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As the commentary over "who is the GOAT of SC2?" has picked up over the last few months, I've heard a surprising number of commentators and casters who follow the professional scene closely say that Maru hasn't won an offline, premier international/overseas tournament. The strange thing about this refrain is that it's just not true. Maru won WESG 2017--which, strangely, took place in 2018--to take home a 200K prize. What's particularly confusing about this collective amnesia among the SC2 professional commentariat is that WESG rivaled Blizzcon and IEM Katowice in terms of level of competition and prize pool for offline, international events (though perhaps not in terms of production quality/value). Debates around which tournaments should be considered "premier" aside, these three events were really in a category of their own for a number of years.
The point of this post is not to argue for or against Maru as the GOAT (please let's not go down that rabbit hole). I'm just genuinely curious why everyone has forgotten about WESG, and also curious if there is any chance the tournament organizers could bring it back since it was such an important tournament for sustaining the professional scene. WESG was cancelled during the pandemic, but as offline tournaments are starting back up, I wondered if there was a possibility that WESG could be back?
I also can't locate the official English-language VODs for any of the WESGs (perhaps that's one reason WESG has been relegated to the dustbin of SC2 history). This is particularly sad because all 3 WESGs produced truly epic, nail-biting 4-3 finals (I'd argue that the Maru-Dark WESG finals is one of the greatest grand finals matches in SC2 history). I think in the past I had watched some of the VODs so hopefully they exist somewhere? If anyone finds them and can share that would be pretty great!
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On March 21 2022 04:57 rwala wrote:
As the commentary over "who is the GOAT of SC2?" has picked up over the last few months, I've heard a surprising number of commentators and casters who follow the professional scene closely say that Maru hasn't won an offline, premier international/overseas tournament. The strange thing about this refrain is that it's just not true. Maru won WESG 2017--which, strangely, took place in 2018--to take home a 200K prize. What's particularly confusing about this collective amnesia among the SC2 professional commentariat is that WESG rivaled Blizzcon and IEM Katowice in terms of level of competition and prize pool for offline, international events (though perhaps not in terms of production quality/value). Debates around which tournaments should be considered "premier" aside, these three events were really in a category of their own for a number of years.
The point of this post is not to argue for or against Maru as the GOAT (please let's not go down that rabbit hole). I'm just genuinely curious why everyone has forgotten about WESG, and also curious if there is any chance the tournament organizers could bring it back since it was such an important tournament for sustaining the professional scene. WESG was cancelled during the pandemic, but as offline tournaments are starting back up, I wondered if there was a possibility that WESG could be back?
I also can't locate the official English-language VODs for any of the WESGs (perhaps that's one reason WESG has been relegated to the dustbin of SC2 history). This is particularly sad because all 3 WESGs produced truly epic, nail-biting 4-3 finals (I'd argue that the Maru-Dark WESG finals is one of the greatest grand finals matches in SC2 history). I think in the past I had watched some of the VODs so hopefully they exist somewhere? If anyone finds them and can share that would be pretty great!
In terms of level of competition WESG didn't remotely rival Blizzcon/IEM Katowice, many HSCs had better player pools. At the time the WESG were held there were at most 5-6 world class players in any given WESG. (This is debatable if you include qualifiers, but the community generally discounts qualifier performances)
Iirc casters haven't been saying that he's never won an international event, just that he's underperformed in BLizzcon/IEM Katowice? Maybe some have said that he's never won, I haven't caught every cast. A lot of the amnesia is probably due to godawful production quality if I had to guess.
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United States33374 Posts
People definitely underrate WESG. Consider the 2012 Battle.net World Championship (the first "BlizzCon"), which everyone holds up as a super legit, world championship-class win for PartinG. If you actually look at the prize money, the difficulty of the regional qualifiers, and the general scale of the tournaments, WESG is about equivalent—if not even more 'relevant' than the BWC.
It's hard to say exactly why people forget about WESG—a lot of it has to do with the fact that it didn't FEEL important, whether due to production, promotion, or the reputation of the name attached. Another thing to remember is SC2 fans tend to follow a narratively compelling version of history, not one based in objective fact.
