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On March 23 2022 20:48 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On March 22 2022 23:52 rwala wrote: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^^
I mean, I've heard many commentators and casters take this line and as you can see other longtime fans also find it curious, so it seemed worthy of of exploring. It's not like I'm fixated on complaining about not having everything translated into my preferred language 
I do agree that it's noteworthy that Maru has never won a world championship. If that's all that's being noted, I'd nod my head in agreement and this thread wouldn't exist. What's interesting is when commentators try to take it a step further and speculate about a player's performance patterns across various tournament formats. For example, first it was that Maru underperforms at "weekender" tournaments with all this speculation that he's really only a preparation-based player. When results were proving this theory to be a bit silly, they shifted off that narrative. Then it was Maru underperforms in online tournaments, and when he won a few of those in a row, they shifted off that narrative. Now it's Maru hasn't won a premier, overseas, offline tournament, implying there's a performance dip due to jet lag, transit, unfamiliar environments, etc. Again, this statement just isn't true. You can say nobody cares about WESG, but Maru's one of a handful of players that took home 200K winning an overseas, offline premier event featuring among the broadest and deepest international player pools of top pros.
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Even disregarding the fact that WESG didn't assign a World Championship, it was held not that far from Korea and that had a less deep pool of top players than Katowice and BlizzCon, Maru winning it once doesn't disprove that he generally underperforms in this kind of tournaments.
Maru underperformed relatively to expectations, he was often regarded as the favourite to win such events, with Aligulac agreeing(he was ranked #1 before BlizzCon 2018 and Katowice 2019, 2022).
Maru also underperformed relatively to how well he fared in other kind of competitions: since he first won an OSL back in 2013 there have been 24 Code S seasons, of which Maru won 4 reaching the finals twice more(in addition to countless ro4).
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Northern Ireland25195 Posts
On March 23 2022 22:26 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2022 20:48 Balnazza wrote:On March 22 2022 23:52 rwala wrote: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^^ I mean, I've heard many commentators and casters take this line and as you can see other longtime fans also find it curious, so it seemed worthy of of exploring. It's not like I'm fixated on complaining about not having everything translated into my preferred language I do agree that it's noteworthy that Maru has never won a world championship. If that's all that's being noted, I'd nod my head in agreement and this thread wouldn't exist. What's interesting is when commentators try to take it a step further and speculate about a player's performance patterns across various tournament formats. For example, first it was that Maru underperforms at "weekender" tournaments with all this speculation that he's really only a preparation-based player. When results were proving this theory to be a bit silly, they shifted off that narrative. Then it was Maru underperforms in online tournaments, and when he won a few of those in a row, they shifted off that narrative. Now it's Maru hasn't won a premier, overseas, offline tournament, implying there's a performance dip due to jet lag, transit, unfamiliar environments, etc. Again, this statement just isn't true. You can say nobody cares about WESG, but Maru's one of a handful of players that took home 200K winning an overseas, offline premier event featuring among the broadest and deepest international player pools of top pros.
I don’t recall people really ever saying Maru underperformed in online tournaments, indeed the theory from most was that the online era might suit him without the travel/playing a home environment.
And he put up pretty stellar results overall the last stretch. ‘Maru doesn’t do online’ really to my knowledge only referred to him not bothering with online tournaments like weeklies.
As for WESG if you don’t count qualifiers the actual event is not especially stacked. Logically yes, then qualifying being so hard should count in the consideration of the difficulty of winning the tournament. It’s logically a rather big scalp to take home.
This isn’t just Maru either, the last flourish of Inno in his latter gradual mediocre/slump period was taking a WESG and people don’t really mention it for him either.
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On March 23 2022 22:26 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2022 20:48 Balnazza wrote:On March 22 2022 23:52 rwala wrote: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^^ I mean, I've heard many commentators and casters take this line and as you can see other longtime fans also find it curious, so it seemed worthy of of exploring. It's not like I'm fixated on complaining about not having everything translated into my preferred language I do agree that it's noteworthy that Maru has never won a world championship. If that's all that's being noted, I'd nod my head in agreement and this thread wouldn't exist. What's interesting is when commentators try to take it a step further and speculate about a player's performance patterns across various tournament formats. For example, first it was that Maru underperforms at "weekender" tournaments with all this speculation that he's really only a preparation-based player. When results were proving this theory to be a bit silly, they shifted off that narrative. Then it was Maru underperforms in online tournaments, and when he won a few of those in a row, they shifted off that narrative. Now it's Maru hasn't won a premier, overseas, offline tournament, implying there's a performance dip due to jet lag, transit, unfamiliar environments, etc. Again, this statement just isn't true. You can say nobody cares about WESG, but Maru's one of a handful of players that took home 200K winning an overseas, offline premier event featuring among the broadest and deepest international player pools of top pros.
I still don't get what you are trying to achieve. Like, what should commentators say? "Maru is just the greatest in everything and it is just bad luck he always bombs in the most important tournament of the year"? And obviously the narrative shifts when it is disproven? What do you expect?
Again, WESG isn't that important, because it wasn't that stacked. If Alibaba wouldn't have in thrown in such a big prizepool, nobody would have even cared that it happened. That is not the fault of anybody, including Marus. It is still great that he won it and was runner-up, he also won it against some pretty good players. But it was in no way, shape or form comparable with Kattowice or BlizzCon and those are the tournaments were legends are born. Maru failed to win one, even though you would expect that he has the skill to do it. And that is the last thing that helds him back. Honestly, and as yourself I don't want to go there, it really also kicks him out of the discussion for GOAT, atleast in my opinion. You just need that biggest of all titles to be up there and it is just surprising that Maru not only constantly fails to get that title, but he also kind of bombs those tournaments. So obviously people start speculating why that happens, when he does so well in GSL. And the easiest thing seems to be that he always needs to be in his prefered, perfect setting to do well. A speculation, but everybody is allowed to come up with another answer. That will happen until he either retires or finally wins that trophy.
And just for the lolz: When the World Cyber Games were still relevant, you needed two wins to get into the Hall of Fame. By that standard, Maru would even be further away from being in the Hall of Fame of Starcraft 2.
