2018 IEM PyeongChang qualifiers and details

On November 30 2017 02:07 ElusoryX wrote:
Slot distribution seems fair given the number of participants. I'll never understand the people crying about Koreans being given "little" spots in a region-based system.

Asia West qualifiers is an early Christmas present for Demi.
Asia East qualifiers is basically Sioras vs SEA & Taiwan.

On November 30 2017 02:01 ZigguratOfUr wrote:
I guess we should've expected a disappointing format of the sort when we heard about the Olympic partnership. Any guesses as to who will represent Asia West and East?

On November 30 2017 03:13 billynasty wrote:
I'm wondering, who the player from Africa is gonna be. Anyone have any ideas?

On November 30 2017 03:58 aQuaSC wrote:
Were people crying that much at WCG back in the day about it not having 50% of Korean line-up too?

On November 30 2017 05:02 geokilla wrote:

Also two for South America? Who is a pro from South America?

On November 30 2017 04:52 JackONeill wrote:
Initially read "IEM Pyongyang"

On November 30 2017 01:06 DieuCure wrote:
IMO : 2 spots for South America and 5 Europe = waste

On November 30 2017 08:50 IArako wrote:


All of those players will be better than NA/Asia east+west/oceania players except Neeb so why are exactly these waste?
That makes no sense.

Ofc Korea should have more

On November 30 2017 09:22 zealotstim wrote:
lol I guess we will know who the two finalists are early.

On November 30 2017 09:11 breaker1328 wrote:
I don't see what the fuss is about when it comes to a lack of Korean players at an Olympic style event. It's like saying that it's unfair that Canada can only send one hockey team to the Olympics even though Canada could probably ice at least 3 Olympic level teams.

S.Korea gets one player for their region and likely the second player is for being the "host country." Five players from Europe also makes sense given their population density and the number of countries these players need to represent. I'm fine with the player distribution. Whichever Korean ends up going to this thing is probably going to win it anyway and if you really need to get your Korean SC2 fix then just watch their qualifiers and skip the main tournament.

On November 30 2017 21:10 opisska wrote:


You just won the thread

On November 30 2017 22:16 LDaVinci wrote:


I strongly disagree. there is no such thing as absolute best among koreans. Innovation was supposed to be, and well, it didn't go so well at Blizzcon. And then recent event have shown good games between koreans and foreigners. Their is still a gap and at least one korean should make it to the final, but seeing one of the two lose to Neeb, Special, Serral (huge form recently), or hell even DNS or Denver (I know French bias obviously) who perform incredibly well in the last weeks could happen.
And in any case, the confrontation is always interesting, at least to assess how much of the gap there is still to close. The more we have korean/foreigners games, the more we know about it.
And sure you'll be the first of saying "oh look it was 3-1 and 3-0 only, not even close", without even watching one game which should be pretty close. At least it was in recent event, with foreigners taking games and matches out of very good koreans.

On November 30 2017 22:30 ParksonVN wrote:


Do i need to remind you about the last WESG ? Yes Inno didn't win Blizzcon but it took a top Korean to stop him, Rogue on other hand lost 1-2 vs Neeb just before he found out the way to beat him 2-0 later. I haven't seen a foreigner wins against top 3 Koreans in a bo5, remember we are talking about the very top Korean who are Inno, Rogue, TY.

On November 30 2017 23:38 DieuCure wrote:
Because wesg 2016 was interesting ?

Stop fooling yourself, guys like you are ruining kr scene.

On December 01 2017 00:08 LDaVinci wrote:


Yes I should be blame on the fact koreans don't watch SC2. It's all my fault, I've got to admit it. And silly me, I didn't watch proleague or GSL during day time because I was at work, what was I thinking ?
Sorry to want to watch European play and to get excited when foreigners play at top level.

Guys like you are an insult to intelligence.

Blizzcon was fun and interesting and it was only few weeks ago. In a year, foreigners showed they can improve a lot when there is the money incentive. They are not at top korean level yet, but neither are most koreans... you know the difference between top 4 5 korean and the rest. Top foreigners are good enough to show great games against the top koreans though.
You know Denver just beat Impact and hero in Ting event. Sure they are probably not the hottest koreans right now and they maybe had lags, but this was unthinkable a year ago. Foreigners are improving fast.

And btw I don't care about developping the kr scene. I mean they have two major tournaments to earn money, plus some big events. For just one country that's not even that populated (less than germany). Region lock was the best decision of blizzard ever. 5 years ago, koreans where trusting all the tournaments, and the koreans who where playing in NA or EU where not even the best of them (except 1 or 2). Now the foreigners can improve and get money. The level is increasing tremendously.

