The gap has closed between foreigners and Korea - Page 2

On August 05 2018 21:18 sc-darkness wrote:
Well, wasn't Nestea like 30 years old when he won? I'm not sure age here means anything. It's more about if there are new players and incentive as you mention.

On August 05 2018 21:27 deacon.frost wrote:

Without a healthy Korean scene there will be no Korean vs Foreigners, the numbers will eventually fade out, many people will stop watching after Korean scene will be dismantled and without region lock it will probably soon happen.

“[Activision-Blizzard] made GSL clones around the world, and a bunch of Koreans were allowed to move to other regions, where they’d win easier tournaments,” remembers Plott. “We lost a lot of our star power, and the GSL clone tournaments never really picked up well because it was just a bunch of top Korean guys just bashing everyone.”

“There was one day [in the GSL studio] where just one guy came into watch. We’d gone from having a full studio to just one guy,” said Stemkoski.

On August 05 2018 21:50 Charoisaur wrote:

We'll talk again in 2 years when most of the current korean pros are in military.

On August 05 2018 20:57 xelnaga_empire wrote:
I think the gap has closed a little between foreigners and Korea, especially Europe. Korea is still better than the rest of the world, this is undeniable. But the gap has closed a little.

I suspect since the collapse of ProLeague and the collapse of the KESPA teams (with Jin Air the only team left), the practice environment for Koreans is not as it once was during the ProLeague and KESPA days.

On the other hand, the WCS region lock has done wonders for the foreign scene. I suspect the foreign pros are getting more chances to get prize money from tournaments, and this is motivating them to practice harder. At the same time, in the Europe scene, there are new up and coming players like Reynor and Clem, adding to the competitive environment of the Europe scene. Conversely, I don't know of any young and upcoming Korean players.

In cross tournaments that involve Koreans and foreigners (especially European players), the foreigners are performing quite well against the Koreans. You have HSC where the Koreans lost to many European players at HSC, although the finalists were Soo and Innovation. Scarlett won IEM Pyeongchang, denying sOs in the finals, while Elazer denied Zest in the same tournament. Then Scarlett made it as far as the Round of 8 in the GSL, which hasn't been done by a foreigner since Naniwa I think. In this season's GSL, you have Neeb and Reynor making it to the Round of 16, and Special came close. And in online tournaments, you see the Koreans losing to foreigners every now and then (although Koreans tend to win more in online tournaments). And of course, there were some upsets by European players at GSL vs The World.

I suspect the gap will continue to close because some of the top Korean pros now are getting older. For example, Classic is a few months from turning to 27 years of age. And there doesn't seem to be any new Korean youngsters coming through.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing if the gap is closing because the viewership has gone up for SC2 this year. If the closing gap between foreigners and Korea leads to more viewers, and therefore more sponsors and money injected into the SC2 scene, then all the better for the SC2 pro scene. So I am in favor of the region lock, for the overall health of professional SC2.

On August 05 2018 21:27 deacon.frost wrote:

Without a healthy Korean scene there will be no Korean vs Foreigners, the numbers will eventually fade out, many people will stop watching after Korean scene will be dismantled and without region lock it will probably soon happen.

On August 05 2018 22:50 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
Absolutely not... The gap between Serral and the other foreigners has simply widened.

On August 29 2018 20:18 Anc13nt wrote:
Even though I root for Korean players usually, I have to admit the gap has closed. This year, the foreigners have won 2 global tournaments, made GSL ro4, GSL ro8 and a few GSL ro16. While I think it's unlikely they will have the same degree of success next year, I think it's hard to deny that the gap has closed. That said, the narrative that the gap has been closing every year is something I consider untrue. The gap closed a lot in 2016, but then it probably widened a lot in 2017 and now it has closed significantly again.

On August 29 2018 20:29 Anc13nt wrote:
Yeah, to be fair, even though the foreigner results were kind of disappointing in 2017, there were a lot of close series and if the foreigners were able to clutch some of them, 2017 might also have been a good year for the foreigners.

On August 05 2018 22:47 Fango wrote:

Unless korean pros are competing overseas, I very much doubt they'll get sponsors form decent orgs. Even average-good foreigners can get sponsors over koreans that are much better than them because of their exposure to western audiences. TY and Stats being on splyce seem like the only exceptions.

On August 29 2018 19:42 xelnaga_empire wrote:


No. The gap between foreigner Zerg and Protoss has closed with Korea. Only foreigner Terran remain significantly behind Korean Terran.