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4 Posts
The best StarCraft II player in the world is not a Korean. If not an undeniable reality, it has at least become a fiercely debatable point following Serral's 4-3 victory over Stats in the finals of GSL vs. The World. The victory capped off an incredible tournament run that saw the Finnish phenom go 3-0 vs Kelazhur, 3-0 vs INnoVation, 3-1 vs Dark, and even 1-0 vs Maru in a not-quite showmatch.
Serral's utter domination over the WCS Circuit—combined with a smattering of wins versus notable Korean pros in international competitions—left many fans and players to wonder how he would fare in the GSL. While the answer turned out to be 'pretty damn well' in RO8 and RO4 drubbings of INnoVation and Dark, Korea lived up to its reputation as StarCraft's adopted homeland with an impressive showing from Stats in the grand finals.
Stats had reached the finals stage by winning a shocking upset versus back-to-back Code S champion Maru but was considered the underdog yet again. Serral had already crushed INnoVation and Dark—surely he would inflict even greater humiliation in his best match-up of ZvP? Yet, Stats was able to show the resourcefulness and intelligence that made him one of the most consistent players of Legacy of the Void. An Archon-Chargelot attack caught Serral by surprise in game one, while a clever Redshift Cannon-rush vexed Serral in game two. In what seemed like a blink of an eye, Serral was down 0-2.
However, Serral was not one to be shaken by giving up an early lead, as he had already shown when he came back from a 1-2 deficit versus MaNa in the WCS Austin finals. Serral put on macro-management masterclasses in games three and four, tying the series back up at 2-2.
The balance of the series tilted back in in Stats' favor after an exhilarating game five (an instant, best-game-of-the-year candidate). Stats proved that the series wasn't as simple as Protoss trickery versus Zerg macro, as he matched Serral's strength and then overpowered him in an all-out, full-map war.
Despite being one game away from elimination, Serral refused to crack. He ceded a macro advantage to Stats in game six, but was able to focus on attacking relentlessly with Hydralisks and Banelings to extract the series-tying GG from his opponent. Then, with everything on the line in game seven, Serral fell behind once more after a clever Adept mix-up from Stats took out a number of Drones. There was no indecision in Serral's response: a massive Roach-Queen-Ravager all-in lurched across the map to decide the series once and for all. Stats scrambled to prepare his defenses and microed with all his ability, but it was to no avail. The Zerg Swarm could not be stopped, leaving Stats with no choice but the surrender a historic GG to Serral.
The best StarCraft II player in the world is not a Korean. If not an undeniable reality, Korea's progamers must act as if it is, if they are to bring the WCS Global Championship home again.
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Phenomenal play, phenomenal player, well deserved. The upcoming months will doubtlessly be very exciting
Also lol, forums are very quiet right now as everybody who stayed up for GSLvTW is now catching up on sleep
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I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god.
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congrats serral. Good days for zerg fanboys......... Correction.... GREAT days for zerg fanboys. ggs serral!!!
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On August 06 2018 00:01 Riner1212 wrote:
I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god.
Winning one tournament doesnt make you a god. So how many tournament he have to win? He won 4 tournaments this year.
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JUST PLAY LIKE SERRAL!
All jokes aside. Serral has brilliant decision making..which is the most important attribute for a zerg player. Perfect macro and Korean Zerg level multitask. Going to be interesting to see if Maru can kill him before 10 minutes or not at blizzcon or we might have a foreigner champion this year.
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Seriously impressive plays from both Serral and Stats. I was sad that we couldn't see a bo7 Maru vs Serral but Stats vs Serral delivered.
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That 360 degree flank was insane. The swarm like it was an ingame cinematic :o
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This is great, congratulations to the best foreigner of all time!
Stats fought great as well.
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What a showing that was. Massive congratulations from Sweden to our Scandinavian brothers in the east! :D
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Is there a case for Stats being a kong now?
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On August 06 2018 01:08 Fango wrote:
Is there a case for Stats being a kong now?
No
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Russian Federation80 Posts
On August 06 2018 00:23 flijten wrote:
That 360 degree flank was insane. The swarm like it was an ingame cinematic :o
Yeah, it was crazy. At first it even seemed that there's too little of zerg, and they don't come coordinated, but then more and more poured in from other angles, and "too little" turned out to be "too much". Awesome engagement no doubt!
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Serral Made Finland Great Again!
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On August 06 2018 01:13 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 01:08 Fango wrote:
Is there a case for Stats being a kong now? No
I dunno. He's lost to literally everyone who isn't known for choking in finals.
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Very impressive by Serral. This proves that he is on the same level as the top Koreans, truly significant for a foreigner. But he has definitely NOT proved that he is the best in the world. One premier tournament does not do that. It is ridiculous to hold Serral to a different standard than other top (Korean) players.
Also, this was not GSL! No more than the Super Tournaments are (which, by the way, are more competitive than this was).
It is quite ironic that TL, which recently complained about overhyping by casters, would write these things.
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On August 06 2018 02:02 sneakyfox wrote:
Very impressive by Serral. This proves that he is on the same level as the top Koreans, truly significant for a foreigner. But he has definitely NOT proved that he is the best in the world. One premier tournament does not do that. It is ridiculous to hold Serral to a different standard than other top (Korean) players.
Also, this was not GSL! No more than the Super Tournaments are (which, by the way, are more competitive than this was).
No, Serral beating 3 koreans (that all lost in the ro16 last GSL) in an invitational proves he is the best in the world. Consecutive GSL titles just doesn't compare.
And it's literally liquipedia's fault that people call this a GSL. I don't who started it but this and the GSL world championhips/Supertournaments of the past are listed as GSL titles there. I don't think anyone actually agrees with it other than those who want to claim Mvp and INno have 4 titles.
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On August 06 2018 01:55 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 01:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:08 Fango wrote:
Is there a case for Stats being a kong now? No I dunno. He's lost to literally everyone who isn't known for choking in finals.
So there's only people who are kongs and people who aren't kongs and there's literally nothing in-between?
On August 06 2018 02:13 Fango wrote:
And it's literally liquipedia's fault that people call this a GSL..
Afreeca literally called Inno's GSL vs the World win a GSL title last year so don't blame Liquipedia.
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On August 06 2018 02:02 sneakyfox wrote:
Very impressive by Serral. This proves that he is on the same level as the top Koreans, truly significant for a foreigner. But he has definitely NOT proved that he is the best in the world. One premier tournament does not do that. It is ridiculous to hold Serral to a different standard than other top (Korean) players.
Also, this was not GSL! No more than the Super Tournaments are (which, by the way, are more competitive than this was).
It is quite ironic that TL, which recently complained about overhyping by casters, would write these things.
People are just too excited which is fully understandable since Serral has made history here by becoming the first ever foreigner to contest for the BEST player in the world title. Unlike Neeb (poor guy people almost forgot him)he didn't just win a premier tournament on Korean soil but did so by beating the best Korean players from all 3 races in convincing fashion (in straight-up macro games).
I do feel tho he's being overrated by some people right now, we can say he's at the SAME level as top Koreans, but saying he's already better than them is going too far. It's only one tournament, Korean players haven't given him full attention yet and Stats came very close to beating him. Personally I'd rather view him as just one of the world's top players (along with Stats, Maru, Rogue etc.). Foreigner bias and Korean elitism are both harmful attitudes.
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On August 06 2018 02:13 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 01:55 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 01:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:08 Fango wrote:
Is there a case for Stats being a kong now? No I dunno. He's lost to literally everyone who isn't known for choking in finals. So there's only people who are kongs and people who aren't kongs and there's literally nothing in-between? Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 02:13 Fango wrote:
And it's literally liquipedia's fault that people call this a GSL.. Afreeca literally called Inno's GSL vs the World win a GSL title last year so don't blame Liquipedia.
Did they? Well They didn't give him a pin and when he loads into GSL games he has 3 gold medals under his name. So I'm suprised at that, although they likely put GSL on every event to attract attention anyway.
As far as Kongs go, I just think it's funny how Stats has a similar number of second places/ro4 finishes to guys like soO and Dark. With his only actual wins being when he meets them in finals and they characteristically underperformed.
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Winning an invitational and being non-korean is more skilled than winning 2 GSLs and a WESG while being korean guys! Dont you see?
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I was a Serral skeptic in terms of comparing him to top Koreans, but not anymore. I don't know if I'd call him the best player in the world, but he's up there in my opinion.
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Korea (South)227 Posts
Well, one things certain; Serral has certainly silenced all the doubters who said he could NEVER match up to top level Koreans. But another thing is also certain; Serral is now undoubtedly on the warning radar for Koreans, who will DEFINITELY prepare harder next time they meet. So its all up in the sky as to whether Serral will continue to thrash koreans with ease or if he'll have a tougher mountain to climb next time. Lets just wait and see 
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Congrats to Serral!
Wish it was Maru vs Serral strictly because of how much more entertaining ZvT is than ZvP
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On August 06 2018 02:16 yht9657 wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 02:02 sneakyfox wrote:
Very impressive by Serral. This proves that he is on the same level as the top Koreans, truly significant for a foreigner. But he has definitely NOT proved that he is the best in the world. One premier tournament does not do that. It is ridiculous to hold Serral to a different standard than other top (Korean) players.
Also, this was not GSL! No more than the Super Tournaments are (which, by the way, are more competitive than this was).
It is quite ironic that TL, which recently complained about overhyping by casters, would write these things. People are just too excited which is fully understandable since Serral has made history here by becoming the first ever foreigner to contest for the BEST player in the world title. Unlike Neeb (poor guy people almost forgot him)he didn't just win a premier tournament on Korean soil but did so by beating the best Korean players from all 3 races in convincing fashion (in straight-up macro games). I do feel tho he's being overrated by some people right now, we can say he's at the SAME level as top Koreans, but saying he's already better than them is going too far. It's only one tournament, Korean players haven't given him full attention yet and Stats came very close to beating him. Personally I'd rather view him as just one of the world's top players (along with Stats, Maru, Rogue etc.). Foreigner bias and Korean elitism are both harmful attitudes.
SC2 is not consistent enough for there to ever be a top player but Serral is indisputably top tier.
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On August 06 2018 02:21 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 02:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:55 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 01:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:08 Fango wrote:
Is there a case for Stats being a kong now? No I dunno. He's lost to literally everyone who isn't known for choking in finals. So there's only people who are kongs and people who aren't kongs and there's literally nothing in-between? On August 06 2018 02:13 Fango wrote:
And it's literally liquipedia's fault that people call this a GSL.. Afreeca literally called Inno's GSL vs the World win a GSL title last year so don't blame Liquipedia. Did they? Well They didn't give him a pin and when he loads into GSL games he has 3 gold medals under his name. So I'm suprised at that, although they likely put GSL on every event to attract attention anyway. As far as Kongs go, I just think it's funny how Stats has a similar number of second places/ro4 finishes to guys like soO and Dark. With his only actual wins being when he meets them in finals and they characteristically underperformed.
Stats has less 2nd places in his entire career than soO has just in GSL. And if we start using the term Kong this loosely we may as well start with sOs and his stellar 0/2 record in GSL finals.
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On August 06 2018 02:39 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 02:21 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:55 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 01:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:08 Fango wrote:
Is there a case for Stats being a kong now? No I dunno. He's lost to literally everyone who isn't known for choking in finals. So there's only people who are kongs and people who aren't kongs and there's literally nothing in-between? On August 06 2018 02:13 Fango wrote:
And it's literally liquipedia's fault that people call this a GSL.. Afreeca literally called Inno's GSL vs the World win a GSL title last year so don't blame Liquipedia. Did they? Well They didn't give him a pin and when he loads into GSL games he has 3 gold medals under his name. So I'm suprised at that, although they likely put GSL on every event to attract attention anyway. As far as Kongs go, I just think it's funny how Stats has a similar number of second places/ro4 finishes to guys like soO and Dark. With his only actual wins being when he meets them in finals and they characteristically underperformed. Stats has less 2nd places in his entire career than soO has just in GSL. And if we start using the term Kong this loosely we may as well start with sOs and his stellar 0/2 record in GSL finals.
How many losses to do need? People called MKP, Dream, ByuL etc kongs. Stats has 5 losses and 10 ro4 finishes. A lot of them being matches he was favoured to win.
I just feel like if Stats didn't win those finals against soO and Dark (the pair who choke almost every time including those against Stats), he'd be well established as a kong.
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On August 06 2018 02:43 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 02:39 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 02:21 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:55 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 01:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:08 Fango wrote:
Is there a case for Stats being a kong now? No I dunno. He's lost to literally everyone who isn't known for choking in finals. So there's only people who are kongs and people who aren't kongs and there's literally nothing in-between? On August 06 2018 02:13 Fango wrote:
And it's literally liquipedia's fault that people call this a GSL.. Afreeca literally called Inno's GSL vs the World win a GSL title last year so don't blame Liquipedia. Did they? Well They didn't give him a pin and when he loads into GSL games he has 3 gold medals under his name. So I'm suprised at that, although they likely put GSL on every event to attract attention anyway. As far as Kongs go, I just think it's funny how Stats has a similar number of second places/ro4 finishes to guys like soO and Dark. With his only actual wins being when he meets them in finals and they characteristically underperformed. Stats has less 2nd places in his entire career than soO has just in GSL. And if we start using the term Kong this loosely we may as well start with sOs and his stellar 0/2 record in GSL finals. How many losses to do need? People called MKP, Dream, ByuL etc kongs. Stats has 5 losses and 10 ro4 finishes. A lot of them being matches he was favoured to win. I just feel like if Stats didn't win those finals against soO and Dark (the pair who choke almost every time including those against Stats), he'd be well established as a kong.
The original definition of a Kong is someone who gets 2nd places in Starleagues but can win weekend tournaments (AKA YellOw). Stats absolutely doesn't fit this definition, not one bit.
