for Koreans.
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I am just happy that Blizzard still supports SC2, last of RTS, as an eSport with HotS and Overwatch around.
This system may not be satisfying for everyone but I think they will have spent a lot more time thinking than anyone in this thread about how everything needs to be laid out for everyone (players, organizers, Blizzard, fans) to get something out of it in its current state.
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It is so unfair that Korean can't participate in foreign tournament.
Blizzard's solution:delete all foreign tournament except official WCS circuit championhip.
So clever
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On December 10 2016 19:48 scvnotready wrote:
It is so unfair that Korean can't participate in foreign tournament.
Blizzard's solution:delete all foreign tournament except official WCS circuit championhip.
So clever
I think it's more organizations not wanting to run sc2 anymore than blizz "deleting" the tournaments
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On December 10 2016 20:02 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 19:48 scvnotready wrote:
It is so unfair that Korean can't participate in foreign tournament.
Blizzard's solution:delete all foreign tournament except official WCS circuit championhip.
So clever I think it's more organizations not wanting to run sc2 anymore than blizz "deleting" the tournaments
Most definitely.
But I think we will have a lot of cool online tournaments in 2017, so people just have to get used to less big offline tournaments for sc2.
I'm excited to see what TB has in store, besides Shoutcraft Kings.
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On December 10 2016 15:22 NR wrote:All the negativity around here is so off putting. No wonder there is no new blood in the SC community. Who would want to join when they see such an atmosphere? I for one think this is great news and more than I would have expected from Blizzard given the circumstances. Yes, the scene might shrink, but I don't believe the way it was structured was sustainable in the first place. Looking forward to the warchests, I believe that will clearly show how much this community is willing to back up e-sports. Right now it feels like the number one way in which people are involved in esports is as mere "armchair critics". All in all, I'm looking forward to an interesting 2017 of SC2. Maybe if the warchest sales go well they will fund more events.
Noone want's to join SC2 man, every reddit or bnet post where new guys dare to ask something get silenced, downvoted or he gets a responses such "HOW DARE YOU ARE NOT TRYHARD COMPETITIVE", or "UR NOT AT LEAST DIAMOND AFTER A WEEK OF PLAYING, everything is your fault gt*o..."
This place is a not a community anymore it's a dump of few vocals who would just cry and argue about anything that Blizzard or any inciative content creator do... but, you have to realize they can't admit that something went in right direction man, for them it would be end of the world...
But yeah TL not as much, but reddit and bnet forums are not a community place but a toxic dump...
Quick edit: it makes me really sad
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On December 10 2016 20:22 PharaphobiaSC wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 15:22 NR wrote:All the negativity around here is so off putting. No wonder there is no new blood in the SC community. Who would want to join when they see such an atmosphere? I for one think this is great news and more than I would have expected from Blizzard given the circumstances. Yes, the scene might shrink, but I don't believe the way it was structured was sustainable in the first place. Looking forward to the warchests, I believe that will clearly show how much this community is willing to back up e-sports. Right now it feels like the number one way in which people are involved in esports is as mere "armchair critics". All in all, I'm looking forward to an interesting 2017 of SC2. Maybe if the warchest sales go well they will fund more events. Noone want's to join SC2 man, every reddit or bnet post where new guys dare to ask something get silenced, downvoted or he gets a responses such "HOW DARE YOU ARE NOT TRYHARD COMPETITIVE", or "UR NOT AT LEAST DIAMOND AFTER A WEEK OF PLAYING, everything is your fault gt*o..." This place is a not a community anymore it's a dump of few vocals who would just cry and argue about anything that Blizzard or any inciative content creator do... but, you have to realize they can't admit that something went in right direction man, for them it would be end of the world... But yeah TL not as much, but reddit and bnet forums are not a community place but a toxic dump... Quick edit: it makes me really sad
I don't agree at all with what you said about Reddit.
I see posts from new players asking for help on reddit almost daily and the veterans are always incredibly helpful. They keep giving advice, linking to guides and are even offering to play with them/coach them.
Edit: Just check out this thread from yesterday or the WCS thread and tell me how it's a toxic dump please.
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Only 3 GSLs. we need something else to compensate
Edit: 6 major Korean events. This is nice.
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On December 10 2016 18:51 mrarthursimon wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 18:26 Diabolique wrote:
I looked first at the announcement and thought: "Damned, region lock still in place, Korean ban from international competitions again, this is really bad, Blizzard did not learn anything and is continuing to destroy the Korean scene."
Well, I did not like the WCS 2016 system and am still strongly against what has been done against the most mid tier Koreans ... I liked quite a much the WCS 2015 system, where you had all the GSLs, SSLs, then you had the four seasons (four?) of "WCS Welfare" for foreigners only, which was perfectly fine, as I support the idea that some tournaments should give the foreigners the possibility to win reasonable money without the Koreans. And then you had all the great international tournaments, IEMs and DHs, many great events, where both the Koreans and foreigners could compete.
Then, I looked at the WCS 2017 again and realized something: Hey, the WCS 2017 is much more similar to WCS 2015 than to WCS 2016! There is only one exception - the international tournaments are gone (except Katowice). There are ONLY the four seasons of WCS Welfare in 2017 and this number is the same as in WCS 2015. Plus some regional challengers! So it is not the "active support" for tournament organisers to ban Koreans, in which case they receive a massive contribution. And a penalty to any tournament organisers, who would like to organize a global event (it would have to be a 50k tournament). Am I correct or did I read something wrong and these damaging incentives are still in place?
So the real message of the announcement should be - "SC2 is declining, we have less tournaments, but we still keep (pay) four (only four) events locked for foreigners. In Korea we cooperate with Afreeca to support three GSLs per year and a few new Korean small events. Plus Katowice is a global event (which is great!)."
So when comparing WCS 2016 and WCS 2017, the second seems to me to be better, with less events from which the Koreans are banned and no active incentives for eventual third party organizers to ban them from their events. Firstly, there is no such thing as region lock since 2015. In 2016 and 2017 you can complete anywhere you want to, all you gotta do is go FUCKING BE A PART OF THE COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PLAY IN. If you want to play in EU GO GET A VISA, go live there, go play on the ladder there, and you can play in any circuit tournament through regional qualifiers. Same with NA. Same with every other non-Korean region. .
Please correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know there was (and still is, no?) a difference between the WCS ruleset and GSL ruleset.
To participate in WCS EU as in your example you have to get visa, go live there, go play ladder, play enough games on the ladder and then and only then you can take a chance in qualifiers.
To participate in GSL you only had to go to the venue where qualifiers were taking place. Just that. No Visa, playing on ladder etc.
GSL (Global Star League) was a global league where anybody could participate as long as you were good enough. Thing is that good enough meant that almost no foreigner (there were some great exceptions ofc) were interested in paying a lot of money for a flight to only get destroyed in qualifiers.
However the opposite was true - Koreans did paid a lot of money to travel to foreign event as MLG, DH, IEM etc. because they knew they are good enough to win enough to cover journey expenses.
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It seems like 2017 WCS is in fact a bit better than 2016 WCS and when taking recent events into consideration probably better than expected which is good news. Great news are that there will be not only WCS 2017 but also 2018 which means at least 2 years of blizzard support for SC2 which I am thankful for
However it is hard to be delighted by perspectives for future when the same time we know there is not gonna be ProLeague (my favourite tournament), SSL and korean teams anymore.
So in short it seems like:
2017 WCS > 2016 WCS
SC2 in general 2017 < 2016
Well I guess that "you have to be happy with what you have to be happy with" 
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Support Take TV Tournaments plz!
