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Read the introduction article for information on the methodology behind this article series.
Editor's note: In 2015 TL.net's stuchiu tried to answer the most controversial question in all of StarCraft II: Who are the greatest players of all time?
No, the series didn't lead to the community reaching a harmonious consensus, but it was a fantastic way to look back on competitive StarCraft II history and celebrate its most accomplished players.
Eight years after stuchiu named Mvp the GOAT, Mizenhauer has decided to take a shot at creating an updated list. His approach and viewpoints are entirely different, but it's no less appreciative of StarCraft II history. Who will make the top ten cutoff this time around? |
On January 18 2024 17:26 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2024 02:24 Charoisaur wrote:
Great read but I have to disagree hard with the rankings here.
This means that both Rain and TY rank above two of Maru, Serral, Rogue, Inno, Zest, Stats, Dark, sOs, Mvp, Life and I don't see that for any of them.
Maybe sOs because Mizenhauer doesn't rank world championships that highly and Life got excluded from the list? Stats won a GSL and an SSL. He was very consistently good and a proleague monster, but I'll go out and say he is not making the top 10. Life isn't either for obvious reasons. But looking at how Mizenhauer is rating WCs, there's a case for Reynor to be in there. And maybe Nestea and MC too, both with 3 wins in GSL and world championships, albeit in the very early pre-Kespa era of WoL. E: oh, and he said he was valuing 2nd places quite highly, so soO is up there too.
if soO is up there because his 2nd place than Stats definitely must be too. He has 2nd places in 3 world championships and 2 Starleagues (or 3?) as well as numerous other tournaments
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On January 18 2024 02:57 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2024 02:24 Charoisaur wrote:
Great read but I have to disagree hard with the rankings here.
This means that both Rain and TY rank above two of Maru, Serral, Rogue, Inno, Zest, Stats, Dark, sOs, Mvp, Life and I don't see that for any of them.
Maybe sOs because Mizenhauer doesn't rank world championships that highly and Life got excluded from the list? Life isn't on the list for obv reasons  But even if he was in consideration, I don't think he deserves top 10 on any accomplishment-based list with his resume (it's been superseded by a lot of players because they got to keep playing after he got banned for life, lol). The hypothetical Life case is very much the "he felt like the best player" vibes that ppl have applied to Mvp/Maru/Serral/INno at various points in their careers.
If Lifes resume got superseded than Rain's should as well, but he is there. Life was definitely more succesful than Rain and they were both playing at the same time
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On January 18 2024 02:46 Poopi wrote:If WESG is counted as World Championships, I don’t see how Maru won’t be #1 on this list. However as pointed out by Charoisaur, some players won’t make it despite having potentially more arguments than Rain or TY Interesting either way 
Just make the same table of performances per stages, listing every international championship that both Maru and Serral have been together.
And compare Finals / Semi finals /RO4, accomplishments between them both, and early exits... And you will see why Maru doesnt deserve GOAT title when Serrals is in the same picture.
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On January 18 2024 19:39 Locutus_ wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2024 02:46 Poopi wrote:If WESG is counted as World Championships, I don’t see how Maru won’t be #1 on this list. However as pointed out by Charoisaur, some players won’t make it despite having potentially more arguments than Rain or TY Interesting either way Just make the same table of performances per stages, listing every international championship that both Maru and Serral have been together. And compare Finals / Semi finals /RO4, accomplishments between them both, and early exits... And you will see why Maru doesnt deserve GOAT title when Serrals is in the same picture.
Yeah. if you ignore all tournaments before 2018 as well as all tournaments Serral didn't participate in, then he's the Goat, I agree
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On January 18 2024 19:39 Locutus_ wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2024 02:46 Poopi wrote:If WESG is counted as World Championships, I don’t see how Maru won’t be #1 on this list. However as pointed out by Charoisaur, some players won’t make it despite having potentially more arguments than Rain or TY Interesting either way Just make the same table of performances per stages, listing every international championship that both Maru and Serral have been together. And compare Finals / Semi finals /RO4, accomplishments between them both, and early exits... And you will see why Maru doesnt deserve GOAT title when Serrals is in the same picture.
Maru has made more Final/Ro4 than you realized, despite his later half of 2023 didnt suggest so. He has made more Ro4 at IEM than Serral iirc, but Serral won 1 so you probably will say it doesnt matter.