For example, an incredibly glaring inconsistency that everyone is 100% fine with is how the KeSPA cups are treated: When Neeb wins one in Korea, it's a historic event to be celebrated forever. When soO wins one, it's a shoddy "tier 2" event that doesn't count against his silver streak. Granted, soO didn't help himself here since he downplayed the relevance of his "tier 2" wins, but I have to wonder if he he came to that judgment himself, or if he was influenced by perception from the fan community (probably a vicious feedback cycle).
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Canada8989 Posts
I think a factor with WESG, is that it was outside the ESL-Blizzard circuit and involved almost very of the major english casters, focusing more on the Chinese audience.
The storytelling in SC2 is done by a rather small number of people and organisation. If you don't leave an impact or those storytellers or have an organisation behind an event willing to reuse footage from that event or weave it into larger narative, it kind of fall into obscurity.
You have something similar happening right now with the Caster team league comming back (the follow up to the Warchess Teamleague). It has become one of the most remembered event in recent history, in part because Blizzard put its marketing behind it, but also because it was a very meaningfull experience for many the casters involved, that then spend years talking and joking about it on stream so it sunk into the collective SC2 memory. If you were to think about very simillar kind of competition targeted around the Korean fans like the VSL Teamleague or the ... I want to say BJDestruction Teamleague (?) you would be hard press to find anyone who remembers them, cause noone ever talk about it.
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On March 21 2022 05:06 dysenterymd wrote:
In terms of level of competition WESG didn't remotely rival Blizzcon/IEM Katowice, many HSCs had better player pools. At the time the WESG were held there were at most 5-6 world class players in any given WESG. (This is debatable if you include qualifiers, but the community generally discounts qualifier performances)
Iirc casters haven't been saying that he's never won an international event, just that he's underperformed in BLizzcon/IEM Katowice? Maybe some have said that he's never won, I haven't caught every cast. A lot of the amnesia is probably due to godawful production quality if I had to guess.
Yeah, you haven't caught every cast and some of this I've also seen on streams and shows. I don't really want to call people out, but the reel on this one's pretty long. If it were just claims of underperforming at Blizzcon and IEM Katowice specifically, I'd have no complaint.
On the substance, you make some good points, but the one about WESG only having 5-6 world class players is not true and also not really the point. Sure some HSC cups have had stronger player pools than some WESGs (though I recall that Maru and some other top players didn't even elect to compete in the HSCs). And arguably other smaller tournaments to include King of Battles and TSL have at times arguably had a tougher player pool than WESG, IEM Katowice, and even Blizzcon. Heck, last season's NeXT KR server *qualifiers* rivaled the level of competition we've seen in a number of premier international events. Post-region lock, it wasn't really until the last couple of years that we saw international tournaments produce player pools as strong as GSL, and really you'd have to do a case-by-case analysis to figure out which champions faced the toughest competition on their pathway to taking the trophy in any given tournament. But all this is beside the point. As you can see, once you start with the "I-found-a-HSC-with-a-stronger-player-pool-than-a-WESG" stuff, you find yourself wading into a morass of region lock/qualification dynamics, playoff bracket draws and pathways, and racial balance and balance patch arguments.
For purposes of this thread, I'm not really trying to get into all that beyond showing the messiness that ensues once you do. My point was just that by any reasonable standard WESG was a premier overseas/international, offline event that offered a monstrous prize pool for its main event and prize pools for its regional qualifier tournaments that rivaled Blizzcon's and IEM's (I believe when WESG premiered, it was actually the largest prize pool in SC2 history). All the top players put their hat in ring for the trophy, and each year the ultimate champion had to defeat arguably the best player in the world to win the 200K. Winning WESG was a really big deal any way you look at it, so to see everyone forget about it is just honestly a bit strange.
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Russian Federation195 Posts
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Northern Ireland25216 Posts
WESG always ‘felt’ a bit of a wonky tournament, really not helped with how it was accessed and broadcast to the Western foreign scene.
It had a pseudo-WCG format, but without going the full hog and doing the ‘Olympics of eSports’ route.