Dream and ByuL didn't win a single tournament, only 2nd places, and MarineKing won weekenders while getting 2nd places in GSL. They fit a lot better.
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Big congrats to Serral! Whatever the future may bring, Serral has certainly left his mark in 2018 so far and will always be considered one of the best foreigners in SC2 because of that.
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On July 16 2018 00:10 AgonySC wrote:Show nested quote +On July 15 2018 19:38 Gurbak wrote:On July 15 2018 17:45 fLyiNgDroNe wrote:
i am scared to think that if Serral wins Montreal he'll set the bar for best foreigner on unreachable level. only if he can win tournaments with koreans like stephano Yep. Winning tournaments in which Koreans are banned means nothing. He won all these foreigner tourneys yet didnt win IEM or WECG... surprise surprise. Casters hype him up so much, wonder what they'll say when hes swept at GSL vs The World.
I'm literally smiling so much now.
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On August 06 2018 02:46 Durnuu wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 02:43 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:39 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 02:21 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:55 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 01:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:08 Fango wrote:
Is there a case for Stats being a kong now? No I dunno. He's lost to literally everyone who isn't known for choking in finals. So there's only people who are kongs and people who aren't kongs and there's literally nothing in-between? On August 06 2018 02:13 Fango wrote:
And it's literally liquipedia's fault that people call this a GSL.. Afreeca literally called Inno's GSL vs the World win a GSL title last year so don't blame Liquipedia. Did they? Well They didn't give him a pin and when he loads into GSL games he has 3 gold medals under his name. So I'm suprised at that, although they likely put GSL on every event to attract attention anyway. As far as Kongs go, I just think it's funny how Stats has a similar number of second places/ro4 finishes to guys like soO and Dark. With his only actual wins being when he meets them in finals and they characteristically underperformed. Stats has less 2nd places in his entire career than soO has just in GSL. And if we start using the term Kong this loosely we may as well start with sOs and his stellar 0/2 record in GSL finals. How many losses to do need? People called MKP, Dream, ByuL etc kongs. Stats has 5 losses and 10 ro4 finishes. A lot of them being matches he was favoured to win. I just feel like if Stats didn't win those finals against soO and Dark (the pair who choke almost every time including those against Stats), he'd be well established as a kong. The original definition of a Kong is someone who gets 2nd places in Starleagues but can win weekend tournaments (AKA YellOw). Stats absolutely doesn't fit this definition, not one bit. Dream and ByuL didn't win a single tournament, only 2nd places, and MarineKing won weekenders while getting 2nd places in GSL. They fit a lot better.
Yeah but in sc2 starleagues mean a bit less and weekenders mean a lot more.
I was just saying it's quite funny that Stats has lost to everyone other than soO and Dark, who are the biggest kongs we have right now. If he didn't beat the guys who choke more than anyone else in sc2, he'd be well known as a kong by now.
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Instead of making a fuss about if Serral is the best, equal to top tier Koreans and if this is a GSL win or not, how about we look at one of the most insane engagements I've seen in the history of starcraft
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oh i lost 11 drones to 6 adepts, whatever im gonna just win with roaches.
how do u stop that as protoss idk
User was warned for this post
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On August 06 2018 02:37 TentativePanda wrote:
Congrats to Serral!
Wish it was Maru vs Serral strictly because of how much more entertaining ZvT is than ZvP
Entertaining o_O ? Not as entertaining as ZvT!? Have you taken a look at the highlight above ^ or *that* game 5?
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/293320065?t=04h48m50s
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Is Kong meant as an insult or just tough luck, like soO?
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On August 06 2018 03:39 Torvaltz wrote:
oh i lost 11 drones to 6 adepts, whatever im gonna just win with roaches.
how do u stop that as protoss idk
scouting the all in? serral didnt build a single drone since... attacked on 44 drones, while stats went up on like 60. if he had immediately put down the shield batterys, he hold this and win the game.
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On August 06 2018 03:39 Torvaltz wrote:
oh i lost 11 drones to 6 adepts, whatever im gonna just win with roaches.
how do u stop that as protoss idk
Identify sooner and build army instead of economy/tech? Cannons, shield batteries? He had no defense to this, he failed to identify it early.
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will they release replays?
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On August 06 2018 03:43 dicey wrote:
Is Kong meant as an insult or just tough luck, like soO?
It's a bad thing meant in a loving way.
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Canada8988 Posts
On August 06 2018 03:23 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 02:46 Durnuu wrote:On August 06 2018 02:43 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:39 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 02:21 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:55 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 01:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:08 Fango wrote:
Is there a case for Stats being a kong now? No I dunno. He's lost to literally everyone who isn't known for choking in finals. So there's only people who are kongs and people who aren't kongs and there's literally nothing in-between? On August 06 2018 02:13 Fango wrote:
And it's literally liquipedia's fault that people call this a GSL.. Afreeca literally called Inno's GSL vs the World win a GSL title last year so don't blame Liquipedia. Did they? Well They didn't give him a pin and when he loads into GSL games he has 3 gold medals under his name. So I'm suprised at that, although they likely put GSL on every event to attract attention anyway. As far as Kongs go, I just think it's funny how Stats has a similar number of second places/ro4 finishes to guys like soO and Dark. With his only actual wins being when he meets them in finals and they characteristically underperformed. Stats has less 2nd places in his entire career than soO has just in GSL. And if we start using the term Kong this loosely we may as well start with sOs and his stellar 0/2 record in GSL finals. How many losses to do need? People called MKP, Dream, ByuL etc kongs. Stats has 5 losses and 10 ro4 finishes. A lot of them being matches he was favoured to win. I just feel like if Stats didn't win those finals against soO and Dark (the pair who choke almost every time including those against Stats), he'd be well established as a kong. The original definition of a Kong is someone who gets 2nd places in Starleagues but can win weekend tournaments (AKA YellOw). Stats absolutely doesn't fit this definition, not one bit. Dream and ByuL didn't win a single tournament, only 2nd places, and MarineKing won weekenders while getting 2nd places in GSL. They fit a lot better. Yeah but in sc2 starleagues mean a bit less and weekenders mean a lot more. I was just saying it's quite funny that Stats has lost to everyone other than soO and Dark, who are the biggest kongs we have right now. If he didn't beat the guys who choke more than anyone else in sc2, he'd be well known as a kong by now.
Hum the thing is I don't really feel like Stats play particularly bad in final, the finals he lost were the final he was suppose to. (maybe with the exception of Katowice against TY, but he still played a great series) He lost premier title to a red hot Maru, INno when he was killing every toss and Dark when he was dominant, and now against Seral but he gave him by far the best opposition of the tournament. Sure you could say he lost some final but it's not really that he can't win them it's more that it happen that his best wasn't enough to win.
In opposition after his first 2 gsl loss SoO has played far bellow his actual level in every finals he's been in (you could say he also choke his final against Zest)
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On August 06 2018 03:23 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 02:46 Durnuu wrote:On August 06 2018 02:43 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:39 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 02:21 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:55 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 01:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:08 Fango wrote:
Is there a case for Stats being a kong now? No I dunno. He's lost to literally everyone who isn't known for choking in finals. So there's only people who are kongs and people who aren't kongs and there's literally nothing in-between? On August 06 2018 02:13 Fango wrote:
And it's literally liquipedia's fault that people call this a GSL.. Afreeca literally called Inno's GSL vs the World win a GSL title last year so don't blame Liquipedia. Did they? Well They didn't give him a pin and when he loads into GSL games he has 3 gold medals under his name. So I'm suprised at that, although they likely put GSL on every event to attract attention anyway. As far as Kongs go, I just think it's funny how Stats has a similar number of second places/ro4 finishes to guys like soO and Dark. With his only actual wins being when he meets them in finals and they characteristically underperformed. Stats has less 2nd places in his entire career than soO has just in GSL. And if we start using the term Kong this loosely we may as well start with sOs and his stellar 0/2 record in GSL finals. How many losses to do need? People called MKP, Dream, ByuL etc kongs. Stats has 5 losses and 10 ro4 finishes. A lot of them being matches he was favoured to win. I just feel like if Stats didn't win those finals against soO and Dark (the pair who choke almost every time including those against Stats), he'd be well established as a kong. The original definition of a Kong is someone who gets 2nd places in Starleagues but can win weekend tournaments (AKA YellOw). Stats absolutely doesn't fit this definition, not one bit. Dream and ByuL didn't win a single tournament, only 2nd places, and MarineKing won weekenders while getting 2nd places in GSL. They fit a lot better. Yeah but in sc2 starleagues mean a bit less and weekenders mean a lot more. I was just saying it's quite funny that Stats has lost to everyone other than soO and Dark, who are the biggest kongs we have right now. If he didn't beat the guys who choke more than anyone else in sc2, he'd be well known as a kong by now.
But he did beat those guys and thus isn't a kong.
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That 360 was insane to watch. Stats' army just walks in, nothing on sight, then BAM, ITS A TRAP.
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Greatest foreign player ever in SC1 and SC2
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Awesome tournament and awesome performamce by Serral!! GG!
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Stats choked/stroked/tilted at some point during game 6. He was ahead in tech and upgrades, had a shit ton of storms vs ling/bane/hydra, similar supply, just decently ahead overall, then out of nowhere he started floating 1k+ minerals up to 2k and a shit ton of gas too, also, before people say that Serral was putting on pressure, Stats started floating and derping at the 7 minute mark, prior to any shit serral did, he was also losing shit left and right without using them, like templars still with storm to cast.
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On August 06 2018 04:09 Charoisaur wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 03:23 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:46 Durnuu wrote:On August 06 2018 02:43 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:39 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 02:21 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:55 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 01:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:08 Fango wrote:
Is there a case for Stats being a kong now? No I dunno. He's lost to literally everyone who isn't known for choking in finals. So there's only people who are kongs and people who aren't kongs and there's literally nothing in-between? On August 06 2018 02:13 Fango wrote:
And it's literally liquipedia's fault that people call this a GSL.. Afreeca literally called Inno's GSL vs the World win a GSL title last year so don't blame Liquipedia. Did they? Well They didn't give him a pin and when he loads into GSL games he has 3 gold medals under his name. So I'm suprised at that, although they likely put GSL on every event to attract attention anyway. As far as Kongs go, I just think it's funny how Stats has a similar number of second places/ro4 finishes to guys like soO and Dark. With his only actual wins being when he meets them in finals and they characteristically underperformed. Stats has less 2nd places in his entire career than soO has just in GSL. And if we start using the term Kong this loosely we may as well start with sOs and his stellar 0/2 record in GSL finals. How many losses to do need? People called MKP, Dream, ByuL etc kongs. Stats has 5 losses and 10 ro4 finishes. A lot of them being matches he was favoured to win. I just feel like if Stats didn't win those finals against soO and Dark (the pair who choke almost every time including those against Stats), he'd be well established as a kong. The original definition of a Kong is someone who gets 2nd places in Starleagues but can win weekend tournaments (AKA YellOw). Stats absolutely doesn't fit this definition, not one bit. Dream and ByuL didn't win a single tournament, only 2nd places, and MarineKing won weekenders while getting 2nd places in GSL. They fit a lot better. Yeah but in sc2 starleagues mean a bit less and weekenders mean a lot more. I was just saying it's quite funny that Stats has lost to everyone other than soO and Dark, who are the biggest kongs we have right now. If he didn't beat the guys who choke more than anyone else in sc2, he'd be well known as a kong by now. But he did beat those guys and thus isn't a kong.
Depends if you count beating soO and Dark as a win (ok I'm joking here). But Stats still has a record in failing to win without his opponents choking. And I would say he underperforms in finals a lot. Obviously not to the extent of someone like soO.
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On August 06 2018 04:04 Nakajin wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 03:23 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:46 Durnuu wrote:On August 06 2018 02:43 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:39 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 02:21 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 02:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:55 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 01:13 Elentos wrote:On August 06 2018 01:08 Fango wrote:
Is there a case for Stats being a kong now? No I dunno. He's lost to literally everyone who isn't known for choking in finals. So there's only people who are kongs and people who aren't kongs and there's literally nothing in-between? On August 06 2018 02:13 Fango wrote:
And it's literally liquipedia's fault that people call this a GSL.. Afreeca literally called Inno's GSL vs the World win a GSL title last year so don't blame Liquipedia. Did they? Well They didn't give him a pin and when he loads into GSL games he has 3 gold medals under his name. So I'm suprised at that, although they likely put GSL on every event to attract attention anyway. As far as Kongs go, I just think it's funny how Stats has a similar number of second places/ro4 finishes to guys like soO and Dark. With his only actual wins being when he meets them in finals and they characteristically underperformed. Stats has less 2nd places in his entire career than soO has just in GSL. And if we start using the term Kong this loosely we may as well start with sOs and his stellar 0/2 record in GSL finals. How many losses to do need? People called MKP, Dream, ByuL etc kongs. Stats has 5 losses and 10 ro4 finishes. A lot of them being matches he was favoured to win. I just feel like if Stats didn't win those finals against soO and Dark (the pair who choke almost every time including those against Stats), he'd be well established as a kong. The original definition of a Kong is someone who gets 2nd places in Starleagues but can win weekend tournaments (AKA YellOw). Stats absolutely doesn't fit this definition, not one bit. Dream and ByuL didn't win a single tournament, only 2nd places, and MarineKing won weekenders while getting 2nd places in GSL. They fit a lot better. Yeah but in sc2 starleagues mean a bit less and weekenders mean a lot more. I was just saying it's quite funny that Stats has lost to everyone other than soO and Dark, who are the biggest kongs we have right now. If he didn't beat the guys who choke more than anyone else in sc2, he'd be well known as a kong by now. Hum the thing is I don't really feel like Stats play particularly bad in final, the finals he lost were the final he was suppose to. (maybe with the exception of Katowice against TY, but he still played a great series) He lost premier title to a red hot Maru, INno when he was killing every toss and Dark when he was dominant, and now against Seral but he gave him by far the best opposition of the tournament. Sure you could say he lost some final but it's not really that he can't win them it's more that it happen that his best wasn't enough to win. In opposition after his first 2 gsl loss SoO has played far bellow his actual level in every finals he's been in (you could say he also choke his final against Zest)
He clearly underperforms in finals. He played badly against Maru in the final, even if Maru was hot. He got ruined by INno with admittedly imba tank pushes, but beat him in GSL not long after. Against TY he played well until game 7, and here against Serral he was a bit clueless at the end. Maybe unlucky in not scouting the allin, but I feel like he should have scouted it.