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The statistical breakdowns are very useful. They really underline the levels that these players achieved, and for how long they maintained them, because that can sometimes get lost when you only look at championship wins.
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United States1911 Posts
On January 18 2024 18:14 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2024 17:26 Acrofales wrote:On January 18 2024 02:24 Charoisaur wrote:
Great read but I have to disagree hard with the rankings here.
This means that both Rain and TY rank above two of Maru, Serral, Rogue, Inno, Zest, Stats, Dark, sOs, Mvp, Life and I don't see that for any of them.
Maybe sOs because Mizenhauer doesn't rank world championships that highly and Life got excluded from the list? Stats won a GSL and an SSL. He was very consistently good and a proleague monster, but I'll go out and say he is not making the top 10. Life isn't either for obvious reasons. But looking at how Mizenhauer is rating WCs, there's a case for Reynor to be in there. And maybe Nestea and MC too, both with 3 wins in GSL and world championships, albeit in the very early pre-Kespa era of WoL. E: oh, and he said he was valuing 2nd places quite highly, so soO is up there too. I think given Miz doesn’t rate influence/developing the game quite as highly as I do, in lieu of flourishing in an era where the foundations were set and stealing an edge where you’re a bit ahead of the curve was much harder, I doubt Nestea/MC are making it. Even me, who rates it very highly indeed (it is a strategy game after all, not a pure execution game) probably still would have those two as a lock for a top 20, but not too 10. Not his fault at all but I don’t think Reynor has a shot and I’d agree. He doesn’t have Serral’s relentless consistency, he shares the lack of Proleague with him, but not the lack of Starleague participation and while his first efforts saw him exceed expectation, his latest saw him come way short of it. He’s a bit streaky, peak for the big moments kind of guy, but he’s just not been around long enough to have more of those moments than Rogue, or $o$ who I feel are similarly mercurial talents. As I said I don’t think it’s really a failing of his, if Reynor was a couple of years older and on a similar talent development trajectory he’s probably making a case for top 10. As a Serral on a similar trajectory would move from a ‘where do we place him in the top 10’ to an absolute lock for a top 3 place But as we can’t as a species, unfortunately (yet) time-travel or peer into alternate timelines such as ‘what if Mvp or Taeja had more robust wrists?’ or ‘what if Rain stuck around?’ we kinda have to judge on face value. For the record I think Reynor probably makes it into a list of ‘top 10 raw talents’ or ‘top 10 mechanical monsters’ no bother, in the latter I’d place him above even Serral probably. I know we have our biases, skills we value more than others and our personal favourites, but I never want my naysaying, or when I take the microscope out to ever imply any disrespect to these titans and their skills. Indeed I think it attests to StarCraft(s) greatness as a game that there is such space for disagreement. That we have preferences for the perfect defensive macro monster, the ruthless timing attack aficionado, the fromage fiend, or the player whose brain compensates for their fingers or the inverse.
Regarding Proleague, please refer to the intro article. One of the main points of comparing these players against their peers in four different phases of sc2 (each of which covers roughly 3 years) is to make it so you can't use a competition one played in against one another didn't. In fact, once you open that can of worms you lose whatever objectivity you had. Let's presume like you say, that serral loses points for not playing in pl. Does mc lose points because he didn't get to play in a "modern" world championship? Does Mvp get docked because he could never played in Proleague and didn't get to play against the majority of the "KeSPA greats"? The answer is no for all three examples. Each of these players were compared against the players they played. Same goes for everyone on this list. Eventually you do have to figure out an order based upon players who might not have intersected, but that process wasn't as difficult as I had expected due to the sheer amount of results I collected..
I think it's silly to say Serral and Reynor should be docked for not playing in Proleague. They simply never had the opportunity to do so. Proleague was a big determiner when analyzing players like Inno, soO, sOs, herO, stats, zest etc etc, because they all competed in PL at the same time. However, when it came to players like Reynor and Serral (who came to prominence after the end of PL) there are tons of events that can be used to compare them to other successful players of the last 5 years.
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Serral maru mvp inno mc dark Stephano nestea/rogue
Was actually just spitballing names thinking about the other 8, but the order came out pretty good.
Life would have probably been in the god tier alongside serral and maru. Shame we got robbed of so many potential great series between them.
I know a lot of people would be quick to dismiss nestea but to be as consistently dominant as he was with the amount of bullshit in the game at that point was pretty impressive, while also being older to boot.
