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The good
- ESL taking over, Apollo in charge of top SC2! (I already saw this as the best case scenario months ago, stoked to see it happen)
- IEM Katowice has for years been widely recognized as the best Starcraft (weekend) tournament. These people are running the show now.
- Less top heavy prize distribution
- Much better qualification system for the World Championship. Looks like it will finally like up to its name.
- An online tournament to fill in the gaps, fantastic idea.
- THREE YEARS!!
The bad
- Still region lock. But Apollo recognizes the problem and says that they didn't have time for an overhaul now. In 2021 it will probably have resolved itself.
- Only three tournaments in Korea. No more Super Tournament 1 and 2, no more GSL vs the world.
- Overall, there will be less top Starcraft than the last three years.
- No Master in China (yet)? And reducing China's player spots? This seems like a massive mistake considering the development there, and the fact that 20% of all SC2 players are from China.
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United States28021 Posts
North America maintaining 4 challenger seeds while EU pillages 3 more spots away from OCE, Asia, and China is the drama-fodder I've been waiting for all year 
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Awesome, I think?
Very sudden but cool. It is really weird that blizzcon is being replaced by Katowice though. Like is there just gonna be no Starcraft at blizzcon then? That seems... weird
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I feel so relieved now !! and so hype for the next seasons ! I think the missing of a blizzcon tournament will definetly leave a gap, but fuck off, IEM Katowice is 100% hype and cool !
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On January 08 2020 00:41 Waxangel wrote:North America maintaining 4 challenger seeds while EU pillages 3 more spots away from OCE, Asia, and China is the drama-fodder I've been waiting for all year
I hope we get an exile to Australia, so that the OCE top 4 is ButAlways, Risky, Firefly and Rex
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Northern Ireland12362 Posts
Pretty exciting, that’s a hell of an overhaul to do at once so I could see them tweaking things here and there over time.
The online tournament thing is also pretty good to fill the gaps and be a breeding ground for new talent.
As for Korea, hm. I guess I await an announcement on specifics there but it doesn’t sound promising thus far.
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Germany2469 Posts
On January 07 2020 23:32 Durnuu wrote:
Did Apollo KILL THE KOREAN SCENE back then in order to take control of all SC2?
What if I told you that the SC2 scene is now under the control of a dark lord of the Sith?
jkjk
Great news all around, enabling people to do some longer term planning etc. 
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China5462 Posts
Considering Blizzcon 2019, moving the final global competition to Katowice is only going to be for the better.
We losing a challenger spot sucks but is expected.
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PS. Really like that the hype video starts with iNcontroL and TotalBiscuit
PPS. This is really a video for the community, so many small things from Starcraft's history in there.
PPPs. Even ESL are ignoring Dark's world championship! What the hell is going on??!!?
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Also we now know SC2 will have at least 13 straight years of professional offline tournaments, we're just a year of BW guys, 2010 haters be damned!
(Although best of luck to the BW scene, it's always great to watch)
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This is so great, love almost everything about it. Especially the weekly cups being tied in to the greater yearly competition process and the changed prize distribution. Should make it much more exciting and rewarding for upcoming players and more sustainable for a greater number for middling pros.
Only thing I'm not too happy with is that we only get one Chinese spot. Seems to me like the Chinese scene has been developing recently and it would be a shame to stifle more talent like Time coming up and playing internationally.
Oh and also Katowice will probably be a much cooler season finale/world championship than Blizzcon. More players means there is almost no chance of missing one of the truly great players with the potential of winning it all (like Innovation in 2019, who won WESG after all and can always have a sick weekend.)
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I'm happy with the 3 more years of pro starcraft, but taking spots from China, Oceania, and Hongkong, Taiwan, Macau and Japan doesn't feel like a good decision to me, that basiclly means Asian players will have a harder time to show themselves, and have to fight for NA, EU spots with that huge and insane lag.
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On January 08 2020 00:57 sneakyfox wrote:PS. Really like that the hype video starts with iNcontroL and TotalBiscuit PPS. This is really a video for the community, so many small things from Starcraft's history in there. PPPs. Even ESL are ignoring Dark's world championship! What the hell is going on??!!?
Dark has a direct invite to Katowice 2020 tho :p
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ALLEYCAT BLUES44907 Posts
I'm not too sure how the korean side works from a host/broadcast sense, is it just going to cut off afreeca/GSL in favor of a WCS Korea at the arena they did KSL1-3?
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[QUOTE]On January 08 2020 00:40 sneakyfox wrote:
- Only three tournaments in Korea. No more Super Tournament 1 and 2. I guess one of the "global masters" counts instead of GSL vs the world. [QUOTE]
Nowhere it says that there won't be Super Tournaments. Winners of STs didn't even qualified for Blizzcon before, which it means it stays the same.
It only says 3 winners from Korea = t3 GSL of similar tournament
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49153 Posts
On January 08 2020 01:11 BLinD-RawR wrote:
I'm not too sure how the korean side works from a host/broadcast sense, is it just going to cut off afreeca/GSL in favor of a WCS Korea at the arena they did KSL1-3?
Details not finalized yet it seems.
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Apollo confirms that the prize pools announced ($1.9m, then $1.2m) exclude the Korean tournaments.
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ALLEYCAT BLUES44907 Posts
On January 08 2020 01:12 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2020 01:11 BLinD-RawR wrote:
I'm not too sure how the korean side works from a host/broadcast sense, is it just going to cut off afreeca/GSL in favor of a WCS Korea at the arena they did KSL1-3? Details not finalized yet it seems.
interesting, wonder how a potential cutoff of afreeca affects the scene, if at all.
purely speculating here.
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On January 08 2020 01:11 Tastyyyy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2020 00:40 sneakyfox wrote:
- Only three tournaments in Korea. No more Super Tournament 1 and 2. I guess one of the "global masters" counts instead of GSL vs the world. Nowhere it says that there won't be Super Tournaments. Winners of STs didn't even qualified for Blizzcon before, which it means it stays the same. It only says 3 winners from Korea = t3 GSL of similar tournament
Yeah okay, it doesn't say that they're off. But that doesn't automatically mean that it "stays the same". We will have to wait and see.
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On January 08 2020 01:15 sneakyfox wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2020 01:11 Tastyyyy wrote:On January 08 2020 00:40 sneakyfox wrote:
- Only three tournaments in Korea. No more Super Tournament 1 and 2. I guess one of the "global masters" counts instead of GSL vs the world. Nowhere it says that there won't be Super Tournaments. Winners of STs didn't even qualified for Blizzcon before, which it means it stays the same. It only says 3 winners from Korea = t3 GSL of similar tournament Yeah okay, it doesn't say that they're off. But that doesn't automatically mean that it "stays the same". We will have to wait and see.
Exactly, lets not get ahead of ourselves
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WCS