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Underperforming in finals doesn't make you a kong.
Stats has so many finals losses because he makes a lot of finals. But he's won on the big stage plenty of times - more than enough to make him not a kong.
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On August 06 2018 04:48 Bagration wrote:
Greatest foreign player ever in SC1 and SC2
What? Please don't bring SC1 into this. You don't know what you're talking about.
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Ok I get the point. But he still only beats kongs. I guess there can only be so many people you call a kong for that reason.
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On August 06 2018 07:59 Fango wrote:
Ok I get the point. But he still only beats kongs. I guess there can only be so many people you call a kong for that reason.
Which makes him the anti kong.
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GGs
I noticed how Serral uses the mini map (watch is eyes), when the player cams were operating 1/4s and semis it looked like he was managing his army extensively via the mini map?, i.e. setting up those awesome flanks and counters, interesting .... Creep spread, Ove placement and ling scouts are probably very important when you spend so much time looking at the MM...
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/nGGZa6Q.png)
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Kinda crazy to see how well he played. Stats did make a lot of mistakes with the oracle though, very strange to see a top protoss losing them so easily.
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On August 06 2018 09:07 Civ.Fan wrote:
GGs
I noticed how Serral uses the mini map (watch is eyes), when the player cams were operating 1/4s and semis it looked like he was managing his army extensively via the mini map?, i.e. setting up those awesome flanks and counters, interesting .... Creep spread, Ove placement and ling scouts are probably very important when you spend so much time looking at the MM...
Yeah. He seems have great general map presence thank to this and scrolling around a lot with the middle mouse button.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/250000593
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Wow nice Serral, foreign bonjwa
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Is there a place to watch VODs of the series? Work has prevented me from watching the series and afreeca hasn't had it on youtube to watch. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks.
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On August 06 2018 09:58 GGzerG wrote:
Wow nice Serral, foreign bonjwa
Upgraded to Next Zerg Bonjwa
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I was saying how beating foreigners in region lock means nothing and that serral was being hyped up, where as naniwa and stephano proved themselves by going toe to toe w the best. Well I take it back serral is a Destroyer GOD!!! Holy shit. Looks like he has a serious chance at blizzcon.
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If Serral wins blizzcon does region lock get removed? Or like Finland graduates and moves back in the Korea leagues 
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Congratulations to Serral, was a great finals. I didn't believe the hype and thought he would get quashed, but happy to be proven wrong.
I guess we should start petitioning Blizzard for a Korean SC2 GSL "welfare" package as Serral will be taking their prizemoney?  .
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ALL HAIL THE KING!!! Let's see if he can keep it up the next time he meets the top koreans at an offline event. For now, all we can do is stop calling Mary our undisputed #1
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i really thougt stats would do it, but the games serral won where dominant and convincing.
it was a great final overall
Well deserved trophy for serral, and now we all can get excited for november, not only due to temperature reasons ^^
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On August 06 2018 00:01 Riner1212 wrote:
I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god.
expect he won his last 4 tournaments ...
On August 06 2018 12:34 Kingsky wrote:If Serral wins blizzcon does region lock get removed? Or like Finland graduates and moves back in the Korea leagues
no it just shows then region lock was a great idea and works to make good europe talents
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On August 06 2018 10:20 NBird wrote:
Is there a place to watch VODs of the series? Work has prevented me from watching the series and afreeca hasn't had it on youtube to watch. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks.
i am wondering that in time of twitch and people knowing the twitch channel people still have to ask
its just in the video section of the stream, but also uploaded on yt by afreeca
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Whoever noticed Serral using the minimap....
Good observation.... He and Raynor do a couple of things the Korean Zergs have lacked imo....
1. They understand Zerg speed, and how to use lings to counter attack...
2. When I play zerg, I ALWAYS make lings, if you dont you arnt a good Zerg. It's like a Terran who cant stutter.
I use the minimap to inject, set waypoints. send units to patrol....
3. Unlike MOST of these Zergs, I think Serral actually USES different control groups, hence his multitasking overwhelming his opponents.
Once I started doing this, I got a lot better really fast....
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Feels super weird that the ryökäle actually did it. Still haven't quite processed it entirely.
But would go with Serral on that I still wouldn't quite consider him the best after this one premier win even when significant, but would say it's quite reasonable to currently consider him as a top-5 player.
Also a special thanks to the mods for not banning Finland for a couple of days for the gifs. :>
On August 06 2018 10:20 NBird wrote:
Is there a place to watch VODs of the series? Work has prevented me from watching the series and afreeca hasn't had it on youtube to watch. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks.
https://www.youtube.com/user/AfreecaTV/videos
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On August 06 2018 19:45 SpaWnvERtiGO wrote:
Whoever noticed Serral using the minimap....
Good observation.... He and Raynor do a couple of things the Korean Zergs have lacked imo....
1. They understand Zerg speed, and how to use lings to counter attack...
2. When I play zerg, I ALWAYS make lings, if you dont you arnt a good Zerg. It's like a Terran who cant stutter.
I use the minimap to inject, set waypoints. send units to patrol....
3. Unlike MOST of these Zergs, I think Serral actually USES different control groups, hence his multitasking overwhelming his opponents.
Once I started doing this, I got a lot better really fast....
See you in GSL soon bud.
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On August 06 2018 19:45 SpaWnvERtiGO wrote:
Whoever noticed Serral using the minimap....
Good observation.... He and Raynor do a couple of things the Korean Zergs have lacked imo....
1. They understand Zerg speed, and how to use lings to counter attack...
2. When I play zerg, I ALWAYS make lings, if you dont you arnt a good Zerg. It's like a Terran who cant stutter.
I use the minimap to inject, set waypoints. send units to patrol....
3. Unlike MOST of these Zergs, I think Serral actually USES different control groups, hence his multitasking overwhelming his opponents.
Once I started doing this, I got a lot better really fast....
damn, i never noticed korean zergs lacked the single most basic skills of their race.
an additional tipp from me to dark, rouge and soo (i know they are reading this):
queens have a skill called "Spawn Creep Tumor", give it a try sometime, you'll be pleasantly suprised
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On August 06 2018 19:19 Drake wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 00:01 Riner1212 wrote:
I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god. expect he won his last 4 tournaments ..
He won IEM Katowice and WeSG?
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On August 06 2018 22:06 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 19:19 Drake wrote:On August 06 2018 00:01 Riner1212 wrote:
I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god. expect he won his last 4 tournaments .. He won IEM Katowice and WeSG?
right he was only top4 in those, so he just won the last three tournaments he entered, which shouldn't change the point to much i presume
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That 360 surround was from which game again?
Thanks
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On August 06 2018 22:21 uummpaa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 22:06 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 19:19 Drake wrote:On August 06 2018 00:01 Riner1212 wrote:
I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god. expect he won his last 4 tournaments .. He won IEM Katowice and WeSG? right he was only top4 in those, so he just won the last three tournaments he entered, which shouldn't change the point to much i presume
No but are wcs wins really that valuble? The guy said winning one event doesn't make you a god, which is true. So I'd assume winning easy events doesn't either.
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So I'd assume winning easy events doesn't either.
Is it though?
Honestly, that's just exactly the bias everyone was talking about. Only Korea is good, all other regions and players are shitty ... in the end it's, as i said, just bias ... with no truth behind it.
I mean, for sure you can say there are smaller events and bigger events ... regarding pricemoney, viewership and so on. Like Homestory Cup for example.
But calling WCS an easy event which doesn't matter is just nonsense. Especially if you can manage to win several of them consecutive. You can only manage something like that if you are that good that you can also win against the top koreans. If anything, Serral has proven that by now. He doesn't need to play GSL seasons to prove that. He has proven already, and maybe he can continue a similar run at this years blizzcon.
Of course he is by far the best foreigner right now. But others are getting better, too.
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On August 06 2018 23:20 JoFar wrote:Is it though? Honestly, that's just exactly the bias everyone was talking about. Only Korea is good, all other regions and players are shitty ... in the end it's, as i said, just bias ... with no truth behind it.
That's not bias, that's just fact. WCS events are easy for top players like Serral.
Look at the results of WeSG, IEM Katowice, even the GSL seasons that feature a lot of the best foreigners. Other than Serral they went 5-15 in maps at gsl vs tw, whereas Serral went 11-4.
Like I've been saying for a while now, foreigners have to do much less to get worshipped than koreans. TY, Dark, Maru, and Classic farmed the hell out of foreigners it wesg events. No one cares because it's the norm. When dealing with the best players in the world, they're all capable of dominating lesser events.
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Poland3748 Posts
On August 06 2018 00:51 AlgeriaT wrote:
What a showing that was. Massive congratulations from Sweden to our Scandinavian brothers in the east! :D
Finland is not Scandinavia. Nordic brothers?
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Czech Republic12128 Posts
On August 06 2018 23:43 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 23:20 JoFar wrote:So I'd assume winning easy events doesn't either. Is it though? Honestly, that's just exactly the bias everyone was talking about. Only Korea is good, all other regions and players are shitty ... in the end it's, as i said, just bias ... with no truth behind it. That's not bias, that's just fact. WCS events are easy for top players like Serral. Look at the results of WeSG, IEM Katowice, even the GSL seasons that feature a lot of the best foreigners. Other than Serral they went 5-15 in maps at gsl vs tw, whereas Serral went 11-4. Like I've been saying for a while now, foreigners have to do much less to get worshipped than koreans. TY, Dark, Maru, and Classic farmed the hell out of foreigners it wesg events. No one cares because it's the norm. When dealing with the best players in the world, they're all capable of dominating lesser events.
AGreed, Maru wins everything everywhere and then loses 2 games, one of which was BO1, admits he didn't practise and suddenly out of knowhere Serrals accomplishments are better? What? I don't doubt he's good ,but seriously? This overhype is killing SErral for me the same way Flash fans killed Flash in SC2 for me. (and partially JD)
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People saying that Serral's GSL vs The World win doesn't mean he was better than the Koreans are missing the point. He was better than them during this event. Period.
Serral also has the most WCS Points in the world.
Serral also has the highest MMR in the world.
Some naysayers will say thats not enough, so come Blizzcon he'll have his chance to be the very best all over again.
The people who keep doubting Serral just serve to motivate him... this dude plays like a beast. Congrats!
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On August 06 2018 23:02 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 22:21 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 22:06 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 19:19 Drake wrote:On August 06 2018 00:01 Riner1212 wrote:
I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god. expect he won his last 4 tournaments .. He won IEM Katowice and WeSG? right he was only top4 in those, so he just won the last three tournaments he entered, which shouldn't change the point to much i presume No but are wcs wins really that valuble? The guy said winning one event doesn't make you a god, which is true. So I'd assume winning easy events doesn't either.
"easy", i see
so far scarlett took more series from serral than dark in the last b05, but i'm sure that means nothing as well.
by the way, why was there never a korean that dominated that hard outside of korea, neither polt, nor hydra where close to the consistency of serral (or are they not so good as well anymore?)
but it´s pointless anyway, i see serral eye to eye with top koreans, the fact that he beats them in a game called sc2 is enough for me.
if you are willing to change or reinterpret anything but the natural laws themself too not change the "korea > rest" idea, all power to you
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Well, hasn't Serral been living and training in Korea for at least 4 months now?
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On August 07 2018 01:39 ThunderJunk wrote:
Well, hasn't Serral been living and training in Korea for at least 4 months now?
No, he’s been there a couple of weeks before this event and went for a couple of months at the end of last year he mostly stays and plays in Finland
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On August 07 2018 01:50 Zaros wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 01:39 ThunderJunk wrote:
Well, hasn't Serral been living and training in Korea for at least 4 months now? No, he’s been there a couple of weeks before this event and went for a couple of months at the end of last year he mostly stays and plays in Finland
Oh wow
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On August 07 2018 00:58 uummpaa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 23:02 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 22:21 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 22:06 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 19:19 Drake wrote:On August 06 2018 00:01 Riner1212 wrote:
I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god. expect he won his last 4 tournaments .. He won IEM Katowice and WeSG? right he was only top4 in those, so he just won the last three tournaments he entered, which shouldn't change the point to much i presume No but are wcs wins really that valuble? The guy said winning one event doesn't make you a god, which is true. So I'd assume winning easy events doesn't either. "easy", i see so far scarlett took more series from serral than dark in the last b05, but i'm sure that means nothing as well. by the way, why was there never a korean that dominated that hard outside of korea, neither polt, nor hydra where close to the consistency of serral (or are they not so good as well anymore?) but it´s pointless anyway, i see serral eye to eye with top koreans, the fact that he beats them in a game called sc2 is enough for me. if you are willing to change or reinterpret anything but the natural laws themself too not change the "korea > rest" idea, all power to you
Scarlett taking two maps of Serral was literally a 1 in 20 result. It's probably the only time Serral's been on match point all year. Wcs tournaments are easy for Serral. They'd be just easy for the top koreans as well (exampes being WeSG and Katowice). Don't make the mistake of cherry picking the results that favour your view and not looking at the tournaments as a whole.
You seem to think I'm trying to downplay Serral's skill, which isn't true. He's on the same level as top koerans. What I'm trying to say is that wcs events aren't much of a challenge for him, and the level of play in them isn't close to that of korean events. I couldn't care less if he farms 3, 4, or even 10 of them. It's like when SpeCial farms the latin american events, doesn't say anything about how he'll be in the global tournaments.