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France12819 Posts
On March 24 2022 00:46 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2022 22:26 rwala wrote:On March 23 2022 20:48 Balnazza wrote:On March 22 2022 23:52 rwala wrote: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^^ I mean, I've heard many commentators and casters take this line and as you can see other longtime fans also find it curious, so it seemed worthy of of exploring. It's not like I'm fixated on complaining about not having everything translated into my preferred language I do agree that it's noteworthy that Maru has never won a world championship. If that's all that's being noted, I'd nod my head in agreement and this thread wouldn't exist. What's interesting is when commentators try to take it a step further and speculate about a player's performance patterns across various tournament formats. For example, first it was that Maru underperforms at "weekender" tournaments with all this speculation that he's really only a preparation-based player. When results were proving this theory to be a bit silly, they shifted off that narrative. Then it was Maru underperforms in online tournaments, and when he won a few of those in a row, they shifted off that narrative. Now it's Maru hasn't won a premier, overseas, offline tournament, implying there's a performance dip due to jet lag, transit, unfamiliar environments, etc. Again, this statement just isn't true. You can say nobody cares about WESG, but Maru's one of a handful of players that took home 200K winning an overseas, offline premier event featuring among the broadest and deepest international player pools of top pros. I still don't get what you are trying to achieve. Like, what should commentators say? "Maru is just the greatest in everything and it is just bad luck he always bombs in the most important tournament of the year"? And obviously the narrative shifts when it is disproven? What do you expect? Again, WESG isn't that important, because it wasn't that stacked. If Alibaba wouldn't have in thrown in such a big prizepool, nobody would have even cared that it happened. That is not the fault of anybody, including Marus. It is still great that he won it and was runner-up, he also won it against some pretty good players. But it was in no way, shape or form comparable with Kattowice or BlizzCon and those are the tournaments were legends are born. Maru failed to win one, even though you would expect that he has the skill to do it. And that is the last thing that helds him back. Honestly, and as yourself I don't want to go there, it really also kicks him out of the discussion for GOAT, atleast in my opinion. You just need that biggest of all titles to be up there and it is just surprising that Maru not only constantly fails to get that title, but he also kind of bombs those tournaments. So obviously people start speculating why that happens, when he does so well in GSL. And the easiest thing seems to be that he always needs to be in his prefered, perfect setting to do well. A speculation, but everybody is allowed to come up with another answer. That will happen until he either retires or finally wins that trophy. And just for the lolz: When the World Cyber Games were still relevant, you needed two wins to get into the Hall of Fame. By that standard, Maru would even be further away from being in the Hall of Fame of Starcraft 2.
Without counting the KR qualifiers which were really stacked, WESG is around as stacked as soO's 2017 run had he won BlizzCon (he finished 2nd), so this is still pretty decent, and overseas. It was slightly less stacked than Rogue's run (the winner) who was a bit "unlucky" in his opponents.
The narrative that Maru is bad overseas / performing worse than usual is overblown: he has "choked" in GSLs he was supposed to win / considered the best countless times as well.
Plus World Championships, specifically overseas, and oh not too close to Korea (like WESG / China) since it's not far enough to matter... well you reduce the number of tournaments to a very low sample size, not winning one doesn't prove much with that level of competition. Especially considering the last terran winners of these specific tournaments were TY and ByuN, quite long ago, it's not like Maru has had disappointing terran results compared to his peers at those tournaments.
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On March 23 2022 22:26 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2022 20:48 Balnazza wrote:On March 22 2022 23:52 rwala wrote: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^^ I mean, I've heard many commentators and casters take this line and as you can see other longtime fans also find it curious, so it seemed worthy of of exploring. It's not like I'm fixated on complaining about not having everything translated into my preferred language I do agree that it's noteworthy that Maru has never won a world championship. If that's all that's being noted, I'd nod my head in agreement and this thread wouldn't exist. What's interesting is when commentators try to take it a step further and speculate about a player's performance patterns across various tournament formats. For example, first it was that Maru underperforms at "weekender" tournaments with all this speculation that he's really only a preparation-based player. When results were proving this theory to be a bit silly, they shifted off that narrative. Then it was Maru underperforms in online tournaments, and when he won a few of those in a row, they shifted off that narrative. Now it's Maru hasn't won a premier, overseas, offline tournament, implying there's a performance dip due to jet lag, transit, unfamiliar environments, etc. Again, this statement just isn't true. You can say nobody cares about WESG, but Maru's one of a handful of players that took home 200K winning an overseas, offline premier event featuring among the broadest and deepest international player pools of top pros.
Your fixation on a detail that has been adressed many times in numerous ways in this thread make it seem like it is that exact detail that is the issue. That detail being: At least one commentator has at some point claimed that Maru never won a big international offline tournament.
This is the detail that you come back to over and over. I'll adress that first.
Point 1:
When WESG was held it was a common opinion that the Korean qualifier was the true contest. The main event was just a formality to decide which Korean gets the biggest payout. When a regional qualifier is deemed to be the hardest part of a tournament, then the tournament loses some of its clout.
Point 2:
People can miss details because they are not perfect. People can take collegues' words for granted since they are expected to know. People who are in the spotlight (live stream) and does not correct someone else can be out of respect or habit, since it can be a bit tricky to tell people are wrong in a way that is not considered rude.
WESG had a big prize pool, but the event was not a proper big international offline tournament. Even if it was, casters are wrong all the time. Don't get hung up on details!
An example of a caster being wrong is (sorry Rotti, but I'll use you as an example since you are usually the best informed and I hope you can take it) at a BlizzCon, before Rogue had won anything big. Rogue was one of the most consistent code S participants, always qualifying, and had been doing really well in Proleague by taking down the biggest names. Rotti was introducing Rogue at BlizzCon, He started the introduction (paraphrasing) "Who is this guy? Nobody knows who he is but he has been raking in the GSL points and managed to qualify."
Anyone following anything Korean knew who Rogue was.
Now I'll adress another thing, that the narrative of commentators are moving the goalpost when talking about Maru.
No SC2 player has played for longer than Maru. He was there from the start. He got big quickly. The weekender narrative you mention worked for longer than Reynor has been playing. It worked for several years. Why not use it? Before doing well in GSL, we had years of Maru failing in non-team formats. When Maru started performing better at weekenders you could talk about him not playing online. That was also something that worked since Maru seldom played online. The Maru narrative changes because Maru changes. He started as an extremely young player, then a child wonder, then a team leaguer, then a preparation player. Maru disliked playing online and he disliked travel. Now he has been playing online for a few years and he has gotten some experience with travel.
Why don't you mention the narrative that Maru is the best TvP player there ever was, which was questioned last year with "why has Maru never been good vs Protoss?" by a fellow user here on TL.
Maru is not the same player today when compared to 2018 (4 years ago), nor during PvProleague in 2014, nor GOMTvT during Wings of Liberty.
The narrative tries to find a partern. Maru had patterns that changed. Therefore the narrative changes.
Lastly, I'll nitpick details from you.