I pretty much went by how they impacted the game. Each one of those players with the exception of maybe dark and rogue had a significant point of where you just acknowledged and agreed that they were the best human playing the game at that point.
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Northern Ireland26235 Posts
On January 18 2024 20:46 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2024 18:14 WombaT wrote:On January 18 2024 17:26 Acrofales wrote:On January 18 2024 02:24 Charoisaur wrote:
Great read but I have to disagree hard with the rankings here.
This means that both Rain and TY rank above two of Maru, Serral, Rogue, Inno, Zest, Stats, Dark, sOs, Mvp, Life and I don't see that for any of them.
Maybe sOs because Mizenhauer doesn't rank world championships that highly and Life got excluded from the list? Stats won a GSL and an SSL. He was very consistently good and a proleague monster, but I'll go out and say he is not making the top 10. Life isn't either for obvious reasons. But looking at how Mizenhauer is rating WCs, there's a case for Reynor to be in there. And maybe Nestea and MC too, both with 3 wins in GSL and world championships, albeit in the very early pre-Kespa era of WoL. E: oh, and he said he was valuing 2nd places quite highly, so soO is up there too. I think given Miz doesn’t rate influence/developing the game quite as highly as I do, in lieu of flourishing in an era where the foundations were set and stealing an edge where you’re a bit ahead of the curve was much harder, I doubt Nestea/MC are making it. Even me, who rates it very highly indeed (it is a strategy game after all, not a pure execution game) probably still would have those two as a lock for a top 20, but not too 10. Not his fault at all but I don’t think Reynor has a shot and I’d agree. He doesn’t have Serral’s relentless consistency, he shares the lack of Proleague with him, but not the lack of Starleague participation and while his first efforts saw him exceed expectation, his latest saw him come way short of it. He’s a bit streaky, peak for the big moments kind of guy, but he’s just not been around long enough to have more of those moments than Rogue, or $o$ who I feel are similarly mercurial talents. As I said I don’t think it’s really a failing of his, if Reynor was a couple of years older and on a similar talent development trajectory he’s probably making a case for top 10. As a Serral on a similar trajectory would move from a ‘where do we place him in the top 10’ to an absolute lock for a top 3 place But as we can’t as a species, unfortunately (yet) time-travel or peer into alternate timelines such as ‘what if Mvp or Taeja had more robust wrists?’ or ‘what if Rain stuck around?’ we kinda have to judge on face value. For the record I think Reynor probably makes it into a list of ‘top 10 raw talents’ or ‘top 10 mechanical monsters’ no bother, in the latter I’d place him above even Serral probably. I know we have our biases, skills we value more than others and our personal favourites, but I never want my naysaying, or when I take the microscope out to ever imply any disrespect to these titans and their skills. Indeed I think it attests to StarCraft(s) greatness as a game that there is such space for disagreement. That we have preferences for the perfect defensive macro monster, the ruthless timing attack aficionado, the fromage fiend, or the player whose brain compensates for their fingers or the inverse. Regarding Proleague, please refer to the intro article. One of the main points of comparing these players against their peers in four different phases of sc2 (each of which covers roughly 3 years) is to make it so you can't use a competition one played in against one another didn't. In fact, once you open that can of worms you lose whatever objectivity you had. Let's presume like you say, that serral loses points for not playing in pl. Does mc lose points because he didn't get to play in a "modern" world championship? Does Mvp get docked because he could never played in Proleague and didn't get to play against the majority of the "KeSPA greats"? The answer is no for all three examples. Each of these players were compared against the players they played. Same goes for everyone on this list. Eventually you do have to figure out an order based upon players who might not have intersected, but that process wasn't as difficult as I had expected due to the sheer amount of results I collected.. I think it's silly to say Serral and Reynor should be docked for not playing in Proleague. They simply never had the opportunity to do so. Proleague was a big determiner when analyzing players like Inno, soO, sOs, herO, stats, zest etc etc, because they all competed in PL at the same time. However, when it came to players like Reynor and Serral (who came to prominence after the end of PL) there are tons of events that can be used to compare them to other successful players of the last 5 years.
Aye mean I agree entirely but as people aren’t entirely discussing the articles through the prism of the criteria you outlined I’m responding to people’s proferred 50 cents
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United States1911 Posts
On January 18 2024 21:46 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2024 20:46 Mizenhauer wrote:On January 18 2024 18:14 WombaT wrote:On January 18 2024 17:26 Acrofales wrote:On January 18 2024 02:24 Charoisaur wrote:
Great read but I have to disagree hard with the rankings here.