And btw, koreans like Polt and Hydra were not on the same level as those who dominated in korea like Maru or Dark either.
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On August 07 2018 01:50 Zaros wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 01:39 ThunderJunk wrote:
Well, hasn't Serral been living and training in Korea for at least 4 months now? No, he’s been there a couple of weeks before this event and went for a couple of months at the end of last year he mostly stays and plays in Finland
I don't think he even went there weeks before the event, Showtime did. As far as I know Serral just went there for the event and is already back in Finland now.
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United States97276 Posts
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Pretty sick to see a foreigner actually win a GSL tournament against such a difficult field. It'll be interesting to see what he can accomplish at Blizzcon, either way awesome games and congratulations to Serral.
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On August 06 2018 23:48 nimdil wrote:Show nested quote +On August 06 2018 00:51 AlgeriaT wrote:
What a showing that was. Massive congratulations from Sweden to our Scandinavian brothers in the east! :D Finland is not Scandinavia. Nordic brothers?
You learn something new everyday on TL - thanks!
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On August 07 2018 02:49 Shellshock wrote:
bonjwa
Agreed.
So dominant.
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is serral the next foreign banjo? we haf to wait and see, torille.
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On August 07 2018 03:17 IshinShishi wrote:
is serral the next foreign banjo? we haf to wait and see, torille.
Finland I would say is more of a accordion country than a banjo country. I'd definitely say he is the next foreign accordion.
I was just looking at Serral's results on liquipedia though, 2018 is really something extra:
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/UGSFHcJ.png)
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Haven't been following Starcraft 2, a foreigner at the top of Alegulac winning Korean tournaments with a winrate of 80%.
This doesn't seem right...
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On August 07 2018 03:49 thezanursic wrote:
Haven't been following Starcraft 2, a foreigner at the top of Alegulac winning Korean tournaments with a winrate of 80%.
This doesn't seem right...
Finland doesn't exist, he isn't real.
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Maru's 2018 has been as dominant with much stronger competition, I wouldn't dream of putting Serral above him, but a top 5 PR def seems fitting.
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The tourney was awesome and the GSL/Afreeca production is just awesome. The effort they put in GSL and GSL vs World is just so cool and unique.. every tournament is unique, its just awesome!!
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On August 07 2018 05:13 IshinShishi wrote:
Maru's 2018 has been as dominant with much stronger competition, I wouldn't dream of putting Serral above him, but a top 5 PR def seems fitting.
I wouldnt dream of putting Serral above Maru either, but for 1 day he was. And i'm pretty sure that over the past couple years, in head to head they're even. He's at the very least on their level atm
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On August 07 2018 09:14 billynasty wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 05:13 IshinShishi wrote:
Maru's 2018 has been as dominant with much stronger competition, I wouldn't dream of putting Serral above him, but a top 5 PR def seems fitting. And i'm pretty sure that over the past couple years, in head to head they're even. He's at the very least on their level atm
They've only met twice. Once at WeSG a few months ago where maru won 3-0, and once yesterday in the team showmatch where Serral won 1-0.
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On August 07 2018 10:16 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 09:14 billynasty wrote:On August 07 2018 05:13 IshinShishi wrote:
Maru's 2018 has been as dominant with much stronger competition, I wouldn't dream of putting Serral above him, but a top 5 PR def seems fitting. And i'm pretty sure that over the past couple years, in head to head they're even. He's at the very least on their level atm They've only met twice. Once at WeSG a few months ago where maru won 3-0, and once yesterday in the team showmatch where Serral won 1-0.
According to Aligulac on 01/22/2018 during the IEM Season XII World Championship it says Serral won 2-0 vs Maru.
I didn't think they met but then i saw this, guess Aligulac isn't always accurate?
Heres's a screenshot of it: ![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/pzubOHo.png)
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oh yeah that online qualifier..... Tbh I am the first memeing about how people making funny excuses of why some koreans lose to foreigners, specially in the past (ping,jetlag, not caring etc etc) but all memes have a foundation of true and Korea to EU server ping is this one. It is seriously unplayable.
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All that extra hard work had certainly paid off for the finnish. Congratulations!
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On August 07 2018 10:53 billynasty wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 10:16 Fango wrote:On August 07 2018 09:14 billynasty wrote:On August 07 2018 05:13 IshinShishi wrote:
Maru's 2018 has been as dominant with much stronger competition, I wouldn't dream of putting Serral above him, but a top 5 PR def seems fitting. And i'm pretty sure that over the past couple years, in head to head they're even. He's at the very least on their level atm They've only met twice. Once at WeSG a few months ago where maru won 3-0, and once yesterday in the team showmatch where Serral won 1-0. According to Aligulac on 01/22/2018 during the IEM Season XII World Championship it says Serral won 2-0 vs Maru. I didn't think they met but then i saw this, guess Aligulac isn't always accurate? Heres's a screenshot of it:
The problem is that aligulac takes into account every game played to the same degree, regardless of the circumstance of the match. When Serral won 2-0 it was on the EU server, with Maru playing from korea. The ping playing from kr to eu is ridiculous, to the point where you can't expect to win playing from kr. That's why no one takes those kind of cross-server results seriously.
Only Maru and I think Trap even tried to play in that qualifier, the rest deemed it unwinnable. Hell I'm not close to the speed of pro players and I find 200-300 ping unplayable.
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On August 07 2018 02:03 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 00:58 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 23:02 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 22:21 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 22:06 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 19:19 Drake wrote:On August 06 2018 00:01 Riner1212 wrote:
I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god. expect he won his last 4 tournaments .. He won IEM Katowice and WeSG? right he was only top4 in those, so he just won the last three tournaments he entered, which shouldn't change the point to much i presume No but are wcs wins really that valuble? The guy said winning one event doesn't make you a god, which is true. So I'd assume winning easy events doesn't either. "easy", i see so far scarlett took more series from serral than dark in the last b05, but i'm sure that means nothing as well. by the way, why was there never a korean that dominated that hard outside of korea, neither polt, nor hydra where close to the consistency of serral (or are they not so good as well anymore?) but it´s pointless anyway, i see serral eye to eye with top koreans, the fact that he beats them in a game called sc2 is enough for me. if you are willing to change or reinterpret anything but the natural laws themself too not change the "korea > rest" idea, all power to you Scarlett taking two maps of Serral was literally a 1 in 20 result. It's probably the only time Serral's been on match point all year. Wcs tournaments are easy for Serral. They'd be just easy for the top koreans as well (exampes being WeSG and Katowice). Don't make the mistake of cherry picking the results that favour your view and not looking at the tournaments as a whole. You seem to think I'm trying to downplay Serral's skill, which isn't true. He's on the same level as top koerans. What I'm trying to say is that wcs events aren't much of a challenge for him, and the level of play in them isn't close to that of korean events. I couldn't care less if he farms 3, 4, or even 10 of them. It's like when SpeCial farms the latin american events, doesn't say anything about how he'll be in the global tournaments. And btw, koreans like Polt and Hydra were not on the same level as those who dominated in korea like Maru or Dark either.
scarlett is also the last non-korean to bet him offline iirc
speaking of cherrypicking:
this works not only for players but for tournaments:
serrals looses vs classic in IEM -> shows that classic was to good
serral beats classic in WESG -> there wasn't enough on the line for classic, if he would played seriously bla bla...
serral wins 3 WCS in dominating fashion -> easy, every top korean can do taht (even though non ever done it)
maru wins 2 GSL -> amazing, nobody can come close to him, if serral was in korea he would not come close
serral comes to korea and beats a top player of every race -> meh, it wasn't a GSL so it doesn't count or sth about recent form of the players.
i just looked at the two GSLs maru won, and tbh he never hat to beat more than 2-3 "top" players (players like solar are surley not rated higher than polt for example).
I bet if serral would have won the exact same matches (which we now all no he can possibly) people would downplay that as well i'm sure.
if serral would win a blizzcon, IEM WC or a GSL, people would still pick the cherries there as well, and if he loses them, (which surley is the more likely event), it proves, that it was all hype ...
but as i already said:
some people will never change their opinion on something, no matter what happens, it's one of the banes of internet discussion
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On August 07 2018 14:10 uummpaa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 02:03 Fango wrote:On August 07 2018 00:58 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 23:02 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 22:21 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 22:06 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 19:19 Drake wrote:On August 06 2018 00:01 Riner1212 wrote:
I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god. expect he won his last 4 tournaments .. He won IEM Katowice and WeSG? right he was only top4 in those, so he just won the last three tournaments he entered, which shouldn't change the point to much i presume No but are wcs wins really that valuble? The guy said winning one event doesn't make you a god, which is true. So I'd assume winning easy events doesn't either. "easy", i see so far scarlett took more series from serral than dark in the last b05, but i'm sure that means nothing as well. by the way, why was there never a korean that dominated that hard outside of korea, neither polt, nor hydra where close to the consistency of serral (or are they not so good as well anymore?) but it´s pointless anyway, i see serral eye to eye with top koreans, the fact that he beats them in a game called sc2 is enough for me. if you are willing to change or reinterpret anything but the natural laws themself too not change the "korea > rest" idea, all power to you Scarlett taking two maps of Serral was literally a 1 in 20 result. It's probably the only time Serral's been on match point all year. Wcs tournaments are easy for Serral. They'd be just easy for the top koreans as well (exampes being WeSG and Katowice). Don't make the mistake of cherry picking the results that favour your view and not looking at the tournaments as a whole. You seem to think I'm trying to downplay Serral's skill, which isn't true. He's on the same level as top koerans. What I'm trying to say is that wcs events aren't much of a challenge for him, and the level of play in them isn't close to that of korean events. I couldn't care less if he farms 3, 4, or even 10 of them. It's like when SpeCial farms the latin american events, doesn't say anything about how he'll be in the global tournaments. And btw, koreans like Polt and Hydra were not on the same level as those who dominated in korea like Maru or Dark either. scarlett is also the last non-korean to bet him offline iirc speaking of cherrypicking: this works not only for players but for tournaments: serrals looses vs classic in IEM -> shows that classic was to good serral beats classic in WESG -> there wasn't enough on the line for classic, if he would played seriously bla bla... serral wins 3 WCS in dominating fashion -> easy, every top korean can do taht (even though non ever done it) maru wins 2 GSL -> amazing, nobody can come close to him, if serral was in korea he would not come close serral comes to korea and beats a top player of every race -> meh, it wasn't a GSL so it doesn't count or sth about recent form of the players. i just looked at the two GSLs maru won, and tbh he never hat to beat more than 2-3 "top" players (players like solar are surley not rated higher than polt for example). I bet if serral would have won the exact same matches (which we now all no he can possibly) people would downplay that as well i'm sure. if serral would win a blizzcon, IEM WC or a GSL, people would still pick the cherries there as well, and if he loses them, (which surley is the more likely event), it proves, that it was all hype ... but as i already said: some people will never change their opinion on something, no matter what happens, it's one of the banes of internet discussion
The bane of humans. Only time and results will tell.
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On August 07 2018 14:56 vyzion wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 14:10 uummpaa wrote:On August 07 2018 02:03 Fango wrote:On August 07 2018 00:58 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 23:02 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 22:21 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 22:06 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 19:19 Drake wrote:On August 06 2018 00:01 Riner1212 wrote:
I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god. expect he won his last 4 tournaments .. He won IEM Katowice and WeSG? right he was only top4 in those, so he just won the last three tournaments he entered, which shouldn't change the point to much i presume No but are wcs wins really that valuble? The guy said winning one event doesn't make you a god, which is true. So I'd assume winning easy events doesn't either. "easy", i see so far scarlett took more series from serral than dark in the last b05, but i'm sure that means nothing as well. by the way, why was there never a korean that dominated that hard outside of korea, neither polt, nor hydra where close to the consistency of serral (or are they not so good as well anymore?) but it´s pointless anyway, i see serral eye to eye with top koreans, the fact that he beats them in a game called sc2 is enough for me. if you are willing to change or reinterpret anything but the natural laws themself too not change the "korea > rest" idea, all power to you Scarlett taking two maps of Serral was literally a 1 in 20 result. It's probably the only time Serral's been on match point all year. Wcs tournaments are easy for Serral. They'd be just easy for the top koreans as well (exampes being WeSG and Katowice). Don't make the mistake of cherry picking the results that favour your view and not looking at the tournaments as a whole. You seem to think I'm trying to downplay Serral's skill, which isn't true. He's on the same level as top koerans. What I'm trying to say is that wcs events aren't much of a challenge for him, and the level of play in them isn't close to that of korean events. I couldn't care less if he farms 3, 4, or even 10 of them. It's like when SpeCial farms the latin american events, doesn't say anything about how he'll be in the global tournaments. And btw, koreans like Polt and Hydra were not on the same level as those who dominated in korea like Maru or Dark either. scarlett is also the last non-korean to bet him offline iirc speaking of cherrypicking: this works not only for players but for tournaments: serrals looses vs classic in IEM -> shows that classic was to good serral beats classic in WESG -> there wasn't enough on the line for classic, if he would played seriously bla bla... serral wins 3 WCS in dominating fashion -> easy, every top korean can do taht (even though non ever done it) maru wins 2 GSL -> amazing, nobody can come close to him, if serral was in korea he would not come close serral comes to korea and beats a top player of every race -> meh, it wasn't a GSL so it doesn't count or sth about recent form of the players. i just looked at the two GSLs maru won, and tbh he never hat to beat more than 2-3 "top" players (players like solar are surley not rated higher than polt for example). I bet if serral would have won the exact same matches (which we now all no he can possibly) people would downplay that as well i'm sure. if serral would win a blizzcon, IEM WC or a GSL, people would still pick the cherries there as well, and if he loses them, (which surley is the more likely event), it proves, that it was all hype ... but as i already said: some people will never change their opinion on something, no matter what happens, it's one of the banes of internet discussion The bane of humans. Only time and results will tell.
the entire discussion here is about which results do tell and which don't ^^
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So that's what an Ro16 GSL looks in 2018? 50% foreigners? Doesn't look like Korean domination to me at all, considering this tournament is held offline in Korea over a longer period (not just a weekend) so you have to live there. I haven't paid much attention to the SC2 scene over the past few years but this is pretty surprising considering everytime I read an SC2 there was a discussion about Koreans being to dominant etc.
