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4 Posts
ESL have announced two new tournaments for the 2023/24 ESL Pro Tour: IEM Katowice 2024 and DreamHack Dallas (read official announcement).
IEM Katowice 2024 will be held over February 8-11 with a $500,000 total prize pool (the same as IEM Katowice 2023). The round-of-36 play-in stage has been removed, while the 24-player main event portion will return in the same familiar format. A combination of seeds and qualifiers will be used to decide the 24 main event players. Ticket sales for IEM Katowice's StarCraft 2 tournament will open on Wednesday, Nov 15 3:00pm GMT (GMT+00:00).
ESL also announced that a major EPT tournament will be held at DreamHack Dallas during May 31-June 2, but did not reveal any additional details.
The official announcement also alludes to a subsequent "world championship" event after DreamHack Dallas.
The journey to the EPT World Championship will continue with an additional ESL SC2 Masters season concluding at DreamHack Dallas, taking place from May 31 to June 2.
![[image loading]](/staff/Waxangel/EPT/Katowice2024/katowicequalifiers.jpg)
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First of all: Great news and even better to have more clearance about the World Championships!
However, it is an odd choice (atleast for now) to split the Word Championships from Katowice again. On one hand it means more SC2 and more prizemoney, but with this new plan the actual EPT Finals will be so late, they basically cramped two years into one Tour. And those Tour finals will definetly have other seeding rules than before, since IEM Katowice alone will award the Top 4 with an invite and that third Masters in Dallas will also give out spots - and not to mention how potential new GSLs will fit into all of that.
Basically, the originally planned out "Tour Guide" is more or less obsolete now.
Lastly, I'm a bit afraid they will put the EPT Finals into that new Gamers8 event. That would be a huge downside to all of this
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Canada8991 Posts
So we get Katowice + a separate world championship AND we get a confirmation of at least some kind of 2024 circuit?
That's beyond my wildest dream, amazing stuff!
I do wonder what it means regarding the EPT, will the 2023-24 circuit still end at Kato or will it continue until next summer?
Edit: Oh yeah Saudi world championship... well shit
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So looks like the real world championship tournament will be played in the Saudi Gamers8 thing. That fucking sucks, and i hate that the only reason that sc2 will be alive next year is some oil prince from a terrible country.
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I was wondering why there are no seeds from EPT points for Kato and if they are completly useless now.
It didn t even occur to me until the 3rd read, that Katowice isn t going to be the world championship.
As others pointed out allready, that probably means, the World championship will be decided at Gamers8 in Saudi Arabia.
Sux
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Hate to add to the derail train of how the oil money is basically going to take over and be the world championships it seems, but it's not just esports after all. Other sports including MMA, boxing, and even portions of soccer are getting huge funding from oil money it seems. That and we know ESL is basically owned by oil money at this point anyway.
On the one hand I am glad that at least SC2 will survive a bit longer thanks to oil money going to the players, on the other hand we all know that that won't last forever either. It's all on the whims of the uber rich billionaire saudi prince or whoever deciding when to shut off the faucet or if humanity can find a way to make use of salt water as a perfect alternative to biofuels such as oil to put them out of business.
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Wait so qualifiers are in a month? this feels extremely short notice. inb4 there are troubles obtaining visas
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Alive game confirmed
2024 let's go
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On November 11 2023 08:39 yoshi245 wrote:
Hate to add to the derail train of how the oil money is basically going to take over and be the world championships it seems, but it's not just esports after all. Other sports including MMA, boxing, and even portions of soccer are getting huge funding from oil money it seems. That and we know ESL is basically owned by oil money at this point anyway.
On the one hand I am glad that at least SC2 will survive a bit longer thanks to oil money going to the players, on the other hand we all know that that won't last forever either. It's all on the whims of the uber rich billionaire saudi prince or whoever deciding when to shut off the faucet or if humanity can find a way to make use of salt water as a perfect alternative to biofuels such as oil to put them out of business. In Dota 2, this year The International (official world championship) had 3m prize pool and Riyadh Masters (no DPC tour points at all) had 15m prize pool.
TI still has its prestige earned by being the biggest tournament by a huge margin in all e-sports for 10 years in a row - but for how long will it last?
In 2015-2022 The International had 20-40m prize pool and no other tournament had more than 3m, mostly 1m or less even for the biggest non-TI tourneys. Now Saudi's tourney is 5x bigger in terms of money.
So yeah, it's inevitable.
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On November 11 2023 08:39 yoshi245 wrote:
Hate to add to the derail train of how the oil money is basically going to take over and be the world championships it seems, but it's not just esports after all. Other sports including MMA, boxing, and even portions of soccer are getting huge funding from oil money it seems. That and we know ESL is basically owned by oil money at this point anyway.
On the one hand I am glad that at least SC2 will survive a bit longer thanks to oil money going to the players, on the other hand we all know that that won't last forever either. It's all on the whims of the uber rich billionaire saudi prince or whoever deciding when to shut off the faucet or if humanity can find a way to make use of salt water as a perfect alternative to biofuels such as oil to put them out of business.
SC2 was created on the whims of Mike Morhaime. He was the only thing stopping Activision from turning Blizzard into a WoW expansion factory.
EDIT: stumbled across this... its hilarious. WoW Cosmetic $25 Horse made more money than SC2:WoL. 
https://gameworldobserver.com/2023/11/10/starcraft-2-made-less-money-than-wow-mount-blizzard-jason-hall
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It is most probably an exaggeration.
SC2: WoL has sold at least 6 million copies for 60$ = 360m revenue.