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On December 10 2016 21:20 egrimm wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 18:51 mrarthursimon wrote:On December 10 2016 18:26 Diabolique wrote:
I looked first at the announcement and thought: "Damned, region lock still in place, Korean ban from international competitions again, this is really bad, Blizzard did not learn anything and is continuing to destroy the Korean scene."
Well, I did not like the WCS 2016 system and am still strongly against what has been done against the most mid tier Koreans ... I liked quite a much the WCS 2015 system, where you had all the GSLs, SSLs, then you had the four seasons (four?) of "WCS Welfare" for foreigners only, which was perfectly fine, as I support the idea that some tournaments should give the foreigners the possibility to win reasonable money without the Koreans. And then you had all the great international tournaments, IEMs and DHs, many great events, where both the Koreans and foreigners could compete.
Then, I looked at the WCS 2017 again and realized something: Hey, the WCS 2017 is much more similar to WCS 2015 than to WCS 2016! There is only one exception - the international tournaments are gone (except Katowice). There are ONLY the four seasons of WCS Welfare in 2017 and this number is the same as in WCS 2015. Plus some regional challengers! So it is not the "active support" for tournament organisers to ban Koreans, in which case they receive a massive contribution. And a penalty to any tournament organisers, who would like to organize a global event (it would have to be a 50k tournament). Am I correct or did I read something wrong and these damaging incentives are still in place?
So the real message of the announcement should be - "SC2 is declining, we have less tournaments, but we still keep (pay) four (only four) events locked for foreigners. In Korea we cooperate with Afreeca to support three GSLs per year and a few new Korean small events. Plus Katowice is a global event (which is great!)."
So when comparing WCS 2016 and WCS 2017, the second seems to me to be better, with less events from which the Koreans are banned and no active incentives for eventual third party organizers to ban them from their events. Firstly, there is no such thing as region lock since 2015. In 2016 and 2017 you can complete anywhere you want to, all you gotta do is go FUCKING BE A PART OF THE COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PLAY IN. If you want to play in EU GO GET A VISA, go live there, go play on the ladder there, and you can play in any circuit tournament through regional qualifiers. Same with NA. Same with every other non-Korean region. . Please correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know there was (and still is, no?) a difference between the WCS ruleset and GSL ruleset. To participate in WCS EU as in your example you have to get visa, go live there, go play ladder, play enough games on the ladder and then and only then you can take a chance in qualifiers. To participate in GSL you only had to go to the venue where qualifiers were taking place. Just that. No Visa, playing on ladder etc. GSL (Global Star League) was a global league where anybody could participate as long as you were good enough. Thing is that good enough meant that almost no foreigner (there were some great exceptions ofc) were interested in paying a lot of money for a flight to only get destroyed in qualifiers. However the opposite was true - Koreans did paid a lot of money to travel to foreign event as MLG, DH, IEM etc. because they knew they are good enough to win enough to cover journey expenses.
For WCS 2013 and 2014 you didn't need to have a residency visa or even live in the region you were competing in since the qualifiers and the Ro32 were online. Only the Ro16 and playoffs were offline, and they probably had paid travel and accommodations. So Koreans playing in WCS NA or EU theoretically only had to be in the country for 2 weeks. This hurt the NA scene more than the EU scene because more Koreans played in WCS NA because the ping was lower. Tournaments like IPL and MLG were also willing to pay for Koreans to be flown in to boost viewership.
In contrast, GSL offered no support for foreigners trying to compete after the GomTV house closed. While it existed players like Jinro, Naniwa, and Idra played in GSL and got to the Ro8/Ro4. Since then, the only players who have attempted the qualifiers have been ones that are living in Korea long-term like Scarlett and State. Players have to get a place to live long-term since the tournament is over the course of several months instead of 2 weeks.
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I just don't understand why still a region lock. There are plenty of reasons not to have it anymore and it clearly hurts the Korean scene. I think that's where a lot of the disappointment comes from.
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On December 11 2016 02:41 zealotstim wrote:
I just don't understand why still a region lock. There are plenty of reasons not to have it anymore and it clearly hurts the Korean scene. I think that's where a lot of the disappointment comes from.
Because without it the foreign scene gets hurt.
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Lets be real, for the few people that is interesed in Korea in SC2, Blizzard put a lot of money in tournaments for the next year, you can blame Blizzard for the design of the game, the WCS region lock, but not for not wasting a big amount of money in the Korean SC2 scene.
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South Korea2105 Posts
On December 11 2016 02:41 zealotstim wrote:
I just don't understand why still a region lock. There are plenty of reasons not to have it anymore and it clearly hurts the Korean scene. I think that's where a lot of the disappointment comes from.
Because foreign competitors generate more revenue
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On December 10 2016 20:05 Musicus wrote:
I'm excited to see what TB has in store, besides Shoutcraft Kings.
as much as Blizzard has fumbled things with competitive SC2 their decision to keep giving TB moar resources to create bigger competitions has been a good one.
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On December 11 2016 02:50 palexhur wrote:
Lets be real, for the few people that is interesed in Korea in SC2, Blizzard put a lot of money in tournaments for the next year, you can blame Blizzard for the design of the game, the WCS region lock, but not for not wasting a big amount of money in the Korean SC2 scene.
My theory:
Nah, they cater to people like me who dont care about foreigners and personalities at all. People who subscribed to every GSL event since like 2011 and paid for watching SPL. (i really would like to know how many stopped spending money after the WCS 2016 system).
I just dont get it why they dont just kill korea sc2. The hardcore skill fans should be decimated after the SPL team implosion. All 3 parts are released and i bet people spend still money on mission packs and dlcs withouth korea.
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I've been gone for a while (grad school), but am excited to grab LOTV and start watching/playing in the coming year... this is excellent news
P.S. TL has so many little, shiny changes!
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I won't like I would have liked a few more open-non-region-locked events, but 6 major Korean tournaments this year isn't bad, especially since other stuff may come up (could go from like 1 to 2). This is nice.
This coming from a rabid-anti-anti-Korean-region-lock guy. This this is great and that SC2 is going to have a nice next two years.
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On December 11 2016 03:31 gingerfluffmuff wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 02:50 palexhur wrote:
Lets be real, for the few people that is interesed in Korea in SC2, Blizzard put a lot of money in tournaments for the next year, you can blame Blizzard for the design of the game, the WCS region lock, but not for not wasting a big amount of money in the Korean SC2 scene. My theory: Nah, they cater to people like me who dont care about foreigners and personalities at all. People who subscribed to every GSL event since like 2011 and paid for watching SPL. (i really would like to know how many stopped spending money after the WCS 2016 system). I just dont get it why they dont just kill korea sc2. The hardcore skill fans should be decimated after the SPL team implosion. All 3 parts are released and i bet people spend still money on mission packs and dlcs withouth korea.
They still support SC2 in Korea because they know their image is on the line as a publisher that "care" about the pro scene of its games, Overwatch in Korea is just huge and they cant send the message to all those people who paid USD60, that after one year of the last release they will not "care".It is not about SC2 in Korea anymore, now is about Blizzard brand.
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Given the situation, it's good news
The one thing i'm surprised over is the region locking still existing. With the death of Korean pro teams, the "advantage" in infrastructure is gone, so if it wasn't before, now it's definitely foreign welfare. Is it worth it and does this bring more viewers? Last year proved otherwise as far as i know.
In any case, the best chance for SC2 now is not about tournament structure IMO, but by how much they can improve gameplay with the new patch to bring back players and viewers that got feed up with SC2.