This means that both Rain and TY rank above two of Maru, Serral, Rogue, Inno, Zest, Stats, Dark, sOs, Mvp, Life and I don't see that for any of them.
Maybe sOs because Mizenhauer doesn't rank world championships that highly and Life got excluded from the list? Stats won a GSL and an SSL. He was very consistently good and a proleague monster, but I'll go out and say he is not making the top 10. Life isn't either for obvious reasons. But looking at how Mizenhauer is rating WCs, there's a case for Reynor to be in there. And maybe Nestea and MC too, both with 3 wins in GSL and world championships, albeit in the very early pre-Kespa era of WoL. E: oh, and he said he was valuing 2nd places quite highly, so soO is up there too. I think given Miz doesn’t rate influence/developing the game quite as highly as I do, in lieu of flourishing in an era where the foundations were set and stealing an edge where you’re a bit ahead of the curve was much harder, I doubt Nestea/MC are making it. Even me, who rates it very highly indeed (it is a strategy game after all, not a pure execution game) probably still would have those two as a lock for a top 20, but not too 10. Not his fault at all but I don’t think Reynor has a shot and I’d agree. He doesn’t have Serral’s relentless consistency, he shares the lack of Proleague with him, but not the lack of Starleague participation and while his first efforts saw him exceed expectation, his latest saw him come way short of it. He’s a bit streaky, peak for the big moments kind of guy, but he’s just not been around long enough to have more of those moments than Rogue, or $o$ who I feel are similarly mercurial talents. As I said I don’t think it’s really a failing of his, if Reynor was a couple of years older and on a similar talent development trajectory he’s probably making a case for top 10. As a Serral on a similar trajectory would move from a ‘where do we place him in the top 10’ to an absolute lock for a top 3 place But as we can’t as a species, unfortunately (yet) time-travel or peer into alternate timelines such as ‘what if Mvp or Taeja had more robust wrists?’ or ‘what if Rain stuck around?’ we kinda have to judge on face value. For the record I think Reynor probably makes it into a list of ‘top 10 raw talents’ or ‘top 10 mechanical monsters’ no bother, in the latter I’d place him above even Serral probably. I know we have our biases, skills we value more than others and our personal favourites, but I never want my naysaying, or when I take the microscope out to ever imply any disrespect to these titans and their skills. Indeed I think it attests to StarCraft(s) greatness as a game that there is such space for disagreement. That we have preferences for the perfect defensive macro monster, the ruthless timing attack aficionado, the fromage fiend, or the player whose brain compensates for their fingers or the inverse. Regarding Proleague, please refer to the intro article. One of the main points of comparing these players against their peers in four different phases of sc2 (each of which covers roughly 3 years) is to make it so you can't use a competition one played in against one another didn't. In fact, once you open that can of worms you lose whatever objectivity you had. Let's presume like you say, that serral loses points for not playing in pl. Does mc lose points because he didn't get to play in a "modern" world championship? Does Mvp get docked because he could never played in Proleague and didn't get to play against the majority of the "KeSPA greats"? The answer is no for all three examples. Each of these players were compared against the players they played. Same goes for everyone on this list. Eventually you do have to figure out an order based upon players who might not have intersected, but that process wasn't as difficult as I had expected due to the sheer amount of results I collected.. I think it's silly to say Serral and Reynor should be docked for not playing in Proleague. They simply never had the opportunity to do so. Proleague was a big determiner when analyzing players like Inno, soO, sOs, herO, stats, zest etc etc, because they all competed in PL at the same time. However, when it came to players like Reynor and Serral (who came to prominence after the end of PL) there are tons of events that can be used to compare them to other successful players of the last 5 years. Aye mean I agree entirely but as people aren’t entirely discussing the articles through the prism of the criteria you outlined I’m responding to people’s proferred 50 cents
Ahh, I got you. I appreciate you adding to the conversation.
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I literally never thought about TY when coming up with a Top 10, but I can't deny he makes sense as a sleeper pick for one of the bottom spots.
But man, do I take issue with your definition of World Championship. It's your criteria, and I appreciate the articles so you do you, but high money = World Championship is just not it. Just because something is called a World Championship doesn't mean it actually is. Like I find it laughable to say Rogue won a World Championship in 2018. There is one World Championship a year, and for 2018 it was Blizzcon, the most prestigious and important tournament of them all. Serral is the World Champion that year, nobody else.