You claim WESG to be an overseas tournament. South Korea has got North Korea in one direction, Japan in another, China in a third and then there is a slim piece of Russia north east and the ocean in the south. Is going to the neighbouring country really an "overseas tournament" for Maru? The tournament was held in Haikou, which is on an island in the ocean about 20 km from the mainland, so it is technically overseas for everyone. As a reference, the distance between Europe and Great Britain is about 30 km. Very overseas.
You also have the group of a) jet lag, b) transit, and c) unfamiliar environments baked into the claim of overseas tournaments.
a) You don't get jet lag from a 1 hour difference, which is the difference between China and South Korea.
b) The transit might be a genuine argument but then it would affect everyone at WESG that isn't native to the city. Maru has would have had the third shortest distance out of every non Chinese player, I think. Maru would be among the least affected by transit there. This argument is almost as weak as the jet lag argument.
c) The difference between Seoul and Haikou could be quite big for Maru, so that is a point I'll give you. Your argument would then claim that Maru isn't more affected than others by a strange environment.
Summary: People can make mistakes so don't nitpick things they do. You are correct in general terms and most people in this thread agree with you.
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On March 24 2022 00:12 Xain0n wrote:
Even disregarding the fact that WESG didn't assign a World Championship, it was held not that far from Korea and that had a less deep pool of top players than Katowice and BlizzCon, Maru winning it once doesn't disprove that he generally underperforms in this kind of tournaments.
Maru underperformed relatively to expectations, he was often regarded as the favourite to win such events, with Aligulac agreeing(he was ranked #1 before BlizzCon 2018 and Katowice 2019, 2022).
Maru also underperformed relatively to how well he fared in other kind of competitions: since he first won an OSL back in 2013 there have been 24 Code S seasons, of which Maru won 4 reaching the finals twice more(in addition to countless ro4).
Ok reaching the finals 6 times and winning 4 is not bad at all out of 24 seasons, especially with all the ro4s where he was pretty much the only terran left back in the old days
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On March 24 2022 00:46 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2022 22:26 rwala wrote:On March 23 2022 20:48 Balnazza wrote:On March 22 2022 23:52 rwala wrote: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^^ I mean, I've heard many commentators and casters take this line and as you can see other longtime fans also find it curious, so it seemed worthy of of exploring. It's not like I'm fixated on complaining about not having everything translated into my preferred language I do agree that it's noteworthy that Maru has never won a world championship. If that's all that's being noted, I'd nod my head in agreement and this thread wouldn't exist. What's interesting is when commentators try to take it a step further and speculate about a player's performance patterns across various tournament formats. For example, first it was that Maru underperforms at "weekender" tournaments with all this speculation that he's really only a preparation-based player. When results were proving this theory to be a bit silly, they shifted off that narrative. Then it was Maru underperforms in online tournaments, and when he won a few of those in a row, they shifted off that narrative. Now it's Maru hasn't won a premier, overseas, offline tournament, implying there's a performance dip due to jet lag, transit, unfamiliar environments, etc. Again, this statement just isn't true. You can say nobody cares about WESG, but Maru's one of a handful of players that took home 200K winning an overseas, offline premier event featuring among the broadest and deepest international player pools of top pros. I still don't get what you are trying to achieve. Like, what should commentators say? "Maru is just the greatest in everything and it is just bad luck he always bombs in the most important tournament of the year"? And obviously the narrative shifts when it is disproven? What do you expect? Again, WESG isn't that important, because it wasn't that stacked. If Alibaba wouldn't have in thrown in such a big prizepool, nobody would have even cared that it happened. That is not the fault of anybody, including Marus. It is still great that he won it and was runner-up, he also won it against some pretty good players. But it was in no way, shape or form comparable with Kattowice or BlizzCon and those are the tournaments were legends are born. Maru failed to win one, even though you would expect that he has the skill to do it. And that is the last thing that helds him back. Honestly, and as yourself I don't want to go there, it really also kicks him out of the discussion for GOAT, atleast in my opinion. You just need that biggest of all titles to be up there and it is just surprising that Maru not only constantly fails to get that title, but he also kind of bombs those tournaments. So obviously people start speculating why that happens, when he does so well in GSL. And the easiest thing seems to be that he always needs to be in his prefered, perfect setting to do well. A speculation, but everybody is allowed to come up with another answer. That will happen until he either retires or finally wins that trophy. And just for the lolz: When the World Cyber Games were still relevant, you needed two wins to get into the Hall of Fame. By that standard, Maru would even be further away from being in the Hall of Fame of Starcraft 2.
Yeah I think it's clear what you don't get from the misuse of quotations and various random tangents. And I see you've taken yourself into the rabbit hole of the GOAT discussion (I was wondering who might set and take their own bait on that one...but if it makes you feel better I agree Maru can't be a GOAT contender unless and until he wins a global championship title). You don't need a "just for the lolz" section for your comments, my friend. That started when you began complaining about the Korean and Chinese players getting translators at events...and it's kind of infused in the rest of your comments.