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What a joke "In Korea, we maintain our commitment to the highest level of StarCraft II and supporting the world’s best players" if you really meant that you wouldn't slowly be cutting down Korean player participation in foreign tournaments all awhile Kespa has dissolved proleague. So what does this mean? We get 3 GSL's, 3 "weekend events" whatever the hell that means, and 3 global events for everyone congrats teamless Korean players the system just keeps getting worse. If Blizzard really cared about the "world's best players" they would go back to letting as many Koreans qualify for Blizzcon and allow more participation in foreign events.
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On December 11 2016 17:03 Nostromo1 wrote:
What a joke "In Korea, we maintain our commitment to the highest level of StarCraft II and supporting the world’s best players" if you really meant that you wouldn't slowly be cutting down Korean player participation in foreign tournaments all awhile Kespa has dissolved proleague. So what does this mean? We get 3 GSL's, 3 "weekend events" whatever the hell that means, and 3 global events for everyone congrats teamless Korean players the system just keeps getting worse. If Blizzard really cared about the "world's best players" they would go back to letting as many Koreans qualify for Blizzcon and allow more participation in foreign events.
Well first of all, 'In Korea' has nothing to do with foreign events because unsurprisingly they are not in Korea.
They aren't slowly cutting down Korean player participation in foreign tournaments. It's the same. If Koreans really wanted to play in the foreign circuit, they can if they acquire a visa. Polt and TRUE won WCS circuit championships last year. They shifted money from foreign tournaments into global events which Koreans will take most of. Korea still has its own events which foreigeners won't compete in. I didn't know the concept of a weeked event was particularly confusing.
I swear people just enjoy being mad.
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On December 11 2016 17:07 Ansibled wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 17:03 Nostromo1 wrote:
What a joke "In Korea, we maintain our commitment to the highest level of StarCraft II and supporting the world’s best players" if you really meant that you wouldn't slowly be cutting down Korean player participation in foreign tournaments all awhile Kespa has dissolved proleague. So what does this mean? We get 3 GSL's, 3 "weekend events" whatever the hell that means, and 3 global events for everyone congrats teamless Korean players the system just keeps getting worse. If Blizzard really cared about the "world's best players" they would go back to letting as many Koreans qualify for Blizzcon and allow more participation in foreign events. Well first of all, 'In Korea' has nothing to do with foreign events because unsurprisingly they are not in Korea. They aren't slowly cutting down Korean player participation in foreign tournaments. It's the same. If Koreans really wanted to play in the foreign circuit, they can if they acquire a visa. Polt and TRUE won WCS circuit championships last year. They shifted money from foreign tournaments into global events which Koreans will take most of. Korea still has its own events which foreigeners won't compete in. I didn't know the concept of a weeked event was particularly confusing. I swear people just enjoy being mad.
I find it hilarious that people can just say oh if you want to participate in foreign tournaments just get a visa to go play in Europe or wherever do you not understand the multitude of complications that go into acquiring said visa its not like you just fill out a form and get one its a very complicated and time consuming process.
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On December 11 2016 17:03 Nostromo1 wrote:
What a joke "In Korea, we maintain our commitment to the highest level of StarCraft II and supporting the world’s best players" if you really meant that you wouldn't slowly be cutting down Korean player participation in foreign tournaments all awhile Kespa has dissolved proleague. So what does this mean? We get 3 GSL's, 3 "weekend events" whatever the hell that means, and 3 global events for everyone congrats teamless Korean players the system just keeps getting worse. If Blizzard really cared about the "world's best players" they would go back to letting as many Koreans qualify for Blizzcon and allow more participation in foreign events.
Or maybe, just maybe, those Koreans should, I don't know, move away from Korea and into another region to be competitive. But no, that's not something we should make our delicate Korean snowflakes to do. That's only what we make those dirty foreigners do.
The level of cognitive dissonance must be astounding.
The Korean scene, in it's current form (not forever) needs to die. It was never good, not for the players, not for the coaches, and not for the game. It was built around keeping financial powerhouse corporations in the public eye for advertising revenue, and it was made with the assistance of a government organization to be that way. Look at what happened when a single tournament decided to go away. Just one. 6 teams implode. Why? Because without the primary way to advertise the backing corporations, they all pulled their money out into places where peoples eyes were going.
That's not what we need for Starcraft. Not one bit. We don't want fickle investors that will shift their revenue when the slightest blip in the numbers come, so they can get maximum reach for their advertising dollars. We need organizations that are willing to invest, but don't need a large or immediate return on investment. That means their investments will be smaller, and as such we need more of those investors.
Say what you want about BaseTradeTV, but they have done a wonderful job of getting sponsors that don't need them to have insane ROI, they have realistic and achievable goals from each sponsor and they negotiate down sponsorship money so that they can actually renew their sponsors rather than set an unrealistic goal and have their sponsors bail when they don't reach it. They also communicate those sponsorship goals to their viewers, which makes the relationship dynamic between the 3 parties all the more viable, because fans don't feel duped into buying or watching ads for a product that doesn't actually care about investing in the scene. That's the kind of grassroots, community development that is needed in order for Korea to come back, better than before, stronger than before, and longer lasting with more benefits for the players than before.
Some of the ways that the pro teams treated their players, that quite a few posters on TL get so wet about, was despicable. While the concept of practice partners is nice, the fact that they would have entire rosters of players that wouldn't get high salary, wouldn't get any chance to advance because they were only there to bolster and improve those that were better than them, and were basically treated like garbage. That's not how we should treat the players in our scene. And that's the infrastructure that is lauded and praised.
That was a broken infrastructure and I'm glad to see it go. I'm sad because of the consequences. But I'm not at all sad to see the dismantling of Kespa's control over SC2. They intentionally stifled the scene, they intentionally refused to work with foreigner teams and organizations that kept requesting Korean talent. But yeah, let's just blame everything on Blizzard.
On December 11 2016 17:23 Nostromo1 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 17:07 Ansibled wrote:On December 11 2016 17:03 Nostromo1 wrote:
What a joke "In Korea, we maintain our commitment to the highest level of StarCraft II and supporting the world’s best players" if you really meant that you wouldn't slowly be cutting down Korean player participation in foreign tournaments all awhile Kespa has dissolved proleague. So what does this mean? We get 3 GSL's, 3 "weekend events" whatever the hell that means, and 3 global events for everyone congrats teamless Korean players the system just keeps getting worse. If Blizzard really cared about the "world's best players" they would go back to letting as many Koreans qualify for Blizzcon and allow more participation in foreign events. Well first of all, 'In Korea' has nothing to do with foreign events because unsurprisingly they are not in Korea. They aren't slowly cutting down Korean player participation in foreign tournaments. It's the same. If Koreans really wanted to play in the foreign circuit, they can if they acquire a visa. Polt and TRUE won WCS circuit championships last year. They shifted money from foreign tournaments into global events which Koreans will take most of. Korea still has its own events which foreigeners won't compete in. I didn't know the concept of a weeked event was particularly confusing. I swear people just enjoy being mad. I find it hilarious that people can just say oh if you want to participate in foreign tournaments just get a visa to go play in Europe or wherever do you not understand the multitude of complications that go into acquiring said visa its not like you just fill out a form and get one its a very complicated and time consuming process.
I find it hilarious that you have no reading comprehension skills. Did you read my post? No? Okay then. You cherry picked. All of what I'm about to say, i already said. I'll wait for your rebuttal which probably will never come because you just want to be angry instead of attempting to find solutions.