So it both cut out Korean numbers, even at a time before foreign land had players on that level, but it didn’t have the hook WCG used to have in representing one’s nation, and all that entails.
Then it had a huge prize pool, so it’s difficult to really place it. It’s a tournament without much community hype, for a load of money, where the Korean qualifiers were more stacked than the main event.
This isn’t just a Western fan perspective either, I believe people were joking Maru seemed to forget his win in an interview, you don’t really hear the Koreans talking about it much.
If I was to tweak it number one is visibility and broadcasting across the scene.
From there I’d do one if two things.
1. Keep it regional, maybe make the field bigger. But have the players being competing under their national flags. Hype that up, aids to the whole qualifying thru main event process. Say, Clem gets through the European qualifier for the honour of carrying French hopes in the main event. Rather than x European player qualifies from the European region. It’s a small change but I think it helps with the narrative aspect, while simultaneously giving the tournament a WCG style niche that separates it from the regular circuit and adds a level of fun partisanship.
2. If you don’t do that, construct the field so the main event is more stacked, a la other tournaments.
I prefer the first option as it gives it more of a niche that it could inhabit that’s a bit different. As it’s currently constructed I don’t think it hits either the stacked qualifier for hype and prestige, nor having a USP that gives it hype even if it isn’t super stacked.
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On March 21 2022 05:36 Waxangel wrote:People definitely underrate WESG. Consider the 2012 Battle.net World Championship (the first "BlizzCon"), which everyone holds up as a super legit, world championship-class win for PartinG. If you actually look at the prize money, the difficulty of the regional qualifiers, and the general scale of the tournaments, WESG is about equivalent—if not even more 'relevant' than the BWC. It's hard to say exactly why people forget about WESG—a lot of it has to do with the fact that it didn't FEEL important, whether due to production, promotion, or the reputation of the name attached. Another thing to remember is SC2 fans tend to follow a narratively compelling version of history, not one based in objective fact. For example, an incredibly glaring inconsistency that everyone is 100% fine with is how the KeSPA cups are treated: When Neeb wins one in Korea, it's a historic event to be celebrated forever. When soO wins one, it's a shoddy "tier 2" event that doesn't count against his silver streak. Granted, soO didn't help himself here since he downplayed the relevance of his "tier 2" wins, but I have to wonder if he he came to that judgment himself, or if he was influenced by perception from the fan community (probably a vicious feedback cycle).
These are all great points. And I don't really have an issue with fans pushing various narratives, etc. Fans gonna do what fans do, and in many ways it's a testament to the health of the game that there's still a strong community that cares enough to get passionate about these otherwise pretty trivial things. My issue is more with some of the casters and commentators, who play an outsized role in shaping narratives, and I feel have some responsibility to at least get the facts right. It would irk me less if there wasn't not-so-subtle (though surely unintentional) anti-Chinese bias at play here. Sure, perhaps the promotion and production value of WESG could have been better. But like, really, we're just going to pretend this massive, premier, offline international SC2 tournament featuring one of the largest prize pools in the history of the game and some of the broadest and deepest participation from the top pros across every region didn't exist? It doesn't have to be your favorite event to acknowledge how important and consequential it was to have this half million dollar global event in the wake of the match-fixing scandal and ProLeague's break-up.
Imagine instead of being criticized, ignored, and forgotten, WESG got 1/10th the love from this community that Shopify gets for putting on a tournament with less than 1/10th the prize pool. Obviously prize pool isn't the only thing that matters--and FWIW I think all the love that sponsors like Shopify are getting now is well-deserved. But, dang, I can't say I'd really blame the WESG organizers for taking this opportunity to shirk away into obscurity after cancelling their 2020 event. With friends like these...