Let's say development did cost 60m - it's 300m profit
For $25 horse - even with almost zero development cost - you need to sell it to 12m players to beat this.
WoW had 12m subscribers at its peak, and obviously not all of them bought it, probably not even half of players.
But in general - yes, of course, 10 mounts that took little time to create can easily beat a game like SC2.
If people are ready to buy 2 cosmetic horses for the same price you can buy The Witcher 3 with 200h of unique gameplay - well, who do we have to blame for MTX rise?
I just think that this particular example is exaggerated.
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SC2:WoL was not $60 for 2 straight years. There were plenty of sales. The game might have sold 3 million copies at full price and another 3 million at ~$40 or $30. Also, all copies not sold directly off of a BNet download give ~$20 to the store front.
Thus, I'd say SC2:WoL might bring in $200 million in revenue to Blizzard.
There are also marketing costs. Every game store I went there went 6 foot Jim Raynor cardboard cutouts. Damn, those were cool times. SC2 was marketed hard. That is expensive.
Then, there is the costs of all the esports initiatives at the GSL and Blizzcons.
SC2:WoL profit was a fraction of the revenue generated.
Pretty much guaranteed that ATVI was enticed by how Blizzard could monetize the arcade. Blizzard promised a monetized version of DOTA that would sweep across the gaming landscape as DOTA did with Warcraft3. That's prolly how Blizzard convinced ATVI to fund SC2.
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On November 11 2023 06:45 Luolis wrote:
So looks like the real world championship tournament will be played in the Saudi Gamers8 thing. That fucking sucks, and i hate that the only reason that sc2 will be alive next year is some oil prince from a terrible country.
Call the prince terrible, not an entire country of people.
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On November 11 2023 23:31 Cricketer12 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2023 06:45 Luolis wrote:
So looks like the real world championship tournament will be played in the Saudi Gamers8 thing. That fucking sucks, and i hate that the only reason that sc2 will be alive next year is some oil prince from a terrible country. Call the prince terrible, not an entire country of people.
I call the nation terrible, not the people. Just like i would call Russia a terrible nation, while i wouldnt say all Russians are terrible people.
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any way you cut it we've got 14 years of esports for a solid RTS game. As a guy who loved other RTS's and watch esports dwindle to almost nothing in a year..i'll take the 14 years.
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United States33708 Posts
On November 11 2023 04:01 Balnazza wrote:
First of all: Great news and even better to have more clearance about the World Championships!
However, it is an odd choice (atleast for now) to split the Word Championships from Katowice again. On one hand it means more SC2 and more prizemoney, but with this new plan the actual EPT Finals will be so late, they basically cramped two years into one Tour. And those Tour finals will definetly have other seeding rules than before, since IEM Katowice alone will award the Top 4 with an invite and that third Masters in Dallas will also give out spots - and not to mention how potential new GSLs will fit into all of that.
Basically, the originally planned out "Tour Guide" is more or less obsolete now.
Lastly, I'm a bit afraid they will put the EPT Finals into that new Gamers8 event. That would be a huge downside to all of this
IEM have always played it a bit fast and loose with their branding, conflating or separating IEM Katowice and the world championship when it's convenient. I think there's a good chance this retroactively gets called a 'world championship' at some point in the future.
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On November 12 2023 02:59 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2023 04:01 Balnazza wrote:
First of all: Great news and even better to have more clearance about the World Championships!
However, it is an odd choice (atleast for now) to split the Word Championships from Katowice again. On one hand it means more SC2 and more prizemoney, but with this new plan the actual EPT Finals will be so late, they basically cramped two years into one Tour. And those Tour finals will definetly have other seeding rules than before, since IEM Katowice alone will award the Top 4 with an invite and that third Masters in Dallas will also give out spots - and not to mention how potential new GSLs will fit into all of that.
Basically, the originally planned out "Tour Guide" is more or less obsolete now.
Lastly, I'm a bit afraid they will put the EPT Finals into that new Gamers8 event. That would be a huge downside to all of this IEM have always played it a bit fast and loose with their branding, conflating or separating IEM Katowice and the world championship when it's convenient. I think there's a good chance this retroactively gets called a 'world championship' at some point in the future.
I didn't mean the particular branding, but that Katowice isn't the EPT Finals anymore, same as during the WCS era. If Katowice is called Global/Grand Finals or not doesn't really matter, that really mostly PR back in the day
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Weird to not have Katowice be the world championship, but i'm fine with it, makes more sense to have just 1 world championship a year.
Also, i just remembered how amazing and intense the games at Gamers8 was, i guess because of the higher prize pool. Players were trying so much harder and doing all these little things that they normally don't feel motivated enough to push themselves to do, i guess (tiny little harasses and trying to make more plays). It led to so much more exciting games, reminiscent of the earlier SC2 years when there was a lot of glory on the line.
If it's the official world championship, then Gamers8 might be even more intense this year!
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On November 11 2023 06:45 Luolis wrote:
So looks like the real world championship tournament will be played in the Saudi Gamers8 thing. That fucking sucks, and i hate that the only reason that sc2 will be alive next year is some oil prince from a terrible country.
Ever since Nolan Bushnell and Mattel Electronics in the 1970s the video game industry has been super scummy. i hope this isn't some big shock to you.
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Why do you guys sound surprised that the finals are going to be held in Saudi? ESL is owned by Savvy Games Group which is owned by Saudi Arabia. If you don't like it, get out of eSports. It's tiring reading the Internet complain about Saudi Arabia or China.
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EPT