No one said it was easy. People are saying there is something preventing Koreans from playing in the circuit and in reality, while there are obstacles, just as there are obstacles for foreigners playing on Korean soil in GSL, it's not impossible, just like it isn't for foreigners to play in GSL.
What's your stance on foreign participation in GSL? Should whoever is running GSL provide housing for the foreign players that come there? Or should the individual be responsible for months of housing while they participate in a tournament that plays out matches daily, but takes weeks to complete a round?
If your answer is "The foreigner should front all of it on their own" then you're a hypocrite.
Look at TRUE, Violet, Polt. All Koreans. All got visas. All participated in the circuit. Just like with foreigners it's drive, determination, and money that prevents them from being able to do so. But unlike with foreigners, it's not a waste for Koreans to do so unless they're in the top 1% of players in their region.
On December 11 2016 02:27 Solar424 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 21:20 egrimm wrote:On December 10 2016 18:51 mrarthursimon wrote:On December 10 2016 18:26 Diabolique wrote:
I looked first at the announcement and thought: "Damned, region lock still in place, Korean ban from international competitions again, this is really bad, Blizzard did not learn anything and is continuing to destroy the Korean scene."
Well, I did not like the WCS 2016 system and am still strongly against what has been done against the most mid tier Koreans ... I liked quite a much the WCS 2015 system, where you had all the GSLs, SSLs, then you had the four seasons (four?) of "WCS Welfare" for foreigners only, which was perfectly fine, as I support the idea that some tournaments should give the foreigners the possibility to win reasonable money without the Koreans. And then you had all the great international tournaments, IEMs and DHs, many great events, where both the Koreans and foreigners could compete.
Then, I looked at the WCS 2017 again and realized something: Hey, the WCS 2017 is much more similar to WCS 2015 than to WCS 2016! There is only one exception - the international tournaments are gone (except Katowice). There are ONLY the four seasons of WCS Welfare in 2017 and this number is the same as in WCS 2015. Plus some regional challengers! So it is not the "active support" for tournament organisers to ban Koreans, in which case they receive a massive contribution. And a penalty to any tournament organisers, who would like to organize a global event (it would have to be a 50k tournament). Am I correct or did I read something wrong and these damaging incentives are still in place?
So the real message of the announcement should be - "SC2 is declining, we have less tournaments, but we still keep (pay) four (only four) events locked for foreigners. In Korea we cooperate with Afreeca to support three GSLs per year and a few new Korean small events. Plus Katowice is a global event (which is great!)."
So when comparing WCS 2016 and WCS 2017, the second seems to me to be better, with less events from which the Koreans are banned and no active incentives for eventual third party organizers to ban them from their events. Firstly, there is no such thing as region lock since 2015. In 2016 and 2017 you can complete anywhere you want to, all you gotta do is go FUCKING BE A PART OF THE COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PLAY IN. If you want to play in EU GO GET A VISA, go live there, go play on the ladder there, and you can play in any circuit tournament through regional qualifiers. Same with NA. Same with every other non-Korean region. . Please correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know there was (and still is, no?) a difference between the WCS ruleset and GSL ruleset. To participate in WCS EU as in your example you have to get visa, go live there, go play ladder, play enough games on the ladder and then and only then you can take a chance in qualifiers. To participate in GSL you only had to go to the venue where qualifiers were taking place. Just that. No Visa, playing on ladder etc. GSL (Global Star League) was a global league where anybody could participate as long as you were good enough. Thing is that good enough meant that almost no foreigner (there were some great exceptions ofc) were interested in paying a lot of money for a flight to only get destroyed in qualifiers. However the opposite was true - Koreans did paid a lot of money to travel to foreign event as MLG, DH, IEM etc. because they knew they are good enough to win enough to cover journey expenses. For WCS 2013 and 2014 you didn't need to have a residency visa or even live in the region you were competing in since the qualifiers and the Ro32 were online. Only the Ro16 and playoffs were offline, and they probably had paid travel and accommodations. So Koreans playing in WCS NA or EU theoretically only had to be in the country for 2 weeks. This hurt the NA scene more than the EU scene because more Koreans played in WCS NA because the ping was lower. Tournaments like IPL and MLG were also willing to pay for Koreans to be flown in to boost viewership. In contrast, GSL offered no support for foreigners trying to compete after the GomTV house closed. While it existed players like Jinro, Naniwa, and Idra played in GSL and got to the Ro8/Ro4. Since then, the only players who have attempted the qualifiers have been ones that are living in Korea long-term like Scarlett and State. Players have to get a place to live long-term since the tournament is over the course of several months instead of 2 weeks.
And even though residency wasn't a requirement, there was an influx of Koreans to the EU scene that actually lived and played there, and why, I feel, right now the EU scene is stronger than the NA scene on average while the NA scene has a few exceptional players that can out perform EU players. EU is just STUFFED with talent though.
Hell, look at ForGG, who is the shining example I can think of off the top of my head. He moved to Europe in 2013 and lived there until 2015. He didn't have to. But he choose to so that he could be closer to the people in the region that he choose to compete inside of. So clearly this is somthing that can, and has, happened. The questions we should be asking and answering are 1) why isn't it happening now and 2) how can we, as the community, make this into a reality for 2017?
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I think this is good news. Europeans/Americanos get Ladder and online qualifiers, on top of that 4 major events.
So you don't have as much travel expenses.
Korea = Seoul, so it's likely most top players can attend GSL matches. Also without Kespa(teams) they are free to use twitch to make a living, like all "Pro-Players" have to these days. I think this makes the community even better.
So basicly Koreans get 3 Major events per year, while rest of the world gets 2 Major events per continent. Not allowing korean residents in these events is fine with me. SC2 now, more then ever, is game for community figures, more than "faceless" execution monsters, wich is, to be completely fair, what is the most liked thing about SC2. Signature moves. Jaedong mutas, Specul Tictacs and so on. This was, at anytime, the most fun thing about SC2 and goes hand in hand with Meta-Breaking skill of MKP or FruitDealer.
Korea is still 1Up against the rest of the world. Sc2 never heavily relied on having (KESPA)teams. While ProLeague was okay...GSTL and GSL Open were much,much much more exciting and MADE twitch, restarted Esports even with players not having a team.
2017- Restart SC2, more casual in coop, less Dorito_420_ADHD_Mountaindew Community (sorry MLG) and more "storylines" in Tournaments.
Talking about Tournaments.
With BTTV, OGaming, Netwars, VSL, Olimoley ,TakeTv ,Shoutcraft and Wardi we have people working on it. Penthouseparty was so nice...and there will be a next one, shoutcraft kings is so fun, wardi will need another christmas tree...
So basicly, BW dominates Korea again, rest of the world makes sc2 a compact community.
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Cannot say that i am extremely hyped for this :/ But we have to take what we can get at this point
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Well let's be fair here. Korea is going to get 6 top-end events; 8 if we count the two open events which will take place.
I do admit though it's fairly anti-grass roots since only the three GSLs are going to be events where newer players can make a name for themselves.
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I've been thinking a bit more about the whole situation for the coming two years:
1. I do not understand why Blizzard is pumping so much money into Korea, where people still prefer BW it seems. Either it is a very golden handshake with the feeble hope that SC2 will get popular in the meantime, or there is some other kind of business interest I don't see (someone mentioned keeping the interest of OW, which could be it, though it sounds far fetched to me).