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On August 07 2018 15:27 Miragee wrote:
So that's what an Ro16 GSL looks in 2018? 50% foreigners? Doesn't look like Korean domination to me at all, considering this tournament is held offline in Korea over a longer period (not just a weekend) so you have to live there. I haven't paid much attention to the SC2 scene over the past few years but this is pretty surprising considering everytime I read an SC2 there was a discussion about Koreans being to dominant etc.
It's pretty much only Serral at this point, every single foreigner other than him is still getting murdered.
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On August 07 2018 15:12 uummpaa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 14:56 vyzion wrote:On August 07 2018 14:10 uummpaa wrote:On August 07 2018 02:03 Fango wrote:On August 07 2018 00:58 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 23:02 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 22:21 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 22:06 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 19:19 Drake wrote:On August 06 2018 00:01 Riner1212 wrote:
I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god. expect he won his last 4 tournaments .. He won IEM Katowice and WeSG? right he was only top4 in those, so he just won the last three tournaments he entered, which shouldn't change the point to much i presume No but are wcs wins really that valuble? The guy said winning one event doesn't make you a god, which is true. So I'd assume winning easy events doesn't either. "easy", i see so far scarlett took more series from serral than dark in the last b05, but i'm sure that means nothing as well. by the way, why was there never a korean that dominated that hard outside of korea, neither polt, nor hydra where close to the consistency of serral (or are they not so good as well anymore?) but it´s pointless anyway, i see serral eye to eye with top koreans, the fact that he beats them in a game called sc2 is enough for me. if you are willing to change or reinterpret anything but the natural laws themself too not change the "korea > rest" idea, all power to you Scarlett taking two maps of Serral was literally a 1 in 20 result. It's probably the only time Serral's been on match point all year. Wcs tournaments are easy for Serral. They'd be just easy for the top koreans as well (exampes being WeSG and Katowice). Don't make the mistake of cherry picking the results that favour your view and not looking at the tournaments as a whole. You seem to think I'm trying to downplay Serral's skill, which isn't true. He's on the same level as top koerans. What I'm trying to say is that wcs events aren't much of a challenge for him, and the level of play in them isn't close to that of korean events. I couldn't care less if he farms 3, 4, or even 10 of them. It's like when SpeCial farms the latin american events, doesn't say anything about how he'll be in the global tournaments. And btw, koreans like Polt and Hydra were not on the same level as those who dominated in korea like Maru or Dark either. scarlett is also the last non-korean to bet him offline iirc speaking of cherrypicking: this works not only for players but for tournaments: serrals looses vs classic in IEM -> shows that classic was to good serral beats classic in WESG -> there wasn't enough on the line for classic, if he would played seriously bla bla... serral wins 3 WCS in dominating fashion -> easy, every top korean can do taht (even though non ever done it) maru wins 2 GSL -> amazing, nobody can come close to him, if serral was in korea he would not come close serral comes to korea and beats a top player of every race -> meh, it wasn't a GSL so it doesn't count or sth about recent form of the players. i just looked at the two GSLs maru won, and tbh he never hat to beat more than 2-3 "top" players (players like solar are surley not rated higher than polt for example). I bet if serral would have won the exact same matches (which we now all no he can possibly) people would downplay that as well i'm sure. if serral would win a blizzcon, IEM WC or a GSL, people would still pick the cherries there as well, and if he loses them, (which surley is the more likely event), it proves, that it was all hype ... but as i already said: some people will never change their opinion on something, no matter what happens, it's one of the banes of internet discussion The bane of humans. Only time and results will tell. the entire discussion here is about which results do tell and which don't ^^
True, but we need more data!!!
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On August 07 2018 14:10 uummpaa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 02:03 Fango wrote:On August 07 2018 00:58 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 23:02 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 22:21 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 22:06 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 19:19 Drake wrote:On August 06 2018 00:01 Riner1212 wrote:
I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god. expect he won his last 4 tournaments .. He won IEM Katowice and WeSG? right he was only top4 in those, so he just won the last three tournaments he entered, which shouldn't change the point to much i presume No but are wcs wins really that valuble? The guy said winning one event doesn't make you a god, which is true. So I'd assume winning easy events doesn't either. "easy", i see so far scarlett took more series from serral than dark in the last b05, but i'm sure that means nothing as well. by the way, why was there never a korean that dominated that hard outside of korea, neither polt, nor hydra where close to the consistency of serral (or are they not so good as well anymore?) but it´s pointless anyway, i see serral eye to eye with top koreans, the fact that he beats them in a game called sc2 is enough for me. if you are willing to change or reinterpret anything but the natural laws themself too not change the "korea > rest" idea, all power to you Scarlett taking two maps of Serral was literally a 1 in 20 result. It's probably the only time Serral's been on match point all year. Wcs tournaments are easy for Serral. They'd be just easy for the top koreans as well (exampes being WeSG and Katowice). Don't make the mistake of cherry picking the results that favour your view and not looking at the tournaments as a whole. You seem to think I'm trying to downplay Serral's skill, which isn't true. He's on the same level as top koerans. What I'm trying to say is that wcs events aren't much of a challenge for him, and the level of play in them isn't close to that of korean events. I couldn't care less if he farms 3, 4, or even 10 of them. It's like when SpeCial farms the latin american events, doesn't say anything about how he'll be in the global tournaments. And btw, koreans like Polt and Hydra were not on the same level as those who dominated in korea like Maru or Dark either. scarlett is also the last non-korean to bet him offline iirc speaking of cherrypicking: this works not only for players but for tournaments: serrals looses vs classic in IEM -> shows that classic was to good serral beats classic in WESG -> there wasn't enough on the line for classic, if he would played seriously bla bla... serral wins 3 WCS in dominating fashion -> easy, every top korean can do taht (even though non ever done it) maru wins 2 GSL -> amazing, nobody can come close to him, if serral was in korea he would not come close serral comes to korea and beats a top player of every race -> meh, it wasn't a GSL so it doesn't count or sth about recent form of the players. i just looked at the two GSLs maru won, and tbh he never hat to beat more than 2-3 "top" players (players like solar are surley not rated higher than polt for example). I bet if serral would have won the exact same matches (which we now all no he can possibly) people would downplay that as well i'm sure. if serral would win a blizzcon, IEM WC or a GSL, people would still pick the cherries there as well, and if he loses them, (which surley is the more likely event), it proves, that it was all hype ... but as i already said: some people will never change their opinion on something, no matter what happens, it's one of the banes of internet discussion
well at least is not called pacthzerg by teamliquid
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On August 07 2018 17:34 Argonauta wrote:
well at least is not called pacthzerg by teamliquid
They got more careful as they know their one-way bias has been revealed loads of times in the past 8 years.
GZ Serral btw.
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On August 07 2018 15:27 Miragee wrote:
So that's what an Ro16 GSL looks in 2018? 50% foreigners? Doesn't look like Korean domination to me at all, considering this tournament is held offline in Korea over a longer period (not just a weekend) so you have to live there. I haven't paid much attention to the SC2 scene over the past few years but this is pretty surprising considering everytime I read an SC2 there was a discussion about Koreans being to dominant etc.
It’s 12.5% foreigners for this GSL in ro16
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On August 07 2018 14:10 uummpaa wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 02:03 Fango wrote:On August 07 2018 00:58 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 23:02 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 22:21 uummpaa wrote:On August 06 2018 22:06 Fango wrote:On August 06 2018 19:19 Drake wrote:On August 06 2018 00:01 Riner1212 wrote:
I have to congratulate serial for displaying great perseverance/prowess to win the tournament, but winning one tournament does not make him a god. expect he won his last 4 tournaments .. He won IEM Katowice and WeSG? right he was only top4 in those, so he just won the last three tournaments he entered, which shouldn't change the point to much i presume No but are wcs wins really that valuble? The guy said winning one event doesn't make you a god, which is true. So I'd assume winning easy events doesn't either. "easy", i see so far scarlett took more series from serral than dark in the last b05, but i'm sure that means nothing as well. by the way, why was there never a korean that dominated that hard outside of korea, neither polt, nor hydra where close to the consistency of serral (or are they not so good as well anymore?) but it´s pointless anyway, i see serral eye to eye with top koreans, the fact that he beats them in a game called sc2 is enough for me. if you are willing to change or reinterpret anything but the natural laws themself too not change the "korea > rest" idea, all power to you Scarlett taking two maps of Serral was literally a 1 in 20 result. It's probably the only time Serral's been on match point all year. Wcs tournaments are easy for Serral. They'd be just easy for the top koreans as well (exampes being WeSG and Katowice). Don't make the mistake of cherry picking the results that favour your view and not looking at the tournaments as a whole. You seem to think I'm trying to downplay Serral's skill, which isn't true. He's on the same level as top koerans. What I'm trying to say is that wcs events aren't much of a challenge for him, and the level of play in them isn't close to that of korean events. I couldn't care less if he farms 3, 4, or even 10 of them. It's like when SpeCial farms the latin american events, doesn't say anything about how he'll be in the global tournaments. And btw, koreans like Polt and Hydra were not on the same level as those who dominated in korea like Maru or Dark either. scarlett is also the last non-korean to bet him offline iirc speaking of cherrypicking: this works not only for players but for tournaments: serrals looses vs classic in IEM -> shows that classic was to good serral beats classic in WESG -> there wasn't enough on the line for classic, if he would played seriously bla bla... serral wins 3 WCS in dominating fashion -> easy, every top korean can do taht (even though non ever done it) maru wins 2 GSL -> amazing, nobody can come close to him, if serral was in korea he would not come close serral comes to korea and beats a top player of every race -> meh, it wasn't a GSL so it doesn't count or sth about recent form of the players. i just looked at the two GSLs maru won, and tbh he never hat to beat more than 2-3 "top" players (players like solar are surley not rated higher than polt for example). I bet if serral would have won the exact same matches (which we now all no he can possibly) people would downplay that as well i'm sure. if serral would win a blizzcon, IEM WC or a GSL, people would still pick the cherries there as well, and if he loses them, (which surley is the more likely event), it proves, that it was all hype ... but as i already said: some people will never change their opinion on something, no matter what happens, it's one of the banes of internet discussion
Now you're just spouting irrelevnt nonsense.
You completely missed the point I was making, which was that wcs wins are easy for Serral, and would be just as easy for any top korean (look at any wesg/katowice events if you don't believe me). You tried to argue that Scarlett taking two maps of him disproves this, which is a a perfect example of cherry picking because it's a 1/20 occurrence.
Then instead of answering, you just rant about excuses and make up a bunch of strawmans you think I've said (which I haven't) or would say in various situations? Good job.
Edit: you actually think that I would downplay Serral if he won two GSLs? Get a grip. GSL is the most competitive tournament in sc2. Serral hasn't done it yet, accept it instead of creating some stupid scenario where "even if he did you'd still make excuses".
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in which esport that winning one invitational tournament makes you the best player in the world ??? Hell no. Serral is on par with top Koreans, yes. But don't do stupid thing like saying he is the best in the world because he gotta do more to deserve that title.
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GSL is the most competitive tournament in sc2.
It might be, but in the end, if you have one or two players who are simply better or at least have a big momentum ... i don't see a big difference. You can argue that there are a bunch of korean top players who are at a similar top level, and that was true for most of the earlier years and seasons ... but this year it's all about Maru regarding GSL, and you can argue that it is (or at least looks) similar easy for maru to win GSL(s) this year as it is for Serral to win WCS(s).
Does this mean GSL and WCS are easy tournaments? Or does it simply mean there are two players in both regions, who are - at least this year! - clearly better then their opponents?
As for GSL ... i don't think it is that much more competitive for ro32 or ro16 than WCS ... maybe after ro4, but before that ... i don't know Kev ...
Serral hasn't done it yet
And here is the point ... why SHOULD he?
He would have to leave his country, going for korea for several months ... maybe he just don't like that?
As far as i remember Maru for example doesn't like to travel either ... so where is the problem?
GSL is a good tournament with very good players, for sure ... but same goes for IEM, WESG and WCS events. And in the end you have things like GSL vs. the world or BlizzCon where you have potentially (i know, GSL v. the world isn't quite there because of the voting system there are also some weeker players in it) the best of all regions ... which is (at least for Blizzcon) far better then any WCS OR GSL Ro16.
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On August 08 2018 00:07 JoFar wrote:As for GSL ... i don't think it is that much more competitive for ro32 or ro16 than WCS ... maybe after ro4, but before that ... i don't know Kev ...
It's not even close. Did you miss IEM katowice? When you put all the best wcs and gsl players in the same event, that's what happens. Serral was the only one competing. Same goes for WeSG, the three koreans and Serral were basically guaranteed to be the top 4.
Most WCS players other than Serral wouldn't be expected to get past ro16 in GSL, most don't make it past ro32. Has even lost in the GSL qualfiiers then made the finals at WCS a couple weeks later. Neeb lost in the qualifiers last year and then won WCS Montreal right after. SpeCial is arguably the second best foreigner of the year, and he's lost 4 times in the ro32 now.
On August 08 2018 00:07 JoFar wrote:
And here is the point ... why SHOULD he?
He would have to leave his country, going for korea for several months ... maybe he just don't like that?
As far as i remember Maru for example doesn't like to travel either ... so where is the problem?