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On March 24 2022 01:23 Drfilip wrote:Show nested quote +On March 23 2022 22:26 rwala wrote:On March 23 2022 20:48 Balnazza wrote:On March 22 2022 23:52 rwala wrote: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^^ I mean, I've heard many commentators and casters take this line and as you can see other longtime fans also find it curious, so it seemed worthy of of exploring. It's not like I'm fixated on complaining about not having everything translated into my preferred language I do agree that it's noteworthy that Maru has never won a world championship. If that's all that's being noted, I'd nod my head in agreement and this thread wouldn't exist. What's interesting is when commentators try to take it a step further and speculate about a player's performance patterns across various tournament formats. For example, first it was that Maru underperforms at "weekender" tournaments with all this speculation that he's really only a preparation-based player. When results were proving this theory to be a bit silly, they shifted off that narrative. Then it was Maru underperforms in online tournaments, and when he won a few of those in a row, they shifted off that narrative. Now it's Maru hasn't won a premier, overseas, offline tournament, implying there's a performance dip due to jet lag, transit, unfamiliar environments, etc. Again, this statement just isn't true. You can say nobody cares about WESG, but Maru's one of a handful of players that took home 200K winning an overseas, offline premier event featuring among the broadest and deepest international player pools of top pros. Your fixation on a detail that has been adressed many times in numerous ways in this thread make it seem like it is that exact detail that is the issue. That detail being: At least one commentator has at some point claimed that Maru never won a big international offline tournament.This is the detail that you come back to over and over. I'll adress that first. Point 1:When WESG was held it was a common opinion that the Korean qualifier was the true contest. The main event was just a formality to decide which Korean gets the biggest payout. When a regional qualifier is deemed to be the hardest part of a tournament, then the tournament loses some of its clout. Point 2:People can miss details because they are not perfect. People can take collegues' words for granted since they are expected to know. People who are in the spotlight (live stream) and does not correct someone else can be out of respect or habit, since it can be a bit tricky to tell people are wrong in a way that is not considered rude. WESG had a big prize pool, but the event was not a proper big international offline tournament. Even if it was, casters are wrong all the time. Don't get hung up on details! An example of a caster being wrong is (sorry Rotti, but I'll use you as an example since you are usually the best informed and I hope you can take it) at a BlizzCon, before Rogue had won anything big. Rogue was one of the most consistent code S participants, always qualifying, and had been doing really well in Proleague by taking down the biggest names. Rotti was introducing Rogue at BlizzCon, He started the introduction (paraphrasing) "Who is this guy? Nobody knows who he is but he has been raking in the GSL points and managed to qualify." Anyone following anything Korean knew who Rogue was. Now I'll adress another thing, that the narrative of commentators are moving the goalpost when talking about Maru. No SC2 player has played for longer than Maru. He was there from the start. He got big quickly. The weekender narrative you mention worked for longer than Reynor has been playing. It worked for several years. Why not use it? Before doing well in GSL, we had years of Maru failing in non-team formats. When Maru started performing better at weekenders you could talk about him not playing online. That was also something that worked since Maru seldom played online. The Maru narrative changes because Maru changes. He started as an extremely young player, then a child wonder, then a team leaguer, then a preparation player. Maru disliked playing online and he disliked travel. Now he has been playing online for a few years and he has gotten some experience with travel. Why don't you mention the narrative that Maru is the best TvP player there ever was, which was questioned last year with "why has Maru never been good vs Protoss?" by a fellow user here on TL. Maru is not the same player today when compared to 2018 (4 years ago), nor during PvProleague in 2014, nor GOMTvT during Wings of Liberty. The narrative tries to find a partern. Maru had patterns that changed. Therefore the narrative changes. Lastly, I'll nitpick details from you. You claim WESG to be an overseas tournament. South Korea has got North Korea in one direction, Japan in another, China in a third and then there is a slim piece of Russia north east and the ocean in the south. Is going to the neighbouring country really an "overseas tournament" for Maru? The tournament was held in Haikou, which is on an island in the ocean about 20 km from the mainland, so it is technically overseas for everyone. As a reference, the distance between Europe and Great Britain is about 30 km. Very overseas. You also have the group of a) jet lag, b) transit, and c) unfamiliar environments baked into the claim of overseas tournaments. a) You don't get jet lag from a 1 hour difference, which is the difference between China and South Korea. b) The transit might be a genuine argument but then it would affect everyone at WESG that isn't native to the city. Maru has would have had the third shortest distance out of every non Chinese player, I think. Maru would be among the least affected by transit there. This argument is almost as weak as the jet lag argument. c) The difference between Seoul and Haikou could be quite big for Maru, so that is a point I'll give you. Your argument would then claim that Maru isn't more affected than others by a strange environment. Summary: People can make mistakes so don't nitpick things they do. You are correct in general terms and most people in this thread agree with you.
Interesting way to complain about nitpicking FWIW, the point of the original post is in many ways a challenge to consider facts and independent thinking rather than defer to "common opinion," so an appeal to common opinion might not be very persuasive in this context. Again, I'm not opposed to narratives. I'm not even opposed to shifting narratives. In fact, every good story has a narrative "arc" for a reason. But I don't think you need to distort the facts to drive a good narrative arc. For example, the "common opinion" folks used to push that Maru struggled at "weekender" tourneys because he was a "preparation-based" player. But this not only ignored two years of WESG results, but also never really explained how he was one of the best Proleague players of all time (one of the most challenging formats to prepare for).
The bigger thing for me is that I sort of feel these commentaries are a bit shallow and misunderstand the beauty in how different players play. Like for me, when it comes to Terran, TY is the guy you look to for true deep strategic genius and very interesting preparation-based play. Maru is the guy who wins a GSL with solid TvP against Classic and less than a week later goes off meta TvP mech play versus Stats because he just feels like it should work. He lost that series to Stats, by the way, and honestly I think the reasons why say a lot more about Maru's underperformance in tournaments than anything else.
To your question, I don't care about whether Maru is the best TvP player. Much more interesting is *why* Maru was the only T who could reliably win a TvP for a hot minute: he'd do really weird shit like drop mines for 6 minutes straight and not build vikings and gun down colossus with small packs of marauders. More generally, Maru was the guy that turned Terran cheese builds into macro builds.
So I think the challenge for everyone is to step away from formulaic, trite narratives about which players play well in specific tournament formats and think more about other factors like how playstyle impacts performance and outcomes in different contexts. For example, I don't think it was a fluke that $O$ won 2 global championships and showed legendary performances in Proleague, while similarly being unable to sustain those results several years after the final expansion and many aspects of the game were "solved". These are much more interesting narratives to explore. Or sure, you can just say Maru doesn't perform well in overseas tourneys, I guess...
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Which by itself is not a narrative, it's a fact.
While trying to understand why this happens is just speculating, there is no doubt that Maru underperforms in said tournaments.
It's weird that you don't find it interesting since you were the one who started a thread so closely correlate to this argument.
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On March 24 2022 11:27 Xain0n wrote:
Which by itself is not a narrative, it's a fact.
While trying to understand why this happens is just speculating, there is no doubt that Maru underperforms in said tournaments.
It's weird that you don't find it interesting since you were the one who started a thread so closely correlate to this argument.
I wouldn't define things that are quite literally unverifiable as facts. The best you could do if that's what you wanted to try to do is run a monte carlo simulation or something and compare your algorithm's expected results to Maru's actual results. Those that are familiar with statistical modeling know that the odds any single top-tier player--even the #1 ranked player--will win the championship in any given year is quite low in absolute terms, so part of the confusion here is that casual fans and commentators set their baselines differently to what an "objective" statistical understanding suggests one should. You know what I mean?
Anyways, I never really argued this point, though perhaps it's useful for folks who are expressing such confidence in their understanding of performance baselines to understand it. I recognize that I myself am subject to the same heuristics and biases so am perfectly happy to concede that Maru has underperformed in many of these events (at least it sure feels like he has to me). I'm also interested in why, as I explained in other posts, just not necessarily interested in shallow explanations based on inaccurate understandings of reality.
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Northern Ireland25195 Posts
Maru’s been the longest serving champion tier player in the game.
It is worth noting that he just didn’t play/qualify for as many regular weekend tournaments, for various reasons. Which largely reduces the sample size from which narratives are formed.