2. Cutting the WCS Circuit from 10 events (which was, for me at least, very exiting to follow and players were fighting for points until the very end) to 4 events can really only mean one thing: Blizzard has given up on creating a real WCS circuit. Imagine Bernie Eccelstone stating that Formula 1 will be cut from 20 races in 2016 to 8 races in 2017. What signal does that give the drivers? So why is this happening? The only reasons I can think of are a) DH, IEM etc don't want to have SC2 at all, but they take as much $$$ they can get to host SC2 in a few event in the coming two years (so that Blizzard can phase out and save its face), or b) DH, IEM etc would like to have SC2 in their events, but they can't agree with Blizzard for how this is going to happen with regards to criteria for handing out WCS points or something like that. Either way, I wonder what the foreigners think of this. To quote DK, "to make it simple" there are now only 4 events for foreigners (plus possibly the global events) to stake your future on. Per year.
Maybe I'm painting the devil on the wall, but I don't have a very good feeling about this.
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Well I hope he has a reason to go public with it after half a year since the tournament, was he told that he's not going to get it? I'd be reserved for now with it being 'alarming', we had enough of overreactions
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On December 12 2016 02:21 aQuaSC wrote:Well I hope he has a reason to go public with it after half a year since the tournament, was he told that he's not going to get it? I'd be reserved for now with it being 'alarming', we had enough of overreactions
What other reason would he need besides not getting paid in half a year?
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My thoughts finally sum up on this: Blizzard is going to support at least two years more of competitive Starcraft, both in Korea and internationally. Hurra!
Korea is clearly the winner here, and Europe probably the looser, compared to 2016. I'd like to hear more from international Pros, it seems that they get less tournaments and therefore less exposure.
To Blizzard: Please please make WCS format be double-elim.
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On December 12 2016 02:25 opisska wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2016 02:21 aQuaSC wrote:Well I hope he has a reason to go public with it after half a year since the tournament, was he told that he's not going to get it? I'd be reserved for now with it being 'alarming', we had enough of overreactions What other reason would he need besides not getting paid in half a year?
I don't know, I'd just like to know the whole deal. And I'd prefer for it to not turn around against him, like maybe he missed something or was not messaging them earlier about it waiting just to tweet few months after - nothing against him though of course
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On December 12 2016 01:31 BaneRiders wrote:
I've been thinking a bit more about the whole situation for the coming two years:
1. I do not understand why Blizzard is pumping so much money into Korea, where people still prefer BW it seems. Either it is a very golden handshake with the feeble hope that SC2 will get popular in the meantime, or there is some other kind of business interest I don't see (someone mentioned keeping the interest of OW, which could be it, though it sounds far fetched to me).
I think it's because a lot of the few remaining followers of SC2 prefer to watch Korean play, live or through vods. So it indirectly keeps the hole scene going.
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On December 12 2016 02:26 Xamo wrote:
My thoughts finally sum up on this: Blizzard is going to support at least two years more of competitive Starcraft, both in Korea and internationally. Hurra!
Korea is clearly the winner here, and Europe probably the looser, compared to 2016. I'd like to hear more from international Pros, it seems that they get less tournaments and therefore less exposure.
To Blizzard: Please please make WCS format be double-elim.
The winner? I only see losers tbh
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On December 12 2016 02:47 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2016 02:26 Xamo wrote:
My thoughts finally sum up on this: Blizzard is going to support at least two years more of competitive Starcraft, both in Korea and internationally. Hurra!
Korea is clearly the winner here, and Europe probably the looser, compared to 2016. I'd like to hear more from international Pros, it seems that they get less tournaments and therefore less exposure.
To Blizzard: Please please make WCS format be double-elim. The winner? I only see losers tbh
in 2009 and 2010 Blizzard should've negotiated with the eSports power brokers of South Korea and realized how powerful they are. Blizzard should've found a way to co-operate with them to get them to transition voluntarily over to SC2 immediately.
too late now.
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On December 11 2016 18:55 mrarthursimon wrote:Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 17:03 Nostromo1 wrote:
What a joke "In Korea, we maintain our commitment to the highest level of StarCraft II and supporting the world’s best players" if you really meant that you wouldn't slowly be cutting down Korean player participation in foreign tournaments all awhile Kespa has dissolved proleague. So what does this mean? We get 3 GSL's, 3 "weekend events" whatever the hell that means, and 3 global events for everyone congrats teamless Korean players the system just keeps getting worse. If Blizzard really cared about the "world's best players" they would go back to letting as many Koreans qualify for Blizzcon and allow more participation in foreign events. Or maybe, just maybe, those Koreans should, I don't know, move away from Korea and into another region to be competitive. But no, that's not something we should make our delicate Korean snowflakes to do. That's only what we make those dirty foreigners do. The level of cognitive dissonance must be astounding. The Korean scene, in it's current form (not forever) needs to die. It was never good, not for the players, not for the coaches, and not for the game. It was built around keeping financial powerhouse corporations in the public eye for advertising revenue, and it was made with the assistance of a government organization to be that way. Look at what happened when a single tournament decided to go away. Just one. 6 teams implode. Why? Because without the primary way to advertise the backing corporations, they all pulled their money out into places where peoples eyes were going. That's not what we need for Starcraft. Not one bit. We don't want fickle investors that will shift their revenue when the slightest blip in the numbers come, so they can get maximum reach for their advertising dollars. We need organizations that are willing to invest, but don't need a large or immediate return on investment. That means their investments will be smaller, and as such we need more of those investors. Say what you want about BaseTradeTV, but they have done a wonderful job of getting sponsors that don't need them to have insane ROI, they have realistic and achievable goals from each sponsor and they negotiate down sponsorship money so that they can actually renew their sponsors rather than set an unrealistic goal and have their sponsors bail when they don't reach it. They also communicate those sponsorship goals to their viewers, which makes the relationship dynamic between the 3 parties all the more viable, because fans don't feel duped into buying or watching ads for a product that doesn't actually care about investing in the scene. That's the kind of grassroots, community development that is needed in order for Korea to come back, better than before, stronger than before, and longer lasting with more benefits for the players than before. Some of the ways that the pro teams treated their players, that quite a few posters on TL get so wet about, was despicable. While the concept of practice partners is nice, the fact that they would have entire rosters of players that wouldn't get high salary, wouldn't get any chance to advance because they were only there to bolster and improve those that were better than them, and were basically treated like garbage. That's not how we should treat the players in our scene. And that's the infrastructure that is lauded and praised. That was a broken infrastructure and I'm glad to see it go. I'm sad because of the consequences. But I'm not at all sad to see the dismantling of Kespa's control over SC2. They intentionally stifled the scene, they intentionally refused to work with foreigner teams and organizations that kept requesting Korean talent. But yeah, let's just blame everything on Blizzard. Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 17:23 Nostromo1 wrote:On December 11 2016 17:07 Ansibled wrote:On December 11 2016 17:03 Nostromo1 wrote:
What a joke "In Korea, we maintain our commitment to the highest level of StarCraft II and supporting the world’s best players" if you really meant that you wouldn't slowly be cutting down Korean player participation in foreign tournaments all awhile Kespa has dissolved proleague. So what does this mean? We get 3 GSL's, 3 "weekend events" whatever the hell that means, and 3 global events for everyone congrats teamless Korean players the system just keeps getting worse. If Blizzard really cared about the "world's best players" they would go back to letting as many Koreans qualify for Blizzcon and allow more participation in foreign events. Well first of all, 'In Korea' has nothing to do with foreign events because unsurprisingly they are not in Korea. They aren't slowly cutting down Korean player participation in foreign tournaments. It's the same. If Koreans really wanted to play in the foreign circuit, they can if they acquire a visa. Polt and TRUE won WCS circuit championships last year. They shifted money from foreign tournaments into global events which Koreans will take most of. Korea still has its own events which foreigeners won't compete in. I didn't know the concept of a weeked event was particularly confusing. I swear people just enjoy being mad. I find it hilarious that people can just say oh if you want to participate in foreign tournaments just get a visa to go play in Europe or wherever do you not understand the multitude of complications that go into acquiring said visa its not like you just fill out a form and get one its a very complicated and time consuming process. I find it hilarious that you have no reading comprehension skills. Did you read my post? No? Okay then. You cherry picked. All of what I'm about to say, i already said. I'll wait for your rebuttal which probably will never come because you just want to be angry instead of attempting to find solutions. No one said it was easy. People are saying there is something preventing Koreans from playing in the circuit and in reality, while there are obstacles, just as there are obstacles for foreigners playing on Korean soil in GSL, it's not impossible, just like it isn't for foreigners to play in GSL. What's your stance on foreign participation in GSL? Should whoever is running GSL provide housing for the foreign players that come there? Or should the individual be responsible for months of housing while they participate in a tournament that plays out matches daily, but takes weeks to complete a round? If your answer is "The foreigner should front all of it on their own" then you're a hypocrite. Look at TRUE, Violet, Polt. All Koreans. All got visas. All participated in the circuit. Just like with foreigners it's drive, determination, and money that prevents them from being able to do so. But unlike with foreigners, it's not a waste for Koreans to do so unless they're in the top 1% of players in their region. Show nested quote +On December 11 2016 02:27 Solar424 wrote:On December 10 2016 21:20 egrimm wrote:On December 10 2016 18:51 mrarthursimon wrote:On December 10 2016 18:26 Diabolique wrote:
I looked first at the announcement and thought: "Damned, region lock still in place, Korean ban from international competitions again, this is really bad, Blizzard did not learn anything and is continuing to destroy the Korean scene."