Don't get me wrong, Serral has the right to do whatever he wants. But he hasn't won GSL, let alone twice in a row like Maru. The other guy couldn't seem to accept this and said crap like "well even if he did you'd make excuses", which isn't true. What Maru has done is amazing, it would be no different if Serral, or Leenock, or Classic, or whoever did it.
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On August 07 2018 02:45 Marras wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 01:50 Zaros wrote:On August 07 2018 01:39 ThunderJunk wrote:
Well, hasn't Serral been living and training in Korea for at least 4 months now? No, he’s been there a couple of weeks before this event and went for a couple of months at the end of last year he mostly stays and plays in Finland I don't think he even went there weeks before the event, Showtime did. As far as I know Serral just went there for the event and is already back in Finland now.
Yeah. A total of about a week this time, and the last time he went there was 10 months ago for three weeks.
On August 07 2018 03:49 thezanursic wrote:
Haven't been following Starcraft 2, a foreigner at the top of Alegulac winning Korean tournaments with a winrate of 80%.
This doesn't seem right...
And he was actually on top of aligulac from November to May already. After that Serral had to win 25 series straight to get the first place back.
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I really hope Serral keeps this up, he's been making SC2 extra fun recently. Kind of tired of korean domination. With his mentality of thinking about the game, i hope he'll think about preparing for how everyone will be studying him.
If Serral keeps this up and eventually becomes the best player in the world (key word is if), do you think it'd have an affect on the popularity of the game/genre since it might garner more international attention? it feels like Korean domination, a high learning curve, and so many instant gratification dopamine games these days makes the appeal of SC2 weaker.
Since Blizzard split up the WCS system to make it more feasible for foreigners (assumption) making it more appealing to be an SC2 progamer, is Serral a prime example of this? Will he motivate and carry momentum for all other foreigners to compete at a higher level?
I'm just theory crafting and wondering if the game was dominated by foreigners, would it have more appeal to the rest of the world? Or, is it just something that's not as enjoyable as team play MOBA or plug and play FPS games.
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On August 07 2018 15:54 IshinShishi wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 15:27 Miragee wrote:
So that's what an Ro16 GSL looks in 2018? 50% foreigners? Doesn't look like Korean domination to me at all, considering this tournament is held offline in Korea over a longer period (not just a weekend) so you have to live there. I haven't paid much attention to the SC2 scene over the past few years but this is pretty surprising considering everytime I read an SC2 there was a discussion about Koreans being to dominant etc. It's pretty much only Serral at this point, every single foreigner other than him is still getting murdered.
Well, other foreigners here won their series or made it a close call, no?
On August 07 2018 19:00 Zaros wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 15:27 Miragee wrote:
So that's what an Ro16 GSL looks in 2018? 50% foreigners? Doesn't look like Korean domination to me at all, considering this tournament is held offline in Korea over a longer period (not just a weekend) so you have to live there. I haven't paid much attention to the SC2 scene over the past few years but this is pretty surprising considering everytime I read an SC2 there was a discussion about Koreans being to dominant etc. It’s 12.5% foreigners for this GSL in ro16
I'm counting 8 in the starting post?
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On August 08 2018 02:50 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On August 07 2018 19:00 Zaros wrote:On August 07 2018 15:27 Miragee wrote:
So that's what an Ro16 GSL looks in 2018? 50% foreigners? Doesn't look like Korean domination to me at all, considering this tournament is held offline in Korea over a longer period (not just a weekend) so you have to live there. I haven't paid much attention to the SC2 scene over the past few years but this is pretty surprising considering everytime I read an SC2 there was a discussion about Koreans being to dominant etc. It’s 12.5% foreigners for this GSL in ro16 I'm counting 8 in the starting post?
This was an invitational / popular vote tourney, 8 from Korea and 8 from the rest of the world. No qualifiers as such.
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On August 08 2018 04:06 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2018 02:50 Miragee wrote:On August 07 2018 19:00 Zaros wrote:On August 07 2018 15:27 Miragee wrote:
So that's what an Ro16 GSL looks in 2018? 50% foreigners? Doesn't look like Korean domination to me at all, considering this tournament is held offline in Korea over a longer period (not just a weekend) so you have to live there. I haven't paid much attention to the SC2 scene over the past few years but this is pretty surprising considering everytime I read an SC2 there was a discussion about Koreans being to dominant etc. It’s 12.5% foreigners for this GSL in ro16 I'm counting 8 in the starting post? This was an invitational / popular vote tourney, 8 from Korea and 8 from the rest of the world. No qualifiers as such.
Oh, I thought this was a GSL. I should learn how to read...
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Serral could be the best player nowadays, or at least the best Zerg. It's not just his wins, but his gameplay when u watch it. It's really perfect play in every matchup. No Korean Zerg plays this flawlessly to be honest. If he wins Blizzcon, he will write history of this game with golden letters.
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Props to Serral. A definite career high point and milestone.
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Tier 1 for me right now is Maru/Rogue/Inno/Serral, and I'd knock Inno or even Rogue off of there before Serral right now. Absolute godhood. Never been more angry about region lock, there should be a middle ground between Serral not getting to play the foreign scene at all and only having/getting to face the top Koreans at GSL vs. World and Blizzcon.
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Never been more angry about region lock
Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock.
In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue.
Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event.
Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it.
And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ...
Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now.
Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that.
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On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that.
I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far.
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On August 08 2018 15:59 vyzion wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Never been more angry about region lock Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that. I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far.
To be fair if your measure of success is toppling Goliath by giving him a terminal disease before David was even old enough to sling a stone, then all I can say is that we have different measures of success. I think that if there was no prejudiced system that drained the Korean scene and gave artificial lifeblood to the foreign scene, Koreans would never have lost to foreigners on a stage as big as this one. It's not just that the foreign community was incentivized, it's also that the Korean community was forced to downsize and re-prioritize. In short, I think that the gap has shrunk not only due to the efforts and benefits garnered by foreigners, but also because of the drought that Blizzard forced onto the Korean scene. Foreigners didn't simply rise to the level of Koreans, Koreans' growth had slowed tremendously while foreigners reaped the benefits of greater incentives. Maybe it was the "right" call, but I think it heavily depends on your perspective.
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On August 08 2018 17:05 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2018 15:59 vyzion wrote:On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Never been more angry about region lock Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that. I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far. To be fair if your measure of success is toppling Goliath by giving him a terminal disease before David was even old enough to sling a stone, then all I can say is that we have different measures of success. I think that if there was no prejudiced system that drained the Korean scene and gave artificial lifeblood to the foreign scene, Koreans would never have lost to foreigners on a stage as big as this one. It's not just that the foreign community was incentivized, it's also that the Korean community was forced to downsize and re-prioritize. In short, I think that the gap has shrunk not only due to the efforts and benefits garnered by foreigners, but also because of the drought that Blizzard forced onto the Korean scene. Foreigners didn't simply rise to the level of Koreans, Koreans' growth had slowed tremendously while foreigners reaped the benefits of greater incentives. Maybe it was the "right" call, but I think it heavily depends on your perspective.
I don't think that Blizzard has forced a drought onto the Korean scene though. Blizzard has been pumping in money in the Korean SC2 scene for the last two years, and maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like there are hardly anyone else contributing to it financially or in any other capacity these days. I mean, how many Korean SC2 teams exist today? Look at the Koreans participating in this tournament. 2 are on Jinair, 3 on foreign teams, and 3 without a team. How many Korean tournaments exist where Blizzard is not providing the cash for the price pool? How many Koreans are even watching SC2?
I don't follow BW myself, but I can see on TL's list of Live Streams that there is someone called Britney streaming with 6543 (!) viewers. Of course, as I wanted to check out the stream it shows two dudes eating, so maybe this is a combined cooking show plus BW...
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/C0QdwWi.jpg)
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On August 08 2018 17:05 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2018 15:59 vyzion wrote:On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Never been more angry about region lock Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that. I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far. To be fair if your measure of success is toppling Goliath by giving him a terminal disease before David was even old enough to sling a stone, then all I can say is that we have different measures of success. I think that if there was no prejudiced system that drained the Korean scene and gave artificial lifeblood to the foreign scene, Koreans would never have lost to foreigners on a stage as big as this one. It's not just that the foreign community was incentivized, it's also that the Korean community was forced to downsize and re-prioritize. In short, I think that the gap has shrunk not only due to the efforts and benefits garnered by foreigners, but also because of the drought that Blizzard forced onto the Korean scene. Foreigners didn't simply rise to the level of Koreans, Koreans' growth had slowed tremendously while foreigners reaped the benefits of greater incentives. Maybe it was the "right" call, but I think it heavily depends on your perspective.
I'll be thrilled to hear how Blizzard "slowed Koreans' growth tremendously". Enlighten me.
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Terrific write-up. I haven't followed SC2 at all this year, couldn't pick Serral out of a lineup, but that synopsis had me hooked.
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On August 08 2018 17:38 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2018 17:05 Jealous wrote:On August 08 2018 15:59 vyzion wrote:On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Never been more angry about region lock Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that. I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far. To be fair if your measure of success is toppling Goliath by giving him a terminal disease before David was even old enough to sling a stone, then all I can say is that we have different measures of success. I think that if there was no prejudiced system that drained the Korean scene and gave artificial lifeblood to the foreign scene, Koreans would never have lost to foreigners on a stage as big as this one. It's not just that the foreign community was incentivized, it's also that the Korean community was forced to downsize and re-prioritize. In short, I think that the gap has shrunk not only due to the efforts and benefits garnered by foreigners, but also because of the drought that Blizzard forced onto the Korean scene. Foreigners didn't simply rise to the level of Koreans, Koreans' growth had slowed tremendously while foreigners reaped the benefits of greater incentives. Maybe it was the "right" call, but I think it heavily depends on your perspective. I don't think that Blizzard has forced a drought onto the Korean scene though. Blizzard has been pumping in money in the Korean SC2 scene for the last two years, and maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like there are hardly anyone else contributing to it financially or in any other capacity these days. I mean, how many Korean SC2 teams exist today? Look at the Koreans participating in this tournament. 2 are on Jinair, 3 on foreign teams, and 3 without a team. How many Korean tournaments exist where Blizzard is not providing the cash for the price pool? How many Koreans are even watching SC2? I don't follow BW myself, but I can see on TL's list of Live Streams that there is someone called Britney streaming with 6543 (!) viewers. Of course, as I wanted to check out the stream it shows two dudes eating, so maybe this is a combined cooking show plus BW...
Britney is very much an entertainer that streams a lot of Broodwar (playing himself, organising tournaments, streaming other tournaments) but also does other...crazy stuff Koreans love to watch.
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Czech Republic12128 Posts
On August 08 2018 17:38 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2018 17:05 Jealous wrote:On August 08 2018 15:59 vyzion wrote:On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Never been more angry about region lock Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that. I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far. To be fair if your measure of success is toppling Goliath by giving him a terminal disease before David was even old enough to sling a stone, then all I can say is that we have different measures of success. I think that if there was no prejudiced system that drained the Korean scene and gave artificial lifeblood to the foreign scene, Koreans would never have lost to foreigners on a stage as big as this one. It's not just that the foreign community was incentivized, it's also that the Korean community was forced to downsize and re-prioritize. In short, I think that the gap has shrunk not only due to the efforts and benefits garnered by foreigners, but also because of the drought that Blizzard forced onto the Korean scene. Foreigners didn't simply rise to the level of Koreans, Koreans' growth had slowed tremendously while foreigners reaped the benefits of greater incentives. Maybe it was the "right" call, but I think it heavily depends on your perspective. I don't think that Blizzard has forced a drought onto the Korean scene though. Blizzard has been pumping in money in the Korean SC2 scene for the last two years, and maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like there are hardly anyone else contributing to it financially or in any other capacity these days. I mean, how many Korean SC2 teams exist today? Look at the Koreans participating in this tournament. 2 are on Jinair, 3 on foreign teams, and 3 without a team. How many Korean tournaments exist where Blizzard is not providing the cash for the price pool? How many Koreans are even watching SC2? I don't follow BW myself, but I can see on TL's list of Live Streams that there is someone called Britney streaming with 6543 (!) viewers. Of course, as I wanted to check out the stream it shows two dudes eating, so maybe this is a combined cooking show plus BW...
It doesn't help when you sign for a tournament and foreigner kicks you out of GSL. That's a closed season for you... think about this. And region lock is implemented by whom? Blizzard ;-)
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On August 09 2018 04:07 Miragee wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2018 17:38 BaneRiders wrote:On August 08 2018 17:05 Jealous wrote:On August 08 2018 15:59 vyzion wrote:On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Never been more angry about region lock Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that. I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far. To be fair if your measure of success is toppling Goliath by giving him a terminal disease before David was even old enough to sling a stone, then all I can say is that we have different measures of success. I think that if there was no prejudiced system that drained the Korean scene and gave artificial lifeblood to the foreign scene, Koreans would never have lost to foreigners on a stage as big as this one. It's not just that the foreign community was incentivized, it's also that the Korean community was forced to downsize and re-prioritize. In short, I think that the gap has shrunk not only due to the efforts and benefits garnered by foreigners, but also because of the drought that Blizzard forced onto the Korean scene. Foreigners didn't simply rise to the level of Koreans, Koreans' growth had slowed tremendously while foreigners reaped the benefits of greater incentives. Maybe it was the "right" call, but I think it heavily depends on your perspective. I don't think that Blizzard has forced a drought onto the Korean scene though. Blizzard has been pumping in money in the Korean SC2 scene for the last two years, and maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like there are hardly anyone else contributing to it financially or in any other capacity these days. I mean, how many Korean SC2 teams exist today? Look at the Koreans participating in this tournament. 2 are on Jinair, 3 on foreign teams, and 3 without a team. How many Korean tournaments exist where Blizzard is not providing the cash for the price pool? How many Koreans are even watching SC2? I don't follow BW myself, but I can see on TL's list of Live Streams that there is someone called Britney streaming with 6543 (!) viewers. Of course, as I wanted to check out the stream it shows two dudes eating, so maybe this is a combined cooking show plus BW... Britney is very much an entertainer that streams a lot of Broodwar (playing himself, organising tournaments, streaming other tournaments) but also does other...crazy stuff Koreans love to watch.