If he’d rocked up to more regular old IEMs/Dreamhacks, an ASUS Rog or whatever and taken more of those, it wouldn’t even be a narrative in the first place.
Taeja would turn up of a summer and win a few weekend tournaments back to back and be clearly good at running those gauntlets, not quite replicate that form in Starleagues and it was pretty obvious one format suited him better.
As it were he’s had a good year in online weekenders, and is generally judged on Blizzcons and Katowices. Where he’s generally done well by any reasonable metric. But well he’s Maru
I don’t see what exploring that is any less, or more interesting than explaining sOs’ trajectory, an analysis I basically agree with by the way.
Who knows? It’d be interesting to talk to pros to verify some of these theories, we can only look from the outside in and come up with theories.
When sOs dismantled him one Blizzcon with trickery, vs his 4-peat in GSL, the temptation is that his team prepping against him versus for his benefit make a difference. But we have no way of knowing that. The assumption being that the likes of sOs and Rogue are very tricky players so may form the ‘brains’ of JAGW, and Maru is still a fearsome mechanical opponent but without the prep help doesn’t have as good gameplans. Which could be nonsense, Maru could have been the brains behind their prep but we don’t know that.
Other pieces could fit that puzzle. Last year Maru tried a tricky build against Reynor in one of the best maps for his split map defensive style, left a wall up sloppily and died. Seems dumb to not put your best forward right? But alternatively, Reynor if on any map was expecting Maru to play like Maru it was that map, so it could have been a clever ploy that backfired. Ultimately it was a tight series and I’d have favoured Maru if he’d made it past Reynor and maybe he has that WC. On thin margins are these things decided.
This year he didn’t veto a map that to me looks unwinnable outside of cheesing against a player of Serral’s calibre. That was quite mystifying to me as decisions go:
Alternatively this year, as I think is possible the likes of Serral, Reynor especially really did seem to aim successfully to peak for Katowice. Maru had a great year with some absolute TvZ clinics but perhaps he peaked or showed his hand too soon
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On March 24 2022 09:45 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2022 00:46 Balnazza wrote:On March 23 2022 22:26 rwala wrote:On March 23 2022 20:48 Balnazza wrote:On March 22 2022 23:52 rwala wrote: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^^ I mean, I've heard many commentators and casters take this line and as you can see other longtime fans also find it curious, so it seemed worthy of of exploring. It's not like I'm fixated on complaining about not having everything translated into my preferred language I do agree that it's noteworthy that Maru has never won a world championship. If that's all that's being noted, I'd nod my head in agreement and this thread wouldn't exist. What's interesting is when commentators try to take it a step further and speculate about a player's performance patterns across various tournament formats. For example, first it was that Maru underperforms at "weekender" tournaments with all this speculation that he's really only a preparation-based player. When results were proving this theory to be a bit silly, they shifted off that narrative. Then it was Maru underperforms in online tournaments, and when he won a few of those in a row, they shifted off that narrative. Now it's Maru hasn't won a premier, overseas, offline tournament, implying there's a performance dip due to jet lag, transit, unfamiliar environments, etc. Again, this statement just isn't true. You can say nobody cares about WESG, but Maru's one of a handful of players that took home 200K winning an overseas, offline premier event featuring among the broadest and deepest international player pools of top pros. I still don't get what you are trying to achieve. Like, what should commentators say? "Maru is just the greatest in everything and it is just bad luck he always bombs in the most important tournament of the year"? And obviously the narrative shifts when it is disproven? What do you expect? Again, WESG isn't that important, because it wasn't that stacked. If Alibaba wouldn't have in thrown in such a big prizepool, nobody would have even cared that it happened. That is not the fault of anybody, including Marus. It is still great that he won it and was runner-up, he also won it against some pretty good players. But it was in no way, shape or form comparable with Kattowice or BlizzCon and those are the tournaments were legends are born. Maru failed to win one, even though you would expect that he has the skill to do it. And that is the last thing that helds him back. Honestly, and as yourself I don't want to go there, it really also kicks him out of the discussion for GOAT, atleast in my opinion. You just need that biggest of all titles to be up there and it is just surprising that Maru not only constantly fails to get that title, but he also kind of bombs those tournaments. So obviously people start speculating why that happens, when he does so well in GSL. And the easiest thing seems to be that he always needs to be in his prefered, perfect setting to do well. A speculation, but everybody is allowed to come up with another answer. That will happen until he either retires or finally wins that trophy. And just for the lolz: When the World Cyber Games were still relevant, you needed two wins to get into the Hall of Fame. By that standard, Maru would even be further away from being in the Hall of Fame of Starcraft 2. Yeah I think it's clear what you don't get from the misuse of quotations and various random tangents. And I see you've taken yourself into the rabbit hole of the GOAT discussion (I was wondering who might set and take their own bait on that one...but if it makes you feel better I agree Maru can't be a GOAT contender unless and until he wins a global championship title). You don't need a "just for the lolz" section for your comments, my friend. That started when you began complaining about the Korean and Chinese players getting translators at events...and it's kind of infused in the rest of your comments.
You know, if you just wanted to complain a bit that those evil commentators dare to question Maru, you could have done that way easier and not waste everybodys time...
Since you were so kind to answer my question 'what do you expect?' (though you didn't answer, probably because I hurt your feelings? :<) with 'that people talk more about why he bombs and not that he does', I will give you the rundown: Because IEM (and other events) have a tight schedule and you can only talk so much about a single player. And in the end, everything casters come up with would just be speculations. The fact however, and it irritates me that you think that isn't a fact, is that Maru bombs this tournaments on a regular bases and hasn't won one yet, which is odd seeing how is one of the best of all time. You cannot waste hours of psychological analysis on one player that eventually will go out in the Ro8 without leaving a mark. In fact, while it also keeps the pressure high, it is just a compliment to Marus skill. Same went for Serral when he was "in a slump" aka. wasn't winning everything.
People have very high expectations for the very best and when they constantly underperform in the most important tournament of the year, it eventually becomes a narrative. You can see that in a lot of sports btw, like Messi in Football or Alexander Zverev in Tennis.
Last but not least: The harsh truth about (E)Sports is, that in the future, when people look back at your career, nobody really cares why you didn't win "the big thing". They only see that you didn't and it leaves a mark on your track record. And while I really don't like to watch terran in general and Maru in particular, it still would sadden me a bit if his career never gets this crowning achievement. But I really don't care why he can't perform at the highest level, because in the end, he just has to suck it up, as harsh as that sounds. Other people, like Rogue or Dark, are in the same position as him concerning jetlag and travel etc. and they won their big titles. So whatever is "wrong" with Maru, he is the only one who will ever be able to fix it and no amount of in-depth analysis from commentators will ever change that.