I would say the so-called IEM World Championship only became such in 2020, in absence of anything else. It was called the World Championship since 2011 after all, and as you pointed out yourself, it really wasn't considered to be more important or prestigious than any other international tournament back then. Nobody even gave a thought to the name. It was just a name!
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Northern Ireland26235 Posts
On January 18 2024 23:26 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2024 21:46 WombaT wrote:On January 18 2024 20:46 Mizenhauer wrote:On January 18 2024 18:14 WombaT wrote:On January 18 2024 17:26 Acrofales wrote:On January 18 2024 02:24 Charoisaur wrote:
Great read but I have to disagree hard with the rankings here.
This means that both Rain and TY rank above two of Maru, Serral, Rogue, Inno, Zest, Stats, Dark, sOs, Mvp, Life and I don't see that for any of them.
Maybe sOs because Mizenhauer doesn't rank world championships that highly and Life got excluded from the list? Stats won a GSL and an SSL. He was very consistently good and a proleague monster, but I'll go out and say he is not making the top 10. Life isn't either for obvious reasons. But looking at how Mizenhauer is rating WCs, there's a case for Reynor to be in there. And maybe Nestea and MC too, both with 3 wins in GSL and world championships, albeit in the very early pre-Kespa era of WoL. E: oh, and he said he was valuing 2nd places quite highly, so soO is up there too. I think given Miz doesn’t rate influence/developing the game quite as highly as I do, in lieu of flourishing in an era where the foundations were set and stealing an edge where you’re a bit ahead of the curve was much harder, I doubt Nestea/MC are making it. Even me, who rates it very highly indeed (it is a strategy game after all, not a pure execution game) probably still would have those two as a lock for a top 20, but not too 10. Not his fault at all but I don’t think Reynor has a shot and I’d agree. He doesn’t have Serral’s relentless consistency, he shares the lack of Proleague with him, but not the lack of Starleague participation and while his first efforts saw him exceed expectation, his latest saw him come way short of it. He’s a bit streaky, peak for the big moments kind of guy, but he’s just not been around long enough to have more of those moments than Rogue, or $o$ who I feel are similarly mercurial talents. As I said I don’t think it’s really a failing of his, if Reynor was a couple of years older and on a similar talent development trajectory he’s probably making a case for top 10. As a Serral on a similar trajectory would move from a ‘where do we place him in the top 10’ to an absolute lock for a top 3 place But as we can’t as a species, unfortunately (yet) time-travel or peer into alternate timelines such as ‘what if Mvp or Taeja had more robust wrists?’ or ‘what if Rain stuck around?’ we kinda have to judge on face value. For the record I think Reynor probably makes it into a list of ‘top 10 raw talents’ or ‘top 10 mechanical monsters’ no bother, in the latter I’d place him above even Serral probably. I know we have our biases, skills we value more than others and our personal favourites, but I never want my naysaying, or when I take the microscope out to ever imply any disrespect to these titans and their skills. Indeed I think it attests to StarCraft(s) greatness as a game that there is such space for disagreement. That we have preferences for the perfect defensive macro monster, the ruthless timing attack aficionado, the fromage fiend, or the player whose brain compensates for their fingers or the inverse. Regarding Proleague, please refer to the intro article. One of the main points of comparing these players against their peers in four different phases of sc2 (each of which covers roughly 3 years) is to make it so you can't use a competition one played in against one another didn't. In fact, once you open that can of worms you lose whatever objectivity you had. Let's presume like you say, that serral loses points for not playing in pl. Does mc lose points because he didn't get to play in a "modern" world championship? Does Mvp get docked because he could never played in Proleague and didn't get to play against the majority of the "KeSPA greats"? The answer is no for all three examples. Each of these players were compared against the players they played. Same goes for everyone on this list. Eventually you do have to figure out an order based upon players who might not have intersected, but that process wasn't as difficult as I had expected due to the sheer amount of results I collected.. I think it's silly to say Serral and Reynor should be docked for not playing in Proleague. They simply never had the opportunity to do so. Proleague was a big determiner when analyzing players like Inno, soO, sOs, herO, stats, zest etc etc, because they all competed in PL at the same time. However, when it came to players like Reynor and Serral (who came to prominence after the end of PL) there are tons of events that can be used to compare them to other successful players of the last 5 years. Aye mean I agree entirely but as people aren’t entirely discussing the articles through the prism of the criteria you outlined I’m responding to people’s proferred 50 cents Ahh, I got you. I appreciate you adding to the conversation.