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On March 21 2022 12:12 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On March 21 2022 05:36 Waxangel wrote:People definitely underrate WESG. Consider the 2012 Battle.net World Championship (the first "BlizzCon"), which everyone holds up as a super legit, world championship-class win for PartinG. If you actually look at the prize money, the difficulty of the regional qualifiers, and the general scale of the tournaments, WESG is about equivalent—if not even more 'relevant' than the BWC. It's hard to say exactly why people forget about WESG—a lot of it has to do with the fact that it didn't FEEL important, whether due to production, promotion, or the reputation of the name attached. Another thing to remember is SC2 fans tend to follow a narratively compelling version of history, not one based in objective fact. For example, an incredibly glaring inconsistency that everyone is 100% fine with is how the KeSPA cups are treated: When Neeb wins one in Korea, it's a historic event to be celebrated forever. When soO wins one, it's a shoddy "tier 2" event that doesn't count against his silver streak. Granted, soO didn't help himself here since he downplayed the relevance of his "tier 2" wins, but I have to wonder if he he came to that judgment himself, or if he was influenced by perception from the fan community (probably a vicious feedback cycle). My issue is more with some of the casters and commentators, who play an outsized role in shaping narratives, and I feel have some responsibility to at least get the facts right. It would irk me less if there wasn't not-so-subtle (though surely unintentional) anti-Chinese bias at play here.
The ESL and the casters over the last few years have been more foreigner-biased in their organisation and their casting. Thus it is not surprising that WESG does not get the same love that any of the ESL productions have gotten over the years. One example that I can think of easily was the prize money distribution that was taken off IEM Katowice 2021. Instead of fairly distributing it to tournaments that the Koreans have a chance to win them, it was all given to the regionals. That was very unfair to the Koreans, and yet no one prominent in the scene bat an eyelid on it.
Like what Nakajin said, there is really only a small handful of people (mainly casters) that control the narrative of the SC2 scene. Given that some of the casters are such good friends with the players from EU, is it any surprise that tournaments like WESG or the WTL are not given the same amount of attention? Among the English casters, only Wardii that is a more prominent caster. (I think Steadfast did some casting as well) An example is Ryung in IEM Katowice - everyone was surprised by how well he did, but I hardly hear anything about his performances in the WTL, in which he had a very respectable win-ratio given his team.
It is not surprising to me that WESG hardly gets any mention at all. Add on to the fact that it's mainly organised by the Chinese, and the foreigner scene (fans and casters alike) just doesn't know/care much about it. Anything that is not organised by a Western company with English casters just doesn't get as much attention/love. Also, add on another fact that Tastosis are not doing that much travelling for SC2 anymore, the Korean voices/representatives are further isolated.
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WESG had a huge prize pool
However in terms of competition, it was a step below blizzcon and kawotice.
Most would agree that Maru is the Terran GOAT of LOTV
The goat terran still belongs to inno
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WESG had a huge prizepool, but it wasn't really "organic", if that makes sense. Alibaba just threw around a bit of money. I mean, if I remember correctly, there are some Invite series in Tennis in Doha and China that also award huge amounts of money, but no one would say they are as relevant as the Grand Slams.
In the end, every (E)sports ist defined by its own circuit and only the things that happen in this circuit are truely relevant. People who say "TSM has never won an international League tournament" are also wrong, since they won IEM Kattowice. Buuuut since IEM isn't part of Riots circuit, it doesn't really count. Same goes for WESG.
In Marus case, it really doesn't help that WESG happened in China. That is kind of "outside the box, but pressed right back at it".
Just to add to your point "anything that isn't organized and casted by western doesn't get much love".
I mean...yeah? Why should I give love to a tournament that is hard to follow for me? Though the caster thing is definetly more important. I mean, GSL is probably the most important non-worldchampionship tournament out there and it is organized by koreans. But since it has good english commentary, people still watch it.
And finally, since you mentioned that prizepool-distribution thing that was supposedly unfair: Well, even if casters think it was unfair (which it wasn't btw, just natural that ESL rather pushes their main regions), they wouldn't talk about stuff like that on the broadcast. Not only would it kinda badmouth their employer, but it would also hit on the enjoyment of the viewers, especially those who don't care and just want to see good games.
But if we talk about unfair: Never has a caster spoken out about the extreme unfairness that chinese and koreans are allowed to do their interviews in their native language, getting a translator etc. Sorry, but not every european is comfortable speaking english, but nevertheless they have to.