"Big players win big games" is a saying in American Football, right? Maru eventually will have to proof that...or maybe he really just doesn't care about all of that and is happy "just" winning GSL. Then that is fine, too.
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On March 24 2022 22:18 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2022 09:45 rwala wrote:On March 24 2022 00:46 Balnazza wrote:On March 23 2022 22:26 rwala wrote:On March 23 2022 20:48 Balnazza wrote:On March 22 2022 23:52 rwala wrote: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^^ I mean, I've heard many commentators and casters take this line and as you can see other longtime fans also find it curious, so it seemed worthy of of exploring. It's not like I'm fixated on complaining about not having everything translated into my preferred language I do agree that it's noteworthy that Maru has never won a world championship. If that's all that's being noted, I'd nod my head in agreement and this thread wouldn't exist. What's interesting is when commentators try to take it a step further and speculate about a player's performance patterns across various tournament formats. For example, first it was that Maru underperforms at "weekender" tournaments with all this speculation that he's really only a preparation-based player. When results were proving this theory to be a bit silly, they shifted off that narrative. Then it was Maru underperforms in online tournaments, and when he won a few of those in a row, they shifted off that narrative. Now it's Maru hasn't won a premier, overseas, offline tournament, implying there's a performance dip due to jet lag, transit, unfamiliar environments, etc. Again, this statement just isn't true. You can say nobody cares about WESG, but Maru's one of a handful of players that took home 200K winning an overseas, offline premier event featuring among the broadest and deepest international player pools of top pros. I still don't get what you are trying to achieve. Like, what should commentators say? "Maru is just the greatest in everything and it is just bad luck he always bombs in the most important tournament of the year"? And obviously the narrative shifts when it is disproven? What do you expect? Again, WESG isn't that important, because it wasn't that stacked. If Alibaba wouldn't have in thrown in such a big prizepool, nobody would have even cared that it happened. That is not the fault of anybody, including Marus. It is still great that he won it and was runner-up, he also won it against some pretty good players. But it was in no way, shape or form comparable with Kattowice or BlizzCon and those are the tournaments were legends are born. Maru failed to win one, even though you would expect that he has the skill to do it. And that is the last thing that helds him back. Honestly, and as yourself I don't want to go there, it really also kicks him out of the discussion for GOAT, atleast in my opinion. You just need that biggest of all titles to be up there and it is just surprising that Maru not only constantly fails to get that title, but he also kind of bombs those tournaments. So obviously people start speculating why that happens, when he does so well in GSL. And the easiest thing seems to be that he always needs to be in his prefered, perfect setting to do well. A speculation, but everybody is allowed to come up with another answer. That will happen until he either retires or finally wins that trophy. And just for the lolz: When the World Cyber Games were still relevant, you needed two wins to get into the Hall of Fame. By that standard, Maru would even be further away from being in the Hall of Fame of Starcraft 2. Yeah I think it's clear what you don't get from the misuse of quotations and various random tangents. And I see you've taken yourself into the rabbit hole of the GOAT discussion (I was wondering who might set and take their own bait on that one...but if it makes you feel better I agree Maru can't be a GOAT contender unless and until he wins a global championship title). You don't need a "just for the lolz" section for your comments, my friend. That started when you began complaining about the Korean and Chinese players getting translators at events...and it's kind of infused in the rest of your comments. You know, if you just wanted to complain a bit that those evil commentators dare to question Maru, you could have done that way easier and not waste everybodys time... Since you were so kind to answer my question 'what do you expect?' (though you didn't answer, probably because I hurt your feelings? :<) with 'that people talk more about why he bombs and not that he does', I will give you the rundown: Because IEM (and other events) have a tight schedule and you can only talk so much about a single player. And in the end, everything casters come up with would just be speculations. The fact however, and it irritates me that you think that isn't a fact, is that Maru bombs this tournaments on a regular bases and hasn't won one yet, which is odd seeing how is one of the best of all time. You cannot waste hours of psychological analysis on one player that eventually will go out in the Ro8 without leaving a mark. In fact, while it also keeps the pressure high, it is just a compliment to Marus skill. Same went for Serral when he was "in a slump" aka. wasn't winning everything. People have very high expectations for the very best and when they constantly underperform in the most important tournament of the year, it eventually becomes a narrative. You can see that in a lot of sports btw, like Messi in Football or Alexander Zverev in Tennis. Last but not least: The harsh truth about (E)Sports is, that in the future, when people look back at your career, nobody really cares why you didn't win "the big thing". They only see that you didn't and it leaves a mark on your track record. And while I really don't like to watch terran in general and Maru in particular, it still would sadden me a bit if his career never gets this crowning achievement. But I really don't care why he can't perform at the highest level, because in the end, he just has to suck it up, as harsh as that sounds. Other people, like Rogue or Dark, are in the same position as him concerning jetlag and travel etc. and they won their big titles. So whatever is "wrong" with Maru, he is the only one who will ever be able to fix it and no amount of in-depth analysis from commentators will ever change that. "Big players win big games" is a saying in American Football, right? Maru eventually will have to proof that...or maybe he really just doesn't care about all of that and is happy "just" winning GSL. Then that is fine, too.
My feelings are okay, thanks for asking I mean, I'm not really sure what to tell you other than you're really all over the place confused and confusing things. The good news is you've got plenty of content in this thread to get up to speed if that's what you want. GLHF!
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On March 24 2022 19:56 WombaT wrote:
Maru’s been the longest serving champion tier player in the game.
It is worth noting that he just didn’t play/qualify for as many regular weekend tournaments, for various reasons. Which largely reduces the sample size from which narratives are formed.
If he’d rocked up to more regular old IEMs/Dreamhacks, an ASUS Rog or whatever and taken more of those, it wouldn’t even be a narrative in the first place.
Taeja would turn up of a summer and win a few weekend tournaments back to back and be clearly good at running those gauntlets, not quite replicate that form in Starleagues and it was pretty obvious one format suited him better.
As it were he’s had a good year in online weekenders, and is generally judged on Blizzcons and Katowices. Where he’s generally done well by any reasonable metric. But well he’s Maru
I don’t see what exploring that is any less, or more interesting than explaining sOs’ trajectory, an analysis I basically agree with by the way.
Who knows? It’d be interesting to talk to pros to verify some of these theories, we can only look from the outside in and come up with theories.