Guys like you are the reason of the skill gap between kr and EU/NA

On December 01 2017 00:08 LDaVinci wrote:


Yes I should be blame on the fact koreans don't watch SC2. It's all my fault, I've got to admit it. And silly me, I didn't watch proleague or GSL during day time because I was at work, what was I thinking ?
Sorry to want to watch European play and to get excited when foreigners play at top level.

Guys like you are an insult to intelligence.

Blizzcon was fun and interesting and it was only few weeks ago. In a year, foreigners showed they can improve a lot when there is the money incentive. They are not at top korean level yet, but neither are most koreans... you know the difference between top 4 5 korean and the rest. Top foreigners are good enough to show great games against the top koreans though.
You know Denver just beat Impact and hero in Ting event. Sure they are probably not the hottest koreans right now and they maybe had lags, but this was unthinkable a year ago. Foreigners are improving fast.

And btw I don't care about developping the kr scene. I mean they have two major tournaments to earn money, plus some big events. For just one country that's not even that populated (less than germany). Region lock was the best decision of blizzard ever. 5 years ago, koreans where trusting all the tournaments, and the koreans who where playing in NA or EU where not even the best of them (except 1 or 2). Now the foreigners can improve and get money. The level is increasing tremendously.

Guys like you are the reason of the skill gap between kr and EU/NA

On December 01 2017 05:24 zealotstim wrote:


Haha, fair enough. Still, it's disappointing to see so few participants from the strongest region.

On December 01 2017 06:00 Waxangel wrote:
Ionno why people are so mad, when this was the standard international tournament/IEM format for all of StarCraft II history until like 2016.

On December 01 2017 04:18 OHGRinho wrote:
My opinion on the European Qualifier:

I think the split is because of Olympia to ensure to have as many nations in there as possible. But the region split within Europe is bollocks. The european pro scene is already quite diverse in nationalities. The problem is, the southern region (as it is determined by ESL) is pretty much non-existent and the east is also underwhelming. And therfor very good players have to be left out.

If you take a look at the standings of the 2017 WCS circuit, you have to scroll down to rank 56 to find Ryu from Italy as the only representative of the southern region. There is no other player in there. The next guy could probably be Reynor, if he is allowed to play, but that's it.

On the other hand, we will have players like Showtime(Nat. GER/ WCS Rank 11), Nerchio(PL/5), Elazer(PL/2), uThermal(NL/14), Harstem(NL/22)...compete for the single central european slot.

In the North Serral (FIN/3), Snute (NOR/4), Namshar (SWE/18) and Zanster (SWE/29) will compete for one spot.

The West are our french guys DnS (35) and PtitDrogo (16) (Stephano is already registered for Africa).

And in the East I could only find Bly (UKR/27) and PiliPili (KAZ/38), but no other competition.

So...the hard qualifiers in Europe will only be the North and the Central region. The rest is going to be rather boring until the semi finals. For some guys even a cupcake, while others have to fight hard for their spot. And that's why I think this is bollocks. For europe it would have been enough with one or two open qualifiers for a maximum of 4 spots overall. Give the Koreans the 5th spot and IEM PyeongChang would have much more quality of play - which is important too.

The one positive thing I can see in this format is, that it probably encourages a couple of players to try their luck. Who knows, we maybe find a gem or two. But I wouldn't expect it.

On December 01 2017 15:06 Clazziquai10 wrote:
5 players from EU, 2 from KR... Lol?

On December 01 2017 07:12 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


Ehhh... there's still a difference between aiming for diversity and rewarding local scenes, and blindly dividing up regions where scenes don't even exist. Even if you had a single qualifier with 5 spots for all of Europe you'd probably still end up with 4 different countries, and better players.

On December 01 2017 21:51 Musicus wrote:

5 spots for 50 nations is indeed not fair.

Why does a single small nation like SK get 2???

I guess just because they are the host nation? Seems stupid to me... Lol.

On December 02 2017 15:40 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


You're being deliberately obtuse. Let's assume that IEM wants to promote regional diversity and sportive universality, goals very much in line with Olympic values (yes we know you fundamentally disagree with these goals). Dividing tournament spots among regions where there are active scenes, among Korea, Europe, China, the Americas achieves this moreso than a purely meritocratic qualifier system, and to its credit does help foster local scenes. Splitting spots among the different regions of Europe doesn't do any additional fostering, since the wider European scene is quite integrated, and there isn't any noticeable for example Southern European Starcraft scene distinct from the European scene.



Korea does not have the largest player base. EU ladder has roughly three times more people than Korean ladder.

On December 02 2017 18:05 ZigguratOfUr wrote:


Considering EU east/south a different scene than the rest of EU and an analogous situation to the split between Europe and Korea takes healthy doses of self-delusion. Face it you're just upset because your precious Koreans go shafted by this qualifier system (the fact that Koreans got screwed over by this qualifier split doesn't make your arguments any less spurious).