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On March 22 2022 20:36 Balnazza wrote:
In the end, every (E)sports ist defined by its own circuit and only the things that happen in this circuit are truely relevant. People who say "TSM has never won an international League tournament" are also wrong, since they won IEM Kattowice. Buuuut since IEM isn't part of Riots circuit, it doesn't really count. Same goes for WESG.
But if we talk about unfair: Never has a caster spoken out about the extreme unfairness that chinese and koreans are allowed to do their interviews in their native language, getting a translator etc. Sorry, but not every european is comfortable speaking english, but nevertheless they have to.
You're right about who gets to define what events are part of the official point-awarding circuit, but that doesn't change the fact that the commentators who have been saying that Maru has never won an overseas/international offline event are wrong. They've been making this point to advance a narrative about an alleged weakness in his performance at overseas offline events, and quite simply that narrative doesn't make any sense unless you ignore the fact that he won 300K placing 1st and 2nd with epic runs at two WESGs in a row. You can say he's inconsistent or even that he's underperformed at IEM and Blizzcon, but you can't just ignore major results to make your point.
No one complains about the translation thing because everyone (except you?) knows it would be a ridiculous complaint for all the obvious reasons, not least of which is that many if not most Korean and Chinese players do not really speak English. So it's a matter of practicality, not comfort. And those that do like Solar often do their interviews in English, FWIW. Also, I assume you know that GSL affords translators to the English-speaking players who compete in Korea?
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United States33374 Posts
On March 22 2022 20:36 Balnazza wrote:
WESG had a huge prizepool, but it wasn't really "organic", if that makes sense. Alibaba just threw around a bit of money. I mean, if I remember correctly, there are some Invite series in Tennis in Doha and China that also award huge amounts of money, but no one would say they are as relevant as the Grand Slams.
In the end, every (E)sports ist defined by its own circuit and only the things that happen in this circuit are truely relevant. People who say "TSM has never won an international League tournament" are also wrong, since they won IEM Kattowice. Buuuut since IEM isn't part of Riots circuit, it doesn't really count. Same goes for WESG.
I agree that's WHY ppl don't care about certain tournaments, but I'm going to say that's the kind of traditionalist, illogical, narrative-based, convenience-first thinking that makes me dislike fan culture in a lot of sports.
On March 22 2022 20:36 Balnazza wrote:
But if we talk about unfair: Never has a caster spoken out about the extreme unfairness that chinese and koreans are allowed to do their interviews in their native language, getting a translator etc. Sorry, but not every european is comfortable speaking english, but nevertheless they have to.
I'm going to assume this is a ridiculously bad faith argument that ignores obvious context. Don't try to keep pushing this shit 
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On March 21 2022 04:57 rwala wrote:
As the commentary over "who is the GOAT of SC2?" has picked up over the last few months, I've heard a surprising number of commentators and casters who follow the professional scene closely say that Maru hasn't won an offline, premier international/overseas tournament. The strange thing about this refrain is that it's just not true. Maru won WESG 2017--which, strangely, took place in 2018--to take home a 200K prize. What's particularly confusing about this collective amnesia among the SC2 professional commentariat is that WESG rivaled Blizzcon and IEM Katowice in terms of level of competition and prize pool for offline, international events (though perhaps not in terms of production quality/value). Debates around which tournaments should be considered "premier" aside, these three events were really in a category of their own for a number of years.
The point of this post is not to argue for or against Maru as the GOAT (please let's not go down that rabbit hole). I'm just genuinely curious why everyone has forgotten about WESG, and also curious if there is any chance the tournament organizers could bring it back since it was such an important tournament for sustaining the professional scene. WESG was cancelled during the pandemic, but as offline tournaments are starting back up, I wondered if there was a possibility that WESG could be back?
I also can't locate the official English-language VODs for any of the WESGs (perhaps that's one reason WESG has been relegated to the dustbin of SC2 history). This is particularly sad because all 3 WESGs produced truly epic, nail-biting 4-3 finals (I'd argue that the Maru-Dark WESG finals is one of the greatest grand finals matches in SC2 history). I think in the past I had watched some of the VODs so hopefully they exist somewhere? If anyone finds them and can share that would be pretty great!