Sounds like a cool guy. Blizzard should recruit him for SC2.
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On August 09 2018 04:46 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2018 17:38 BaneRiders wrote:On August 08 2018 17:05 Jealous wrote:On August 08 2018 15:59 vyzion wrote:On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Never been more angry about region lock Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that. I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far. To be fair if your measure of success is toppling Goliath by giving him a terminal disease before David was even old enough to sling a stone, then all I can say is that we have different measures of success. I think that if there was no prejudiced system that drained the Korean scene and gave artificial lifeblood to the foreign scene, Koreans would never have lost to foreigners on a stage as big as this one. It's not just that the foreign community was incentivized, it's also that the Korean community was forced to downsize and re-prioritize. In short, I think that the gap has shrunk not only due to the efforts and benefits garnered by foreigners, but also because of the drought that Blizzard forced onto the Korean scene. Foreigners didn't simply rise to the level of Koreans, Koreans' growth had slowed tremendously while foreigners reaped the benefits of greater incentives. Maybe it was the "right" call, but I think it heavily depends on your perspective. I don't think that Blizzard has forced a drought onto the Korean scene though. Blizzard has been pumping in money in the Korean SC2 scene for the last two years, and maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like there are hardly anyone else contributing to it financially or in any other capacity these days. I mean, how many Korean SC2 teams exist today? Look at the Koreans participating in this tournament. 2 are on Jinair, 3 on foreign teams, and 3 without a team. How many Korean tournaments exist where Blizzard is not providing the cash for the price pool? How many Koreans are even watching SC2? I don't follow BW myself, but I can see on TL's list of Live Streams that there is someone called Britney streaming with 6543 (!) viewers. Of course, as I wanted to check out the stream it shows two dudes eating, so maybe this is a combined cooking show plus BW... It doesn't help when you sign for a tournament and foreigner kicks you out of GSL. That's a closed season for you... think about this. And region lock is implemented by whom? Blizzard ;-)
That goes both ways though. I'd say True has won more bucks the last two years in WCS than the combined foreign forces in GSL (not to mention Hydra, Polt etc. competing in EU and NA before). And if you mean that it is closed season because there aren't any other tournaments in Korea, then that is hardly Blizzard's fault. People appears to be busy with BW or other games. If I were Blizzard, looking at the return on my investment, I'd seriously have to consider an immediate closure of sponsoring GSL for 2019 and shift the funds to have a fully global circuit, say 3-4 tourneys in EU (like Germany, Spain, Sweden and Poland or something), 3-4 in North America, 2 in South America and maybe 1 in Korea, China, Australia, and 1 somewhere in South-East Asia (if there is an interesting market there) respectively. 12 big tourneys spread over the year with a final.
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On August 08 2018 17:05 Jealous wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2018 15:59 vyzion wrote:On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Never been more angry about region lock Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that. I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far. To be fair if your measure of success is toppling Goliath by giving him a terminal disease before David was even old enough to sling a stone, then all I can say is that we have different measures of success. I think that if there was no prejudiced system that drained the Korean scene and gave artificial lifeblood to the foreign scene, Koreans would never have lost to foreigners on a stage as big as this one. It's not just that the foreign community was incentivized, it's also that the Korean community was forced to downsize and re-prioritize. In short, I think that the gap has shrunk not only due to the efforts and benefits garnered by foreigners, but also because of the drought that Blizzard forced onto the Korean scene. Foreigners didn't simply rise to the level of Koreans, Koreans' growth had slowed tremendously while foreigners reaped the benefits of greater incentives. Maybe it was the "right" call, but I think it heavily depends on your perspective.
I understand your perspective and looking at it from that lens, I agree. Considering my perspective with regards to your perspective, then I'd say that Blizz has had short-term wins in artificially (or organically?) increasing interest internationally at the cost of downsizing/re-prioritizing the goliath korean scene. So, from here on out is we have to wait and see how blizz plans on building them both up together. I'm no Blizzard employee but I'm going to go ahead and assume that Blizzard took a calculated risk to get to this point and has some sort of plan (i hope?!).
Region lock may or may not work out long-term, but this is a business and their goal is to make money above all else, period. I support the risk and the decision for region lock, hoping for long-term success. This also means I'm okay with the scene ultimately becoming a crumbling mess. 2 steps forwards 1 step back, perhaps?
Due to the short-term success (internationally at least), I am looking forward to see blizz's next step.
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It was more Stats playing weird (His multitasking was awefull) than Serral winning but... That wasn't the case against inno and dark.
Serral played really well in those matches.
Now foreigners still are not on the level of korea. Serral is. Like Naniwa before him, Scarlett at some point or iDra. But that's it for now.
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On August 10 2018 15:34 FFW_Rude wrote:
It was more Stats playing weird (His multitasking was awefull) than Serral winning but... That wasn't the case against inno and dark.
Serral played really well in those matches.
Now foreigners still are not on the level of korea. Serral is. Like Naniwa before him, Scarlett at some point or iDra. But that's it for now.
Yep. It's statements like these that divide the community and induce anger in people. Sigh.
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On August 10 2018 20:58 fLyiNgDroNe wrote:Show nested quote +On August 10 2018 15:34 FFW_Rude wrote:
It was more Stats playing weird (His multitasking was awefull) than Serral winning but... That wasn't the case against inno and dark.
Serral played really well in those matches.
Now foreigners still are not on the level of korea. Serral is. Like Naniwa before him, Scarlett at some point or iDra. But that's it for now. Yep. It's statements like these that divide the community and induce anger in people. Sigh.
To be fair, the man has a point in his last few sentences. Remove Serral out the equation and the performance of foreigners was pretty dire. Only three foreigners made it out of the ro16 and Showtime and Special both got absolutely bopped in their quarterfinals matches. The only foreigners other than Serral that come out with any kind of credit are Showtime because he 3-1d Zest and possibly Scarlett due to how close that game with Classic came.
Now GSL vs. The World isn't reflective of everything of course as evidenced by how successful foreigners have been in GSL this year comparatively (Scarlett in the Quarterfinals of Season 1, Neeb and Reynor in the current iteration) but it is the only one of three events in the year where foreigners and koreans play each other en masse (The others being Katowice and Blizzcon, though the case could be made for WESG and Pyeongchang). As such, it has to be the barometer for current foreigner performance and other than Serral it tells a pretty awful tale.
My worry going into Blizzcon is that, other than Serral, which foreigners can we honestly say will make a decent showing? Neeb looks a shadow of himself from last year and even though he is picking up results he doesn't look particularly confident. Special could do what he did last year but he seems to be stuck in a rut as the perennial semi-finalist while seeming to be poor against Koreans at the moment. After a promising start to the year, Scarlett has dropped off quite significantly and a lot of last years hopes e.g. Elazer or Snute are either almost anonymous or significantly diminished. One of the only players that I would currently say looks like he could go toe to toe with the right Korean other than Serral would be Showtime. The other would be Reynor but since he would have to win either WCS Montreal or GSL S3 to qualify that looks like a slim chance though stranger things have happened (looking at you Rogue).
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Just watched the 7 games last night. (I know I am late), but wow. He did not let nerves afflict him. His control and knowledge of the game is surreal!!! (say surreal like Serral). Stats put up a crazy fight. They both did. Just amazing. And I loved how Tastosis were freaking out over the fact it was a game 7 final and the fact that serral is the first non-korean to win a gsl. 8 years of GSL and this has been truly amazing to watch.
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Czech Republic12128 Posts
On August 09 2018 06:11 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2018 04:46 deacon.frost wrote:On August 08 2018 17:38 BaneRiders wrote:On August 08 2018 17:05 Jealous wrote:On August 08 2018 15:59 vyzion wrote:On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Never been more angry about region lock Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that. I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far. To be fair if your measure of success is toppling Goliath by giving him a terminal disease before David was even old enough to sling a stone, then all I can say is that we have different measures of success. I think that if there was no prejudiced system that drained the Korean scene and gave artificial lifeblood to the foreign scene, Koreans would never have lost to foreigners on a stage as big as this one. It's not just that the foreign community was incentivized, it's also that the Korean community was forced to downsize and re-prioritize. In short, I think that the gap has shrunk not only due to the efforts and benefits garnered by foreigners, but also because of the drought that Blizzard forced onto the Korean scene. Foreigners didn't simply rise to the level of Koreans, Koreans' growth had slowed tremendously while foreigners reaped the benefits of greater incentives. Maybe it was the "right" call, but I think it heavily depends on your perspective. I don't think that Blizzard has forced a drought onto the Korean scene though. Blizzard has been pumping in money in the Korean SC2 scene for the last two years, and maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like there are hardly anyone else contributing to it financially or in any other capacity these days. I mean, how many Korean SC2 teams exist today? Look at the Koreans participating in this tournament. 2 are on Jinair, 3 on foreign teams, and 3 without a team. How many Korean tournaments exist where Blizzard is not providing the cash for the price pool? How many Koreans are even watching SC2? I don't follow BW myself, but I can see on TL's list of Live Streams that there is someone called Britney streaming with 6543 (!) viewers. Of course, as I wanted to check out the stream it shows two dudes eating, so maybe this is a combined cooking show plus BW... It doesn't help when you sign for a tournament and foreigner kicks you out of GSL. That's a closed season for you... think about this. And region lock is implemented by whom? Blizzard ;-) That goes both ways though. I'd say True has won more bucks the last two years in WCS than the combined foreign forces in GSL (not to mention Hydra, Polt etc. competing in EU and NA before). And if you mean that it is closed season because there aren't any other tournaments in Korea, then that is hardly Blizzard's fault. People appears to be busy with BW or other games. If I were Blizzard, looking at the return on my investment, I'd seriously have to consider an immediate closure of sponsoring GSL for 2019 and shift the funds to have a fully global circuit, say 3-4 tourneys in EU (like Germany, Spain, Sweden and Poland or something), 3-4 in North America, 2 in South America and maybe 1 in Korea, China, Australia, and 1 somewhere in South-East Asia (if there is an interesting market there) respectively. 12 big tourneys spread over the year with a final.
Even if I ignore the fact you chose players living in WCS region(which was the fucking point of region lock), and even if I ignore the blatant discrimination(it's not about banning too good players, it's about banning all Koreans, no matter how good or bad are they ... otherwise Serral would be banned in WCS too).
Sure, stop paying GSL, because if any new player appears and is killed by a foreigner, then Blizzard is killing the Korean scene anyway. At least it would be fast and mercifull. All the new names in GSL are foreigners. We have only players moving to BW, moving to other games, retiring completely or going into the army. And mind you - many players ARE old and WILL go into the army "soon"(not in 2019, but certainly soon enough)
The Korean scene is NOT growing. Because there are way too harsh conditions for any growth and you ahve only 1 shot and 1 shot only. If you lose in the qualification for GSL you're out for 3 months and you have to survive that period. Foreigners don't have to solve this dilemma.
WOuld banning foreigners solve this? No, I know it won't!!!! I admitted it severla times!! But it's a step in the right direction.
Edit> And if the region lock is so good as all you people are saying , then why we don't wanna help the Korean scene to grow by using it? Why? Is this some kind of another discrimination against Korea?
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On August 11 2018 02:22 deacon.frost wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2018 06:11 BaneRiders wrote:On August 09 2018 04:46 deacon.frost wrote:On August 08 2018 17:38 BaneRiders wrote:On August 08 2018 17:05 Jealous wrote:On August 08 2018 15:59 vyzion wrote:On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Never been more angry about region lock Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that. I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far. To be fair if your measure of success is toppling Goliath by giving him a terminal disease before David was even old enough to sling a stone, then all I can say is that we have different measures of success. I think that if there was no prejudiced system that drained the Korean scene and gave artificial lifeblood to the foreign scene, Koreans would never have lost to foreigners on a stage as big as this one. It's not just that the foreign community was incentivized, it's also that the Korean community was forced to downsize and re-prioritize. In short, I think that the gap has shrunk not only due to the efforts and benefits garnered by foreigners, but also because of the drought that Blizzard forced onto the Korean scene. Foreigners didn't simply rise to the level of Koreans, Koreans' growth had slowed tremendously while foreigners reaped the benefits of greater incentives. Maybe it was the "right" call, but I think it heavily depends on your perspective. I don't think that Blizzard has forced a drought onto the Korean scene though. Blizzard has been pumping in money in the Korean SC2 scene for the last two years, and maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like there are hardly anyone else contributing to it financially or in any other capacity these days. I mean, how many Korean SC2 teams exist today? Look at the Koreans participating in this tournament. 2 are on Jinair, 3 on foreign teams, and 3 without a team. How many Korean tournaments exist where Blizzard is not providing the cash for the price pool? How many Koreans are even watching SC2? I don't follow BW myself, but I can see on TL's list of Live Streams that there is someone called Britney streaming with 6543 (!) viewers. Of course, as I wanted to check out the stream it shows two dudes eating, so maybe this is a combined cooking show plus BW... It doesn't help when you sign for a tournament and foreigner kicks you out of GSL. That's a closed season for you... think about this. And region lock is implemented by whom? Blizzard ;-) That goes both ways though. I'd say True has won more bucks the last two years in WCS than the combined foreign forces in GSL (not to mention Hydra, Polt etc. competing in EU and NA before). And if you mean that it is closed season because there aren't any other tournaments in Korea, then that is hardly Blizzard's fault. People appears to be busy with BW or other games. If I were Blizzard, looking at the return on my investment, I'd seriously have to consider an immediate closure of sponsoring GSL for 2019 and shift the funds to have a fully global circuit, say 3-4 tourneys in EU (like Germany, Spain, Sweden and Poland or something), 3-4 in North America, 2 in South America and maybe 1 in Korea, China, Australia, and 1 somewhere in South-East Asia (if there is an interesting market there) respectively. 12 big tourneys spread over the year with a final. Even if I ignore the fact you chose players living in WCS region(which was the fucking point of region lock), and even if I ignore the blatant discrimination(it's not about banning too good players, it's about banning all Koreans, no matter how good or bad are they ... otherwise Serral would be banned in WCS too). Sure, stop paying GSL, because if any new player appears and is killed by a foreigner, then Blizzard is killing the Korean scene anyway. At least it would be fast and mercifull. All the new names in GSL are foreigners. We have only players moving to BW, moving to other games, retiring completely or going into the army. And mind you - many players ARE old and WILL go into the army "soon"(not in 2019, but certainly soon enough) The Korean scene is NOT growing. Because there are way too harsh conditions for any growth and you ahve only 1 shot and 1 shot only. If you lose in the qualification for GSL you're out for 3 months and you have to survive that period. Foreigners don't have to solve this dilemma. WOuld banning foreigners solve this? No, I know it won't!!!! I admitted it severla times!! But it's a step in the right direction. Edit> And if the region lock is so good as all you people are saying , then why we don't wanna help the Korean scene to grow by using it? Why? Is this some kind of another discrimination against Korea?