Well, I did not like the WCS 2016 system and am still strongly against what has been done against the most mid tier Koreans ... I liked quite a much the WCS 2015 system, where you had all the GSLs, SSLs, then you had the four seasons (four?) of "WCS Welfare" for foreigners only, which was perfectly fine, as I support the idea that some tournaments should give the foreigners the possibility to win reasonable money without the Koreans. And then you had all the great international tournaments, IEMs and DHs, many great events, where both the Koreans and foreigners could compete.
Then, I looked at the WCS 2017 again and realized something: Hey, the WCS 2017 is much more similar to WCS 2015 than to WCS 2016! There is only one exception - the international tournaments are gone (except Katowice). There are ONLY the four seasons of WCS Welfare in 2017 and this number is the same as in WCS 2015. Plus some regional challengers! So it is not the "active support" for tournament organisers to ban Koreans, in which case they receive a massive contribution. And a penalty to any tournament organisers, who would like to organize a global event (it would have to be a 50k tournament). Am I correct or did I read something wrong and these damaging incentives are still in place?
So the real message of the announcement should be - "SC2 is declining, we have less tournaments, but we still keep (pay) four (only four) events locked for foreigners. In Korea we cooperate with Afreeca to support three GSLs per year and a few new Korean small events. Plus Katowice is a global event (which is great!)."
So when comparing WCS 2016 and WCS 2017, the second seems to me to be better, with less events from which the Koreans are banned and no active incentives for eventual third party organizers to ban them from their events. Firstly, there is no such thing as region lock since 2015. In 2016 and 2017 you can complete anywhere you want to, all you gotta do is go FUCKING BE A PART OF THE COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PLAY IN. If you want to play in EU GO GET A VISA, go live there, go play on the ladder there, and you can play in any circuit tournament through regional qualifiers. Same with NA. Same with every other non-Korean region. . Please correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know there was (and still is, no?) a difference between the WCS ruleset and GSL ruleset. To participate in WCS EU as in your example you have to get visa, go live there, go play ladder, play enough games on the ladder and then and only then you can take a chance in qualifiers. To participate in GSL you only had to go to the venue where qualifiers were taking place. Just that. No Visa, playing on ladder etc. GSL (Global Star League) was a global league where anybody could participate as long as you were good enough. Thing is that good enough meant that almost no foreigner (there were some great exceptions ofc) were interested in paying a lot of money for a flight to only get destroyed in qualifiers. However the opposite was true - Koreans did paid a lot of money to travel to foreign event as MLG, DH, IEM etc. because they knew they are good enough to win enough to cover journey expenses. For WCS 2013 and 2014 you didn't need to have a residency visa or even live in the region you were competing in since the qualifiers and the Ro32 were online. Only the Ro16 and playoffs were offline, and they probably had paid travel and accommodations. So Koreans playing in WCS NA or EU theoretically only had to be in the country for 2 weeks. This hurt the NA scene more than the EU scene because more Koreans played in WCS NA because the ping was lower. Tournaments like IPL and MLG were also willing to pay for Koreans to be flown in to boost viewership. In contrast, GSL offered no support for foreigners trying to compete after the GomTV house closed. While it existed players like Jinro, Naniwa, and Idra played in GSL and got to the Ro8/Ro4. Since then, the only players who have attempted the qualifiers have been ones that are living in Korea long-term like Scarlett and State. Players have to get a place to live long-term since the tournament is over the course of several months instead of 2 weeks. And even though residency wasn't a requirement, there was an influx of Koreans to the EU scene that actually lived and played there, and why, I feel, right now the EU scene is stronger than the NA scene on average while the NA scene has a few exceptional players that can out perform EU players. EU is just STUFFED with talent though. Hell, look at ForGG, who is the shining example I can think of off the top of my head. He moved to Europe in 2013 and lived there until 2015. He didn't have to. But he choose to so that he could be closer to the people in the region that he choose to compete inside of. So clearly this is somthing that can, and has, happened. The questions we should be asking and answering are 1) why isn't it happening now and 2) how can we, as the community, make this into a reality for 2017?
Wow! Man, couldnt agree more. All that "omg koreans are dumped hype", almost racism accusations got really out of hand. Im all for healthy competetivness, but noone ever must babysit anyone. That whole kespa SC2 environment was artificial from the very first day, SC2 never needed that kind of infrastructure. Now it's gone and gone for good. Let everything settle down and emerge into something new. Less is more.
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On December 12 2016 02:47 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2016 02:26 Xamo wrote:
My thoughts finally sum up on this: Blizzard is going to support at least two years more of competitive Starcraft, both in Korea and internationally. Hurra!
Korea is clearly the winner here, and Europe probably the looser, compared to 2016. I'd like to hear more from international Pros, it seems that they get less tournaments and therefore less exposure.
To Blizzard: Please please make WCS format be double-elim. The winner? I only see losers tbh
It's not worse for Koreans than 2016. For a guaranteed 2 years. Considering the overall state of the scene that's as close to winning as you can get.
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On December 12 2016 03:05 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2016 02:47 The_Red_Viper wrote:On December 12 2016 02:26 Xamo wrote:
My thoughts finally sum up on this: Blizzard is going to support at least two years more of competitive Starcraft, both in Korea and internationally. Hurra!
Korea is clearly the winner here, and Europe probably the looser, compared to 2016. I'd like to hear more from international Pros, it seems that they get less tournaments and therefore less exposure.
To Blizzard: Please please make WCS format be double-elim. The winner? I only see losers tbh It's not worse for Koreans than 2016. For a guaranteed 2 years. Considering the overall state of the scene that's as close to winning as you can get.
Well we have three GSLs instead of 4 Starleagues. Maybe the super tournaments are decent, but i wouldn't hold my breath.