It should be less about "never" and more about "very rarely" winning an offline Premier international/overseas tournament, that's true.
I think the point was that Maru , throughout his whole career, hasn't performed as strongly as expected at World Championships/equivalents.
Despite WESG being held further from Seoul than I thought, Haikou is just one timezone away, very much unlike Katowice(7.7k kms far) and Anaheim(9.5k) and probably such long travels could have affected Maru's performance more than the average top player's.
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On March 23 2022 08:22 Xain0n wrote:
It should be less about "never" and more about "very rarely" winning an offline Premier international/overseas tournament, that's true.
I think the point was that Maru , throughout his whole career, hasn't performed as strongly as expected at World Championships/equivalents.
Despite WESG being held further from Seoul than I thought, Haikou is just one timezone away, very much unlike Katowice(7.7k kms far) and Anaheim(9.5k) and probably such long travels could have affected Maru's performance more than the average top player's.
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"Very rarely" compared to what baseline? Talking about it like that kind of illustrates my point about these bizarre ways of shaping narrative. It's like trying to say a politician who only won the presidency one time for one term has "very rarely" won the presidency. The point is that when you look at 500K+ premier, overseas, offline events, you're really only looking at a small number of events, to include IEM Katowice, Blizzcon, and WESG. And so by definition only a small number of players have won those events, Maru being one of them. In fact, winning multiple events of this caliber is what's "very rare" (by my count, only Rogue, SOS, and Serral have done so). Winning 'just one' doesn't demonstrate anything about a player's performance liabilities. If trying to make the point about underperforming expectations at these kinds of events generally, plenty of evidence of that for sure, and you'll get no complaints from me.
It's certainly possible that long travels might impact Maru's performance more than others, though as best I can tell he's been winning a lot of tournaments playing at very odd hours of the night so the theory doesn't feel very congruent. It's also possible that he just happens to unfortunately not have performed his best during some of these huge, career-defining tournaments. E.g. I recall last year at IEM Katowice he made some uncharacteristic mis-clicks and mistakes in his series against Reynor. I also recall a time recently when Rogue marched slow banes into Maru's mineral line. Stuff like that, you know? It's not just at overseas, offline events. Maru has bombed out of GSLs like this too. I think there are other players like Serral, for example, that have historically had a more "standard", solid playstyle and thus performed more consistently at their peak performance level. Tho even Serral is not immune from performance dips. One thing that's interesting that commentators don't talk much about (but players often do) is that SC2 as an RTS is quite swingy and can verge on being coin flippy at times with build order and scouting wins, etc. Actually, I do recall casters taking this line when Rogue 4-0'ed Serral in like the fastest finals ever. But the same dynamic plays out in series with less dramatic score lines. Yet for whatever reason it's more attractive to try to advance narratives that X player has a performance problem at Y format events.
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Compared to how often Maru wins other tournaments(even online ones now that he was forced to play them more in the last two years).
Maru's career has been the longest out of any Sc2 progamer since he never quit or retired and he started winning tournaments as early as 2013 while being quite reliably a top player which implies that he has played at BlizzCon(2013, 2015, 2018, 2019), Katowice(2015, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022), WESG(2016, 2017, 2018).
Maru performed very well at WESG with one victory and one second place but two ro4 were the best results he achieved, out of ten attempts; suddenly not so few, almost surely more than any other progamer's.
How many times it's just bad luck or uncharacteristic poor play, especially when you take into consideration how well Maru has been performing at the same time under different conditions?
While stating that long travels affect Maru's play is merely a(reasonable I'd say) speculation, I think it's just safe to say that Maru generally underperformed on a World Championship's stage.
By the way, TY won Katowice and WESG(in the same year, 2017).
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Northern Ireland25216 Posts
On March 23 2022 07:20 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2022 20:36 Balnazza wrote:
WESG had a huge prizepool, but it wasn't really "organic", if that makes sense. Alibaba just threw around a bit of money. I mean, if I remember correctly, there are some Invite series in Tennis in Doha and China that also award huge amounts of money, but no one would say they are as relevant as the Grand Slams.