When sOs dismantled him one Blizzcon with trickery, vs his 4-peat in GSL, the temptation is that his team prepping against him versus for his benefit make a difference. But we have no way of knowing that. The assumption being that the likes of sOs and Rogue are very tricky players so may form the ‘brains’ of JAGW, and Maru is still a fearsome mechanical opponent but without the prep help doesn’t have as good gameplans. Which could be nonsense, Maru could have been the brains behind their prep but we don’t know that.
Other pieces could fit that puzzle. Last year Maru tried a tricky build against Reynor in one of the best maps for his split map defensive style, left a wall up sloppily and died. Seems dumb to not put your best forward right? But alternatively, Reynor if on any map was expecting Maru to play like Maru it was that map, so it could have been a clever ploy that backfired. Ultimately it was a tight series and I’d have favoured Maru if he’d made it past Reynor and maybe he has that WC. On thin margins are these things decided.
This year he didn’t veto a map that to me looks unwinnable outside of cheesing against a player of Serral’s calibre. That was quite mystifying to me as decisions go:
Alternatively this year, as I think is possible the likes of Serral, Reynor especially really did seem to aim successfully to peak for Katowice. Maru had a great year with some absolute TvZ clinics but perhaps he peaked or showed his hand too soon
All great points!
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So glad to see you guys still care about WESG, and many of you want it back (always good to have more premium tournaments). As a Chinese SC2 fan, I also feel pity that a tournament that witnessed so many great matches and attracted so many audience was ceased to be organized, and sadly I'm afraid there won't be any WESG any more in the future.
And that cessation is for multiple reasons, at least to my knowledge. Pandemic is definitely one of them, though it is nothing more than a last straw. The most important reason is that WESG's sponsor, Alibaba (China's biggest e-commerce corporation, some of you may know), was never fully committed to organizing and supporting e-sport tournaments. For Alibaba, WESG was more like a advertising tool, and when it didn't meet the expectation on gaining popularity and was not even profitable, Alibaba felt there was no need to carry on. You may compare it with GSL. The former prioritized commercial effect whereas the latter used commercial as an investment to hold as many GSL tournaments as possible. The result is, Alibaba lost faith in e-sport and the key personnel that used to be in charge of organizing WESG were transferred to other departments. That's why I feel it's very unlikely for us to see another WESG.
The poor marketing strategies, as some of you have mentioned, is partly the reason why WESG didn't gain enough popularity and was not profitable. Tournaments organized by the Chinese community overall lack internationalization practices. Although they understand how to use high prize pool to attract worldwide best competitors, they usually fail to stimulate an international hype - perhaps due to linguistic obstacles and time lag. Tournaments like WESG and WTL no doubt always get the Chinese community super excited to watch and discuss, but they (including the great matches themselves and the amazing cultural content produced by Chinese fans) are somehow less accessible to international audience. The insufficient transcultural exchange between SC2 communities in different regions is a great pity for me.
Some progress has been made, I admit, like WTL has gradually attracted a worldwide audience who can watch the same content, share different opinions, and laugh at jokes from a foreign community. But overall Chinese tournaments are less influential than their counterparts. The Chinese community is only too familiar with GSL, IEM and even other perhaps less scale tournaments like TSL, but I doubt whether WESG, WTL, NEXT have attracted the same amount of international audience. I understand there are many difficulties for SC2 tournaments to become really internationalized - by this I mean not only internationalized players, but more importantly internationalized fan groups that are able to interact more with each other. Linguistic barrier, time lag, and the willingness of regional entrepreneurs (organizers, casters, streamers...) may all be crucial difficulties. I just want to say, judging by the increasing homogeneity (it doesn't mean there's no diversity, it means we have plenty in common - we anticipate the same event, watch the same matches, cheer for the same great performance, laugh at the same hilarious jokes...) of the SC2 world, audience from different communities should be much closer with each other.
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To quickly summarize this thread
When Maru wins, he is da Bess and everyone must praise the kid
When Maru lose, it’s cause toss and Zerg imba. And the classic he doesn’t care and jet lag
Maru wins WESG which was a tier B tournament (competition wise) with a huge prize pool.
Highly doubt Maru will ever win the most prestige tournament (blizzcon / katowice)
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rwala wrote
For example, the "common opinion" folks used to push that Maru struggled at "weekender" tourneys because he was a "preparation-based" player. But this not only ignored two years of WESG results, but also never really explained how he was one of the best Proleague players of all time (one of the most challenging formats to prepare for).
Proleague is one game on a known map vs a known opponent. That is the ideal preparation situation. Maru's success in Proleague has been an argument for his preparation.
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On March 25 2022 10:17 rwala wrote:Show nested quote +On March 24 2022 22:18 Balnazza wrote:On March 24 2022 09:45 rwala wrote:On March 24 2022 00:46 Balnazza wrote:On March 23 2022 22:26 rwala wrote:On March 23 2022 20:48 Balnazza wrote:On March 22 2022 23:52 rwala wrote: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^^ I mean, I've heard many commentators and casters take this line and as you can see other longtime fans also find it curious, so it seemed worthy of of exploring. It's not like I'm fixated on complaining about not having everything translated into my preferred language I do agree that it's noteworthy that Maru has never won a world championship. If that's all that's being noted, I'd nod my head in agreement and this thread wouldn't exist. What's interesting is when commentators try to take it a step further and speculate about a player's performance patterns across various tournament formats. For example, first it was that Maru underperforms at "weekender" tournaments with all this speculation that he's really only a preparation-based player. When results were proving this theory to be a bit silly, they shifted off that narrative. Then it was Maru underperforms in online tournaments, and when he won a few of those in a row, they shifted off that narrative. Now it's Maru hasn't won a premier, overseas, offline tournament, implying there's a performance dip due to jet lag, transit, unfamiliar environments, etc. Again, this statement just isn't true. You can say nobody cares about WESG, but Maru's one of a handful of players that took home 200K winning an overseas, offline premier event featuring among the broadest and deepest international player pools of top pros. I still don't get what you are trying to achieve. Like, what should commentators say? "Maru is just the greatest in everything and it is just bad luck he always bombs in the most important tournament of the year"? And obviously the narrative shifts when it is disproven? What do you expect? Again, WESG isn't that important, because it wasn't that stacked. If Alibaba wouldn't have in thrown in such a big prizepool, nobody would have even cared that it happened. That is not the fault of anybody, including Marus. It is still great that he won it and was runner-up, he also won it against some pretty good players. But it was in no way, shape or form comparable with Kattowice or BlizzCon and those are the tournaments were legends are born. Maru failed to win one, even though you would expect that he has the skill to do it. And that is the last thing that helds him back. Honestly, and as yourself I don't want to go there, it really also kicks him out of the discussion for GOAT, atleast in my opinion. You just need that