On September 21 2020 23:52 Balnazza wrote:
I'm pretty sure ESL can find legal loopholes around any travel bans - they can just hire some law consultants or talk to lawyers.
As for Korea, I went there in the middle of the pandemic. Regarding the two week quarantine thing, you can stay at a friend or family's house and isolate for two weeks. So they can all stay in the Jinair Team House or a Korean friend's house like Tasteless or Artosis. I'm sure they are willing to help out ESL in the name of Esports.
Then they play the weekend tournament from the dorms/apartments/houses on the KR server. It's really that simple.
I do not get why ESL is trying to make this so complicated.
1)Why make it an offline event, when players have to play from a hotel anyway?
2)The ESL is in full-charge of this, so they probably wouldn't play from korea. Instead, they would chose one of their studios (Burbank, Cologne or Leicester I think?). Cologne/Germany would be the obvious choice. In germany, everyone coming from a high-risk country (which is basically everything) has to be in quarantine for five to fourteen days. That includes casters, players and potential other stuff. And they probably have to be in quarantine on their return, too, which could result in some koreans not to be able to play GSL in the following week.
3)ESL isn't even doing their Counterstrike vents offline, even though those probably generate much more money than SC2. So when CS isn't possible, why should they do Starcraft? It is just unnessecary.
4)All teams in the LEC (League of Legends) are living in Berlin, but even THEY didn't go to the studio, also located in Berlin. They played from their respective teamhouses. So ESL would always have to answer the question, why they took such a huge risk with a relatively small event like the SC2 Masters
1. Playing online all on the same server will drastically reduce lag and make games more fair.
2. If quarantine is what it takes, then so be it. Make it a longer tournament. Europe is fine. NA is fine. As long as they all play on the same server all the time. I suggested Korea because they have cheap and effective Covid 19 plans that's way more advanced than any country.
3. They cam do CS and SC2 and all of their games offline at some outdoor area to mitigate spread of covid 19. Same thing as outdoor dining.
4. SC2 is not dying as you suggest. Its 100% worth the investment.