Then there is no Proleague ofc (which isn't about WCS, but still affects the korean scene quite dramatically)
Overall i only see losers
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On December 12 2016 03:16 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2016 03:05 Elentos wrote:On December 12 2016 02:47 The_Red_Viper wrote:On December 12 2016 02:26 Xamo wrote:
My thoughts finally sum up on this: Blizzard is going to support at least two years more of competitive Starcraft, both in Korea and internationally. Hurra!
Korea is clearly the winner here, and Europe probably the looser, compared to 2016. I'd like to hear more from international Pros, it seems that they get less tournaments and therefore less exposure.
To Blizzard: Please please make WCS format be double-elim. The winner? I only see losers tbh It's not worse for Koreans than 2016. For a guaranteed 2 years. Considering the overall state of the scene that's as close to winning as you can get. Well we have three GSLs instead of 4 Starleagues. Maybe the super tournaments are decent, but i wouldn't hold my breath. Then there is no Proleague ofc (which isn't about WCS, but still affects the korean scene quite dramatically) Overall i only see losers
You are on TL, how can you be surprised to see only losers?
+ Show Spoiler +
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On December 12 2016 03:16 The_Red_Viper wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2016 03:05 Elentos wrote:On December 12 2016 02:47 The_Red_Viper wrote:On December 12 2016 02:26 Xamo wrote:
My thoughts finally sum up on this: Blizzard is going to support at least two years more of competitive Starcraft, both in Korea and internationally. Hurra!
Korea is clearly the winner here, and Europe probably the looser, compared to 2016. I'd like to hear more from international Pros, it seems that they get less tournaments and therefore less exposure.
To Blizzard: Please please make WCS format be double-elim. The winner? I only see losers tbh It's not worse for Koreans than 2016. For a guaranteed 2 years. Considering the overall state of the scene that's as close to winning as you can get. Well we have three GSLs instead of 4 Starleagues. Maybe the super tournaments are decent, but i wouldn't hold my breath. Then there is no Proleague ofc (which isn't about WCS, but still affects the korean scene quite dramatically) Overall i only see losers
One Starleague goes missing, but overall there are more tournaments for Koreans to play in. More prize money to be earned. The 3 seasons of GSL are spread out so that losing in January doesn't mean you're done until June. And apparently all parties involved are already committed to keeping this in tact for 2018, which means a lot more security for team owners and players.
Let's face it, it was never going to be better than this for Korea. The fact that it's not worse for the next two years makes them winners. Meanwhile the WCS Circuit got kinda rekt.
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Yeah i honestly don't understand how people are complaining about Korea after this.
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On December 12 2016 04:01 Phredxor wrote:
Yeah i honestly don't understand how people are complaining about Korea after this.
Well, it's still weird that a non-Korean can compete in Korea, but at the same time, a Korean can't compete abroad. Either there should be no region lock at all, or the region lock has to be on both ends, imo. I'm totally against a region lock; but it just seems weird that even now, when the Korean scene is practically dead, Blizzard still tries to protect the foreigners.
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I dont understand why there are so many negative comments here. Blizz is basically caring sc2 so badly, we should just be grateful there is going to be another full year of sc2.
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On December 12 2016 04:47 lastride wrote:
I dont understand why there are so many negative comments here. Blizz is basically caring sc2 so badly, we should just be grateful there is going to be another full year of sc2.
2 years.
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China6327 Posts
I also want to point out that with kespa gone, Korean players will have more Chinese online and offline tournaments to look forward to.
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Im happy with it, looking forward supporting the scene watching everything and bumping some money into blizzard's pocket and some independent tourneys to keep it going.
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On December 12 2016 05:49 digmouse wrote:
I also want to point out that with kespa gone, Korean players will have more Chinese online and offline tournaments to look forward to.
Kung Fu cup gonna be stacked.
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On December 12 2016 04:14 Swisslink wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2016 04:01 Phredxor wrote:
Yeah i honestly don't understand how people are complaining about Korea after this. Well, it's still weird that a non-Korean can compete in Korea, but at the same time, a Korean can't compete abroad. Either there should be no region lock at all, or the region lock has to be on both ends, imo. I'm totally against a region lock; but it just seems weird that even now, when the Korean scene is practically dead, Blizzard still tries to protect the foreigners.
Pretty much that.
Like I said earlier. Better than expected but still a fucking joke
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I'm surprised there's still GSL honestly
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GSL's requirement for in-person qualification always felt like a pretty blatant "soft region lock" to me.
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On December 10 2016 18:53 Penev wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 08:02 NonY wrote:
i don't understand the angle the negative comments are taking. you want more from blizzard but how are you justifying it? such disappointment that there isnt more but why do you think there would be more? i think it's a lot as it is, given the size of sc2 esports community. like what exactly is your business/economic reasoning for there being more events? i just dont understand how it seems like such a given to so many people that there ought to be more tournaments, and more korean tournaments. im surprised by how many there actually are and other people are disgusted at how few there are. can you give the broad strokes of how you figure it would work out for blizzard and these tournament hosting companies etc to support more sc2 events? People believe pizzagate, critical thinking went down the drain apparently
I believe critical thinking long before pizzagate... the anti-intellectual movement sweeping the world has made inroads everywhere.
Honestly, this seems like a lot of support for a game I thought Blizzard was basically going to pull the plug on after I read the comments about their commitment to Proleague.
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Is the region lock successful? Seems like it has failed. Koreans simply moved out of korea. Byun doninated, true vs polt final. A failed experiment? Viewership hasn't increased either.
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Glad to know I have at least two solid years of WCS. GG Blizz
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On December 12 2016 04:14 Swisslink wrote:Show nested quote +On December 12 2016 04:01 Phredxor wrote:
Yeah i honestly don't understand how people are complaining about Korea after this. Well, it's still weird that a non-Korean can compete in Korea, but at the same time, a Korean can't compete abroad. Either there should be no region lock at all, or the region lock has to be on both ends, imo. I'm totally against a region lock; but it just seems weird that even now, when the Korean scene is practically dead, Blizzard still tries to protect the foreigners.
Do you really think foreigners participating in Korean events have the same impact at all to Koreans participating in foreign events?
On December 12 2016 10:27 Eighty7Gaming wrote:
Is the region lock successful? Seems like it has failed. Koreans simply moved out of korea. Byun doninated, true vs polt final. A failed experiment? Viewership hasn't increased either.
The Koreans that moved out of Korea is in the single digits. It isnt like 2013 or 2014 where we had a bunch of Koreans in WCS America and Europe.
Also we have a lot more chance that pro foreigners can afford to go pro. Compare foreigner earnings 2014-2015 to 2016.
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On December 12 2016 10:27 Eighty7Gaming wrote:
Is the region lock successful? Seems like it has failed. Koreans simply moved out of korea. Byun doninated, true vs polt final. A failed experiment? Viewership hasn't increased either.
It was way too late.
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User was banned for this post.
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i like it, just a bit sad to see the SSL go but those weekend formats will be awesome.
i would love to see a long running tournament format like the GSL on the circuit side. I understand the logistics for this are almost impossible but its just a different style of tournament and the games are different to the weekend tournament system.
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I think it would be nice to have more English coverage of Chinese events.
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On December 10 2016 17:16 showstealer1829 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 10 2016 16:48 Charoisaur wrote:
I wonder what happens to Wolf and Valdes now with SSL and Proleague gone. I really love their casts, would be a shame if they had to leave the scene after all they've done for it. Wolf does Heroes and World of Tanks anyway, he's fine Valdes....not so much. I guess he could go back to LoL with RapiD Or maybe they'll both end up casting the OW Proleague
Or they'll both just cast the Hearthstone Kespa Cup
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On December 12 2016 17:41 Incognoto wrote:
I think it would be nice to have more English coverage of Chinese events.
