EPTWhat I wrote here are all true, things have been recorded on TL wiki, news, and witnessed by famous players. And I was a management member that aided a participating team in this tournament I am talking about.
I don't think I am that great in telling this story, post will be updated when it seems confusing.
NSL 2016 was a major team tournament in China, and by today 2017 it’s still not over yet. Timewise, it perhaps is the longest tournament in SC history. Soon as SL 2015 finished, the qualification match had begun in Jan, 2016, two of the winning team were raised to code S, and the teams was given the time until formal tournament begun to reorganize their roster.
I was just a regular player with average ranking in one of the code S teams. Because I can speak enough English, I was contacted by the team captain to invite teamless players. The rule allowed teamless players to aid a team until they join another professional team.
It was scheduled to begin at the end of February or early March. I successfully found a Protoss player to play for us, and I’ve contacted a second one. The first match between X-team and team IG was played on the first weekend of March. After that, no more matches were planned and all the teams were still able to change roster. During this time I’ve found 5 teamless professional players willing to play for our team. According to the terms, we paid some of them half of the money for first half of the tournament.
During this time, team Bheart became unstable, it lost its sponsor so the team name was changed to Gondor, some members left that team and joined newly organized team SpaceCraft along with players from a few other teams. Since the participating team was already decided, SpaceCraft couldn’t join this national tournament NSL 2016. These players were given the option to play under their original team, thus become dual team players, and one of the players didn’t return due to conflict, he was borrowed to a 3rd team. It was questioned that such action was the dual team that the rule of NSL was against of, the organizer’s explanations was that NSL was a platform for Chinese players to develop themselves, dual team was not allowed specifically for foreign players. So team SpaceCraft can borrow their players to tournament teams until they qualify a future NSL themselves. Later, in the first half of the tournament, most of these dual team players left SpaceCraft due to internal reasons. Again, due the fact that this NSL was never finished, team SpaceCraft never got to end the rental.
The starting date of NSL 2016 was first delayed to late March, then April 21. Due to some Chinese players were playing on DH Austin, it was once again delayed to May 14. During this time some of the teamless players found a team and left our roster, I was very sorry I had to ask one of them to refund us the money we paided over PayPal.
At last, it started in mid-July. It’s hard to quantify my judgement, but the games in tournament was just not interesting enough and some players forfeited their matches. The organizer finally got angered when a Korean player forfeited his match. They were quite annoyed and threaten to censor him in China Sc2, it resulted a half way change in rule, that forfeit will result in lost points.
By December, the last online matches were played. For once the final playoff was scheduled to be in January, then after Chinese New Year, then March. During this time the organizer of NSL had already organized many events, and it just doesn’t take long to do the playoff, a matter of one weekend as seen in SL 2015.
As of today, the playoff of this tournament is still not held. NSL was meant to be a tournament that aids the development of Chinese local teams and players, but due to all the time lost in waiting, many teams have not got another league to play in months.