In the end, every (E)sports ist defined by its own circuit and only the things that happen in this circuit are truely relevant. People who say "TSM has never won an international League tournament" are also wrong, since they won IEM Kattowice. Buuuut since IEM isn't part of Riots circuit, it doesn't really count. Same goes for WESG. I agree that's WHY ppl don't care about certain tournaments, but I'm going to say that's the kind of traditionalist, illogical, narrative-based, convenience-first thinking that makes me dislike fan culture in a lot of sports. Show nested quote +On March 22 2022 20:36 Balnazza wrote:
But if we talk about unfair: Never has a caster spoken out about the extreme unfairness that chinese and koreans are allowed to do their interviews in their native language, getting a translator etc. Sorry, but not every european is comfortable speaking english, but nevertheless they have to. I'm going to assume this is a ridiculously bad faith argument that ignores obvious context. Don't try to keep pushing this shit
I dunno. Whatever the fans and the players put the biggest prestige on, generally tends to get the prestige.
Somebody could plough down serious money tomorrow on X tennis tournament, it’s still not the same as winning a Wimbledon with all the stories behind it.
Professional sport grew from glory, competition and prestige and attracted money, not the other way around.
Do I don’t think it’s entirely irrational for fans to act accordingly.
That said WESG didn’t help itself with its format, if it was super stacked and had such a pool and people dismissed it that would be silly
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France12840 Posts
Isn't the real question: "has everyone forgotten about IEM Katowice 2022?"? There is still no recap, is this so the korean elitists of this forum don't have to face the truth of Serral the GOAT any longer?
Maybe the commentators and casters should publicly speak about IEM Katowice 2022, so we can finally get the truth and recap we deserve
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On March 22 2022 23:52 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2022 20:36 Balnazza wrote:
In the end, every (E)sports ist defined by its own circuit and only the things that happen in this circuit are truely relevant. People who say "TSM has never won an international League tournament" are also wrong, since they won IEM Kattowice. Buuuut since IEM isn't part of Riots circuit, it doesn't really count. Same goes for WESG.
But if we talk about unfair: Never has a caster spoken out about the extreme unfairness that chinese and koreans are allowed to do their interviews in their native language, getting a translator etc. Sorry, but not every european is comfortable speaking english, but nevertheless they have to. You're right about who gets to define what events are part of the official point-awarding circuit, but that doesn't change the fact that the commentators who have been saying that Maru has never won an overseas/international offline event are wrong. They've been making this point to advance a narrative about an alleged weakness in his performance at overseas offline events, and quite simply that narrative doesn't make any sense unless you ignore the fact that he won 300K placing 1st and 2nd with epic runs at two WESGs in a row. You can say he's inconsistent or even that he's underperformed at IEM and Blizzcon, but you can't just ignore major results to make your point. No one complains about the translation thing because everyone (except you?) knows it would be a ridiculous complaint for all the obvious reasons, not least of which is that many if not most Korean and Chinese players do not really speak English. So it's a matter of practicality, not comfort. And those that do like Solar often do their interviews in English, FWIW. Also, I assume you know that GSL affords translators to the English-speaking players who compete in Korea?
I don't really get why you are so fixated on "some commentators".
Maru is quite possibly the best terran of all time, yet he consistently fails to do good in the World Championships/outside of Asia. Yes he has won that one obscure tournament nobody really cares about, but for his skill, that is underwhelming. That is a simple and actually true narrative. It is not out of spite, it is just noteworthy, that a player of his caliber never won a world championship. Kind of like Messi is without a doubt one of the all-time great players, but never won the World Cup. Something like that just crowns your career, so it feels like Maru is missing that last step.
@Waxangel:
Not really bad faith, it just annoys me. It also doesn't help me that I sadly don't speak even a word korean, so I don't know if the language really is that compact or if the translator always adds something to the answers of the players, since the english translation always seems that much longer than the actual korean answer^^
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EPT
