On November 05 2018 05:05 TheBloodyDwarf wrote:
It was so great to see Twitter exploding, Serral win gets to Reddit frontpage, biggest news pages in Finland reporting about Serrals win....

Any links to those news? It'd be interesting to see even tho I don't speak Finnish.

aringadingding

481 Posts

November 04 2018 20:27 GMT

#30

Congrats!

Edpayasugo

United Kingdom2224 Posts

November 04 2018 20:28 GMT

#31

Never thought I'd see the day

Noonius

Estonia17413 Posts

November 04 2018 20:33 GMT

#32

The true magnitude of Serral's achievement will be fully understood years from now.
I think it's pretty safe to say he booked his place in the esports Hall of Fame with his run in 2018.
I downloaded the whole 18GB vod of the final day and backed it up on two different hdd's, so that I will forever have it.

Xain0n

Italy3963 Posts

November 04 2018 20:34 GMT

#33

Serral's 2018 is arguably the best year a sc2 player ever had: he won six premier titles out of six finals he made to, out of nine tournaments; he is undefeated offline in the current patch with a 5/5 streak, beating top koreans in two of these tournaments(one being BlizzCon, the most important tournament of the year).
He earned 467k already, beating TY's 2017 earnings(374 k) which were previously the highest in a single year.

As for Maru having a better year than Serral's, surely he realized the unprecedent threepeat of GSL and definitely looked the undisputed strongest player in the world till April; however, despite GSL3 win, he didn't keep up with the amazing start his season had by losing to s0s twice. This puts him at 367k and 4/9 overall in premier tournaments(4/4 when he reached finals); Mvp's 2011 and Life's 2012 runs were kind of the same level.

Yes, Serral obtained most of his wins when koreans weren't partecipating(2/4 if we exclude Pyeonchang when there was only s0s) and he has no GSL titles, but it's just due to him not being in Korea. He is the best in the world at the moment, despite what Aligulac says(well, he lost more than 20 points by winning WCS Valencia…); he may or may not have the desire to prove himself even more in Korea, but he has already shown how strong can he look against top korean players.

Dave4

494 Posts

November 04 2018 20:38 GMT

#34

On November 05 2018 05:12 Musicus wrote:

Show nested quote +

best foreigner of 2018 isn't even a question, should be best foreigner of all time!

Yeah I think thats not an understatement. Lilbow and Neeb have both won multiple WCS in a year but not the full circuit. No one has ever won a BlizzCon before. And Serrals run was much harder and more perfect than old school runs like Naniwa and Stephanie.

Serral's year is basically incomparable to any individual year from any foreigner or korean. I think he is on a streak of 5 premier tournaments consecutively against the best competition in the world. Ludicrous.

Hvvacha

82 Posts

November 04 2018 20:47 GMT

#35

terran foreigner champ when

Fango

United Kingdom8987 Posts

November 04 2018 20:48 GMT

#36

Everyone's gonna forget about Maru's 3x gsl now.

Last year Rogue won blizzcon, as well as 2 non region locked tournaments. Which is more than Serral this year. Yet most people still agreed INno was POTY despite him losing in the blizzcon ro8. No chance that happens here. Hell Rogue got called a patchzerg while he won four weekenders in a row. Meanwhile Serral wins five know a row (three being region locked.....) and its suddenly different.

Imagine if it were the other way around with Serral claiming all three GSLs. People would have locked him in for GOAT about 1000x over. His dominance over the korean scene would be undisputable.

TheBloodyDwarf

Finland7524 Posts

November 04 2018 20:54 GMT

#37

On November 05 2018 05:18 yht9657 wrote:

Show nested quote +

Any links to those news? It'd be interesting to see even tho I don't speak Finnish.

https://www.is.fi/digitoday/esports/art-2000005888014.html

"Historiallinen voitto: Joona Sotala on maailmanmestari!" Historic victory: Joona Sotala is the World champion!

https://www.is.fi/digitoday/esports/art-2000005888071.html
"Tuore MM-voittaja Joona Sotala IS:lle: Ensin tunsin jääväni jälkeen peleissä – sitten tapahtui jotakin" Fresh WC Joona Sotala for IS: At the first I felt getting behind in games - then something happened

https://www.is.fi/digitoday/esports/art-2000005888316.html

"Markku kannusti 11 vuotta sitten poikaansa pelaamaan videopelejä – nostaa nyt lipun salkoon maailmanmestaruuden kunniaksi" Markku (Sotala) encouraged 11 years ago his son to play video games - now rises flag to pole to honor (Serral)

https://yle.fi/aihe/artikkeli/2018/11/04/serral-teki-e-urheiluhistoriaa-suomalaisesta-tuli-ensimmainen-ei-korealainen

"Serral teki e-urheiluhistoriaa! Suomalaisesta tuli ensimmäinen ei-korealainen StarCraftin maailmanmestari" Serral made e-sport history! Finn became the first non-Korean StarCraft Word champion

https://www.hs.fi/urheilu/art-2000005888097.html

"Joona Sotala voitti StarCraft 2:n maailmanmestaruuden ja teki historiaa" Joona Sotala won the StarCraft 2 World championship and made history

IS = Ilta-Sanomat: Finland's biggest news media
Yle = State media
HS = Helsingin Sanomat: Finland's biggest print news paper