What I understood from WCA, it would be an improvement to have even full Chinese coverage
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China6327 Posts
On December 12 2016 17:41 Incognoto wrote:
I think it would be nice to have more English coverage of Chinese events.
From what I know and worth WESG will have high profile English coverage so that's that.
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I'm just not interested anymore.
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What's up with that?
Does SPOTV want to host actual Starcraft events?
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On December 10 2016 02:29 CynicalDeath wrote:
...what's the point of keeping the "dividing line" between Korean WCS and Foreigner WCS if Korean Sc2 is basically no more? this is just stupid, it seems almost they did it without taking into count the last 2 months events...
Its pretty easy to understand. Foreigner scene is healthy, Korean scene isnt. No matter what you believe, foreigners are still shit. Koreans will fill the top ranks of each tournament, foreigners will earn not enough money and retire. The foreigner scene will die out and disappear.
Korean scene doesnt produce new blood. If foreigner scene dies, the sc2 disappears world wide.
Kespa doesnt matter. The best players practise on korean server, but foreigners have no access to that server. You cant get as good or better, if you cant practise with the best (especially after the recent patch changes).
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On December 12 2016 21:00 Incognoto wrote:
What's up with that?
Does SPOTV want to host actual Starcraft events?
Sounds like they took a lot of pride in SSL and want to keep involved in the scene.
Which I find quite surprising considering SSL season 1 looked like they were more than willing to drop SC2 entirely.
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Maybe they're salty because Blizzard didn't consider them for WCS or something. It looks bad for their image or something? Maybe?
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Let's see if SPOTV will actually do some tournaments, right now this seems more like PR talk
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On December 12 2016 21:41 The_Red_Viper wrote:
Let's see if SPOTV will actually do some tournaments, right now this seems more like PR talk
If they wanted to leave they just wouldn't say anything.
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It does sound pretty PR but still this is not quite the tone I expected. I guess we will see what they actually come up with.
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I mean without WCS points also basically means no money from blizzard. Seems hard to do tournaments that way.
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On December 12 2016 21:52 The_Red_Viper wrote:
I mean without WCS points also basically means no money from blizzard. Seems hard to do tournaments that way.
I can understand why Blizzard would rather fund more GSL tournaments than Starleague, they get a lot more attention even if Starleague is a great tournament.
I hope SPOTV will find a way to put on some tournaments though, if they still want to that is.
+ Show Spoiler +
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A teamleague would be nice, maybe together with the ppl from VSL
Hard to get the money for it probably tho
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On December 12 2016 10:27 Eighty7Gaming wrote:
Is the region lock successful? Seems like it has failed. Koreans simply moved out of korea. Byun doninated, true vs polt final. A failed experiment? Viewership hasn't increased either.
The Koreans that moved out of Korea is in the single digits. It isnt like 2013 or 2014 where we had a bunch of Koreans in WCS America and Europe.
Also we have a lot more chance that pro foreigners can afford to go pro. Compare foreigner earnings 2014-2015 to 2016. [/QUOTE]
True.. there is that.
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What does SPOTV do outside of Starcraft, anyway? They used to broadcast Dota but that died.
I hope they find sponsors to have their own events even if its outside Blizzard's WCS. That would be a delight.
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On December 13 2016 03:57 lestye wrote:
What does SPOTV do outside of Starcraft, anyway? They used to broadcast Dota but that died.
I hope they find sponsors to have their own events even if its outside Blizzard's WCS. That would be a delight.
Mostly LoL, FIFA and that Korean Action game. They're doing the Hearthstone Kespa Cup at the moment. They even have Wolf and Valdes casting it....for a viewership of about 45.
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I have no idea what people think korea got the short end of the stick, theres more korean tournaments than foreigner ones and more global events. Meanwhile the 4 DH events are basically the old WCS premier seasons with corresponding challlenger.
Things look bad because theres less tournaments OVERALL but that is hardly Blizzards fault considering, for example, there seem to be only 2 IEMs with SC2 this year.
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On December 13 2016 06:30 Lexender wrote:
I have no idea what people think korea got the short end of the stick, theres more korean tournaments than foreigner ones and more global events. Meanwhile the 4 DH events are basically the old WCS premier seasons with corresponding challlenger.
Things look bad because theres less tournaments OVERALL but that is hardly Blizzards fault considering, for example, there seem to be only 2 IEMs with SC2 this year.
There are only 2 IEMs left in the current IEM season.
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141 Posts
On December 13 2016 03:57 lestye wrote:
What does SPOTV do outside of Starcraft, anyway? They used to broadcast Dota but that died.
I hope they find sponsors to have their own events even if its outside Blizzard's WCS. That would be a delight.
Mostly games from Nexxon, who practically owns the channel as you can sorta tell from the studio.
They could also be doubling down on their LCK co-broadcast which they worked so hard to get despite the criticism (coincidence?).
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Region lock has failed and only created more monopoly in the scene. Affirmative action, communistic enforcement has not helped grow the scene. Viewership is not up. We need more competition not less for a healthy market. I even originally advocated for the region lock.
As firecake said they can't survive so forcing prize money over game quality is not a success.
Back in 2013 we had cooperation with the Koreans and team houses but that is no more.
Forcing monopoly in the scene has created less events, less competition, less opportunities for foreigners to make money in the long run.
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On December 13 2016 06:30 Lexender wrote:
I have no idea what people think korea got the short end of the stick, theres more korean tournaments than foreigner ones and more global events. Meanwhile the 4 DH events are basically the old WCS premier seasons with corresponding challlenger.
Things look bad because theres less tournaments OVERALL but that is hardly Blizzards fault considering, for example, there seem to be only 2 IEMs with SC2 this year.
Because Korean Events are practically Global Events. One could argue that the GSL Seasons do have some kind of soft-region lock, because you pretty much have to live in Korea to participate. But the weekend tournaments don't (or ar least they don't have it any more than any other weekend tournament around the globe)
So yes, Korea definitely got the short end here. It's good for the viewers that we finally get more Korean vs. Foreigner action, but that doesn't make it fair, even less does it mean that the Koreans didn't get the short end here. You got 3 exclusively Korean tournaments (there is no residency lock for the super tournaments) and way more tournaments that are exclusively for the foreign scene.
To use the argumentation of region lock supporters from last season: All the money foreigners get instead of the mid/lower tier Koreans hurts the Korean scene right now, because it reduces the chances of a Korean player to make a living out of it.
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Poland15 Posts
If anyone is to blame, it's everyone connected to match fixing in Korea. That's the reason why sponsors got away, which led to kespa leaving sc2 behind. Blizzard can't take the scene on their back. If IEM leaves too, that is sad but it's their right. We can hope SC2 is still part of next IEM season though - which I would like to see being global events.
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On December 13 2016 09:16 Swisslink wrote:
You got 3 exclusively Korean tournaments (there is no residency lock for the super tournaments) and way more tournaments that are exclusively for the foreign scene.
The difference between 3 and 4 is not that big. And while there is no residency lock for any of the Korean tournaments, the odds that non-Koreans get through online qualifiers played on the Korean server are very low in the grand scheme of things (iAsonu making IEM is more of an outlier).
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EPT![[image loading]](http://d299ks0j9y7dbf.cloudfront.net/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/WCS_2017_Announcement_rev7_Lightbox_600w.jpg)
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