biggest of all titles to be up there and it is just surprising that Maru not only constantly fails to get that title, but he also kind of bombs those tournaments. So obviously people start speculating why that happens, when he does so well in GSL. And the easiest thing seems to be that he always needs to be in his prefered, perfect setting to do well. A speculation, but everybody is allowed to come up with another answer. That will happen until he either retires or finally wins that trophy. And just for the lolz: When the World Cyber Games were still relevant, you needed two wins to get into the Hall of Fame. By that standard, Maru would even be further away from being in the Hall of Fame of Starcraft 2. Yeah I think it's clear what you don't get from the misuse of quotations and various random tangents. And I see you've taken yourself into the rabbit hole of the GOAT discussion (I was wondering who might set and take their own bait on that one...but if it makes you feel better I agree Maru can't be a GOAT contender unless and until he wins a global championship title). You don't need a "just for the lolz" section for your comments, my friend. That started when you began complaining about the Korean and Chinese players getting translators at events...and it's kind of infused in the rest of your comments. You know, if you just wanted to complain a bit that those evil commentators dare to question Maru, you could have done that way easier and not waste everybodys time... Since you were so kind to answer my question 'what do you expect?' (though you didn't answer, probably because I hurt your feelings? :<) with 'that people talk more about why he bombs and not that he does', I will give you the rundown: Because IEM (and other events) have a tight schedule and you can only talk so much about a single player. And in the end, everything casters come up with would just be speculations. The fact however, and it irritates me that you think that isn't a fact, is that Maru bombs this tournaments on a regular bases and hasn't won one yet, which is odd seeing how is one of the best of all time. You cannot waste hours of psychological analysis on one player that eventually will go out in the Ro8 without leaving a mark. In fact, while it also keeps the pressure high, it is just a compliment to Marus skill. Same went for Serral when he was "in a slump" aka. wasn't winning everything. People have very high expectations for the very best and when they constantly underperform in the most important tournament of the year, it eventually becomes a narrative. You can see that in a lot of sports btw, like Messi in Football or Alexander Zverev in Tennis. Last but not least: The harsh truth about (E)Sports is, that in the future, when people look back at your career, nobody really cares why you didn't win "the big thing". They only see that you didn't and it leaves a mark on your track record. And while I really don't like to watch terran in general and Maru in particular, it still would sadden me a bit if his career never gets this crowning achievement. But I really don't care why he can't perform at the highest level, because in the end, he just has to suck it up, as harsh as that sounds. Other people, like Rogue or Dark, are in the same position as him concerning jetlag and travel etc. and they won their big titles. So whatever is "wrong" with Maru, he is the only one who will ever be able to fix it and no amount of in-depth analysis from commentators will ever change that. "Big players win big games" is a saying in American Football, right? Maru eventually will have to proof that...or maybe he really just doesn't care about all of that and is happy "just" winning GSL. Then that is fine, too. My feelings are okay, thanks for asking I mean, I'm not really sure what to tell you other than you're really all over the place confused and confusing things. The good news is you've got plenty of content in this thread to get up to speed if that's what you want. GLHF!
Since you constantly fail to add anything substantial, I will just assume "but Maru is the best, why isn't everyone sucking up to him???" was your entire point. I got that one, so I guess job well done mate?
I get it though, it sucks when your favorite player just isn't getting the results he probably could achieve. I know that feeling, my favorite player of all time is Snute :/ So I feel your pain buddy <3
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Northern Ireland25195 Posts
On March 25 2022 12:02 B111 wrote:
So glad to see you guys still care about WESG, and many of you want it back (always good to have more premium tournaments). As a Chinese SC2 fan, I also feel pity that a tournament that witnessed so many great matches and attracted so many audience was ceased to be organized, and sadly I'm afraid there won't be any WESG any more in the future.
And that cessation is for multiple reasons, at least to my knowledge. Pandemic is definitely one of them, though it is nothing more than a last straw. The most important reason is that WESG's sponsor, Alibaba (China's biggest e-commerce corporation, some of you may know), was never fully committed to organizing and supporting e-sport tournaments. For Alibaba, WESG was more like a advertising tool, and when it didn't meet the expectation on gaining popularity and was not even profitable, Alibaba felt there was no need to carry on. You may compare it with GSL. The former prioritized commercial effect whereas the latter used commercial as an investment to hold as many GSL tournaments as possible. The result is, Alibaba lost faith in e-sport and the key personnel that used to be in charge of organizing WESG were transferred to other departments. That's why I feel it's very unlikely for us to see another WESG.
The poor marketing strategies, as some of you have mentioned, is partly the reason why WESG didn't gain enough popularity and was not profitable. Tournaments organized by the Chinese community overall lack internationalization practices. Although they understand how to use high prize pool to attract worldwide best competitors, they usually fail to stimulate an international hype - perhaps due to linguistic obstacles and time lag. Tournaments like WESG and WTL no doubt always get the Chinese community super excited to watch and discuss, but they (including the great matches themselves and the amazing cultural content produced by Chinese fans) are somehow less accessible to international audience. The insufficient transcultural exchange between SC2 communities in different regions is a great pity for me.
Some progress has been made, I admit, like WTL has gradually attracted a worldwide audience who can watch the same content, share different opinions, and laugh at jokes from a foreign community. But overall Chinese tournaments are less influential than their counterparts. The Chinese community is only too familiar with GSL, IEM and even other perhaps less scale tournaments like TSL, but I doubt whether WESG, WTL, NEXT have attracted the same amount of international audience. I understand there are many difficulties for SC2 tournaments to become really internationalized - by this I mean not only internationalized players, but more importantly internationalized fan groups that are able to interact more with each other. Linguistic barrier, time lag, and the willingness of regional entrepreneurs (organizers, casters, streamers...) may all be crucial difficulties. I just want to say, judging by the increasing homogeneity (it doesn't mean there's no diversity, it means we have plenty in common - we anticipate the same event, watch the same matches, cheer for the same great performance, laugh at the same hilarious jokes...) of the SC2 world, audience from different communities should be much closer with each other.
Good post and insightful. It is a pity indeed that the Chinese and wider Western foreign scene are in largely different ecosystems. That said broadly so are Korean and foreign fans. I get some exposure via the odd Chinese poster on here but that’s about it.
I’m unsure of the particulars behind the scenes, and it’s difficult to plug events into the calendar without some clashes somewhere. For my money I had issues with the format, and put two alternatives forward, but those are my tastes.
Not just having a good foreign cast, but the actual hype leading up the event and pulling eyeballs to the event are very important as well, and I think this was lacking a bit in the wider foreign scene, for whatever reasons.
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EPT