I'm all for regionlock. There is no reason for people who live in one region to play in a different region(aside from greed). Players should just play in their own respective region for WCS and that's it.
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On August 11 2018 01:55 Obisp0 wrote:
Just watched the 7 games last night. (I know I am late), but wow. He did not let nerves afflict him. His control and knowledge of the game is surreal!!! (say surreal like Serral). Stats put up a crazy fight. They both did. Just amazing. And I loved how Tastosis were freaking out over the fact it was a game 7 final and the fact that serral is the first non-korean to win a gsl. 8 years of GSL and this has been truly amazing to watch.
I think most people do not consider GSL vs the World the same as a real GSL. Just saying.
Serral is surreal indeed! But still not a GSL win I think!
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On August 11 2018 04:17 ReachTheSky wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2018 02:22 deacon.frost wrote:On August 09 2018 06:11 BaneRiders wrote:On August 09 2018 04:46 deacon.frost wrote:On August 08 2018 17:38 BaneRiders wrote:On August 08 2018 17:05 Jealous wrote:On August 08 2018 15:59 vyzion wrote:On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Never been more angry about region lock Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that. I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far. To be fair if your measure of success is toppling Goliath by giving him a terminal disease before David was even old enough to sling a stone, then all I can say is that we have different measures of success. I think that if there was no prejudiced system that drained the Korean scene and gave artificial lifeblood to the foreign scene, Koreans would never have lost to foreigners on a stage as big as this one. It's not just that the foreign community was incentivized, it's also that the Korean community was forced to downsize and re-prioritize. In short, I think that the gap has shrunk not only due to the efforts and benefits garnered by foreigners, but also because of the drought that Blizzard forced onto the Korean scene. Foreigners didn't simply rise to the level of Koreans, Koreans' growth had slowed tremendously while foreigners reaped the benefits of greater incentives. Maybe it was the "right" call, but I think it heavily depends on your perspective. I don't think that Blizzard has forced a drought onto the Korean scene though. Blizzard has been pumping in money in the Korean SC2 scene for the last two years, and maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like there are hardly anyone else contributing to it financially or in any other capacity these days. I mean, how many Korean SC2 teams exist today? Look at the Koreans participating in this tournament. 2 are on Jinair, 3 on foreign teams, and 3 without a team. How many Korean tournaments exist where Blizzard is not providing the cash for the price pool? How many Koreans are even watching SC2? I don't follow BW myself, but I can see on TL's list of Live Streams that there is someone called Britney streaming with 6543 (!) viewers. Of course, as I wanted to check out the stream it shows two dudes eating, so maybe this is a combined cooking show plus BW... It doesn't help when you sign for a tournament and foreigner kicks you out of GSL. That's a closed season for you... think about this. And region lock is implemented by whom? Blizzard ;-) That goes both ways though. I'd say True has won more bucks the last two years in WCS than the combined foreign forces in GSL (not to mention Hydra, Polt etc. competing in EU and NA before). And if you mean that it is closed season because there aren't any other tournaments in Korea, then that is hardly Blizzard's fault. People appears to be busy with BW or other games. If I were Blizzard, looking at the return on my investment, I'd seriously have to consider an immediate closure of sponsoring GSL for 2019 and shift the funds to have a fully global circuit, say 3-4 tourneys in EU (like Germany, Spain, Sweden and Poland or something), 3-4 in North America, 2 in South America and maybe 1 in Korea, China, Australia, and 1 somewhere in South-East Asia (if there is an interesting market there) respectively. 12 big tourneys spread over the year with a final. Even if I ignore the fact you chose players living in WCS region(which was the fucking point of region lock), and even if I ignore the blatant discrimination(it's not about banning too good players, it's about banning all Koreans, no matter how good or bad are they ... otherwise Serral would be banned in WCS too). Sure, stop paying GSL, because if any new player appears and is killed by a foreigner, then Blizzard is killing the Korean scene anyway. At least it would be fast and mercifull. All the new names in GSL are foreigners. We have only players moving to BW, moving to other games, retiring completely or going into the army. And mind you - many players ARE old and WILL go into the army "soon"(not in 2019, but certainly soon enough) The Korean scene is NOT growing. Because there are way too harsh conditions for any growth and you ahve only 1 shot and 1 shot only. If you lose in the qualification for GSL you're out for 3 months and you have to survive that period. Foreigners don't have to solve this dilemma. WOuld banning foreigners solve this? No, I know it won't!!!! I admitted it severla times!! But it's a step in the right direction. Edit> And if the region lock is so good as all you people are saying , then why we don't wanna help the Korean scene to grow by using it? Why? Is this some kind of another discrimination against Korea? I'm all for regionlock. There is no reason for people who live in one region to play in a different region(aside from greed). Players should just play in their own respective region for WCS and that's it.
Call it Regional Championship...or RCS.
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On August 11 2018 04:50 b0ub0u wrote:Show nested quote +On August 11 2018 01:55 Obisp0 wrote:
Just watched the 7 games last night. (I know I am late), but wow. He did not let nerves afflict him. His control and knowledge of the game is surreal!!! (say surreal like Serral). Stats put up a crazy fight. They both did. Just amazing. And I loved how Tastosis were freaking out over the fact it was a game 7 final and the fact that serral is the first non-korean to win a gsl. 8 years of GSL and this has been truly amazing to watch. I think most people do not consider GSL vs the World the same as a real GSL. Just saying.
The only times GSL vs TW counts as a GSL is if you want to claim Mvp has four titles, or now if you want to claim Serral is the first foreigner to win it.
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On August 08 2018 04:06 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2018 02:50 Miragee wrote:On August 07 2018 19:00 Zaros wrote:On August 07 2018 15:27 Miragee wrote:
So that's what an Ro16 GSL looks in 2018? 50% foreigners? Doesn't look like Korean domination to me at all, considering this tournament is held offline in Korea over a longer period (not just a weekend) so you have to live there. I haven't paid much attention to the SC2 scene over the past few years but this is pretty surprising considering everytime I read an SC2 there was a discussion about Koreans being to dominant etc. It’s 12.5% foreigners for this GSL in ro16 I'm counting 8 in the starting post? This was an invitational / popular vote tourney, 8 from Korea and 8 from the rest of the world. No qualifiers as such.
Not entirely true. Many of the players qualified as a result of their standing in the points ranking. Only some of the players got voted in.
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On August 11 2018 07:14 LTCM wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2018 04:06 BaneRiders wrote:On August 08 2018 02:50 Miragee wrote:On August 07 2018 19:00 Zaros wrote:On August 07 2018 15:27 Miragee wrote:
So that's what an Ro16 GSL looks in 2018? 50% foreigners? Doesn't look like Korean domination to me at all, considering this tournament is held offline in Korea over a longer period (not just a weekend) so you have to live there. I haven't paid much attention to the SC2 scene over the past few years but this is pretty surprising considering everytime I read an SC2 there was a discussion about Koreans being to dominant etc. It’s 12.5% foreigners for this GSL in ro16 I'm counting 8 in the starting post? This was an invitational / popular vote tourney, 8 from Korea and 8 from the rest of the world. No qualifiers as such. Not entirely true. Many of the players qualified as a result of their standing in the points ranking. Only some of the players got voted in.
Yes, the invites were 4 of the highest standing of each region and the candidates for the votes were also based on points as well (was it six of each race behind the invites in points per race?), thus no Reynor for example because he didn't have enough points yet, + the Chinese representative for the world and second most votes for Korea. So it is not just a popular vote such as Nation Wars, because the players need to have had at least some success during the year to be able to be voted in.
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Watched the finals last night. That was a very good match with great play by both Stats and Serral.
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Classic can take Serral IMO
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On August 08 2018 17:38 BaneRiders wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2018 17:05 Jealous wrote:On August 08 2018 15:59 vyzion wrote:On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Never been more angry about region lock Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that. I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far. To be fair if your measure of success is toppling Goliath by giving him a terminal disease before David was even old enough to sling a stone, then all I can say is that we have different measures of success. I think that if there was no prejudiced system that drained the Korean scene and gave artificial lifeblood to the foreign scene, Koreans would never have lost to foreigners on a stage as big as this one. It's not just that the foreign community was incentivized, it's also that the Korean community was forced to downsize and re-prioritize. In short, I think that the gap has shrunk not only due to the efforts and benefits garnered by foreigners, but also because of the drought that Blizzard forced onto the Korean scene. Foreigners didn't simply rise to the level of Koreans, Koreans' growth had slowed tremendously while foreigners reaped the benefits of greater incentives. Maybe it was the "right" call, but I think it heavily depends on your perspective. I don't think that Blizzard has forced a drought onto the Korean scene though. Blizzard has been pumping in money in the Korean SC2 scene for the last two years, and maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like there are hardly anyone else contributing to it financially or in any other capacity these days. I mean, how many Korean SC2 teams exist today? Look at the Koreans participating in this tournament. 2 are on Jinair, 3 on foreign teams, and 3 without a team. How many Korean tournaments exist where Blizzard is not providing the cash for the price pool? How many Koreans are even watching SC2? I don't follow BW myself, but I can see on TL's list of Live Streams that there is someone called Britney streaming with 6543 (!) viewers. Of course, as I wanted to check out the stream it shows two dudes eating, so maybe this is a combined cooking show plus BW...
LOL is that Rain?
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On August 17 2018 20:38 AzAlexZ wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2018 17:38 BaneRiders wrote:On August 08 2018 17:05 Jealous wrote:On August 08 2018 15:59 vyzion wrote:On August 08 2018 15:54 JoFar wrote:Never been more angry about region lock Well ... to be honest ... i don't think Serral would have improved like he had without region lock. In my opinion region lock was one of the best decisions blizzard ever made. Of course you can argue that it is unfair GSL hasn't a region lock and WCS circuit has ... but that is GSL's job to "repair" this issue. Without region lock there wouldn't be any real reason for foreigners to try, that's just a fact. Look before the region lock ... most of the times only one or two foreigners made it to a Ro8 of a WCS event. Yeah, koreans have been much better ... big part of that was that they had the much better infrastructure. (state sponsored) KESPA systems with all the teams ... the amount of money players got just for being in such a team, team houses, trainers etc. ... that all was something every non-korean SC player could only dream about. Of course koreans trained more and harder ... but part of the truth is also that they could do and afford that and make a living of it. And for what? Market and viewerships for starcraft 2 in south korea had been decreasing anyways ... Of course it has decreased worldwide also, but right now, as quality of games and tournaments in WCS are getting better and better, it's back increasing, as could be seen clearly in the last WCS stop at Valencia. Foreigner players now can make a living out of it, if they train hard und get to the top. And even the gap between foreigners and korean players is closing ... maybe just slowly, cause korean pro's were simply miles ahead and of course they still improve, too ... but same goes for foreigners now. Anyways, i think Starcraft and the tournament scene is in great shape right now. And big part of that is the region lock. Whatever blizzard may plan for 2019 and later, i just hope they won't change that. I completely agree and I consider region lock a success thus far. To be fair if your measure of success is toppling Goliath by giving him a terminal disease before David was even old enough to sling a stone, then all I can say is that we have different measures of success. I think that if there was no prejudiced system that drained the Korean scene and gave artificial lifeblood to the foreign scene, Koreans would never have lost to foreigners on a stage as big as this one. It's not just that the foreign community was incentivized, it's also that the Korean community was forced to downsize and re-prioritize. In short, I think that the gap has shrunk not only due to the efforts and benefits garnered by foreigners, but also because of the drought that Blizzard forced onto the Korean scene. Foreigners didn't simply rise to the level of Koreans, Koreans' growth had slowed tremendously while foreigners reaped the benefits of greater incentives. Maybe it was the "right" call, but I think it heavily depends on your perspective. I don't think that Blizzard has forced a drought onto the Korean scene though. Blizzard has been pumping in money in the Korean SC2 scene for the last two years, and maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like there are hardly anyone else contributing to it financially or in any other capacity these days. I mean, how many Korean SC2 teams exist today? Look at the Koreans participating in this tournament. 2 are on Jinair, 3 on foreign teams, and 3 without a team. How many Korean tournaments exist where Blizzard is not providing the cash for the price pool? How many Koreans are even watching SC2? I don't follow BW myself, but I can see on TL's list of Live Streams that there is someone called Britney streaming with 6543 (!) viewers. Of course, as I wanted to check out the stream it shows two dudes eating, so maybe this is a combined cooking show plus BW... LOL is that Rain?
Yeah it is xD
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EPT![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/WCS2018/gslworldbracket5.png)