Appreciate the fine articles sir, I think it’s obvious which took more thought and perspiration!
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On January 19 2024 00:18 RPR_Tempest wrote:
I literally never thought about TY when coming up with a Top 10, but I can't deny he makes sense as a sleeper pick for one of the bottom spots.
But man, do I take issue with your definition of World Championship. It's your criteria, and I appreciate the articles so you do you, but high money = World Championship is just not it. Just because something is called a World Championship doesn't mean it actually is. Like I find it laughable to say Rogue won a World Championship in 2018. There is one World Championship a year, and for 2018 it was Blizzcon, the most prestigious and important tournament of them all. Serral is the World Champion that year, nobody else.
I would say the so-called IEM World Championship only became such in 2020, in absence of anything else. It was called the World Championship since 2011 after all, and as you pointed out yourself, it really wasn't considered to be more important or prestigious than any other international tournament back then. Nobody even gave a thought to the name. It was just a name!
In terms of prestige there's no reason to rank the "end-of-season" World Championships higher than IEM Katowice though.
They both had a high prize pool, all the best players in the world competing and in terms of format IEM Katowice was actually objectively harder to win as Blizzcon due to Blizzcon having bo3 groupstage with 2 foreigners per group back then.
What name exactly you attribute to this tournament doesn't really matter that much, but by all means they should be counted the same.
For WESG on the other hand I agree.
The funny thing is I don't remember ever seeing or reading this argument that IEM Katowice pre-2020 isn't a "real world championship" before Serral won his 2nd world championship, and sOs was regularly called 3-time world champ without anyone questioning it 
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France12908 Posts
Based on the introduction article, I have come up with a points system that should mirror Mizenhauer's system quite accurately. Once I have finished computing the various points of the 8 players I think will be in the list, I'll post it up as a blog, will be fun to see how far from the actual list it'll end up.
A "preview" (winning code S is around 100 points, for scale) of it: Rain would be at around 450 points + proleague (I haven't found the winrates etc. easily, so I'll dig it more if it's needed in case of ties), TY at around 590 points + proleague, mvp at around 658 points, and Maru at around... 2329 + proleague. Maru was super long to count using  Maru/Results + only premium tier tournaments ordering, despite only counting top 4 and better, plus tournaments around GSL Super Tournament as the bare minimum (so no King of Battles etc.)
Keep in mind though that mvp has had a very short career compared to others, but had the wrist vs Life narrative, epic g7 vs Squirtle, dominated during WoL, etc. so it's possible he ends up at a better place than someone who "accumulated" more points over a long span, but didn't shine as bright.
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On January 18 2024 19:39 Locutus_ wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2024 02:46 Poopi wrote:If WESG is counted as World Championships, I don’t see how Maru won’t be #1 on this list. However as pointed out by Charoisaur, some players won’t make it despite having potentially more arguments than Rain or TY Interesting either way Just make the same table of performances per stages, listing every international championship that both Maru and Serral have been together. And compare Finals / Semi finals /RO4, accomplishments between them both, and early exits... And you will see why Maru doesnt deserve GOAT title when Serrals is in the same picture.
Almost unbelievable how many people want to boil down 14 years of games to only the events Serral played in.
By the same logic you would rank Maru higher if he had refused to play in any World Championship events.
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The, why is TY ahead of Rain section, is so funny. I am thinking, who is not ahead of Rain..
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On January 19 2024 02:16 Fango wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2024 19:39 Locutus_ wrote:On January 18 2024 02:46 Poopi wrote:If WESG is counted as World Championships, I don’t see how Maru won’t be #1 on this list. However as pointed out by Charoisaur, some players won’t make it despite having potentially more arguments than Rain or TY Interesting either way Just make the same table of performances per stages, listing every international championship that both Maru and Serral have been together. And compare Finals / Semi finals /RO4, accomplishments between them both, and early exits... And you will see why Maru doesnt deserve GOAT title when Serrals is in the same picture. Almost unbelievable how many people want to boil down 14 years of games to only the events Serral played in. By the same logic you would rank Maru higher if he had refused to play in any World Championship events.
At least Koreans try to play in Euro-style weekender tourneys (though Maru wasn't really keen during the early years, I recall). Reynor has struggled in GSL but at least he's tried. And then there's Naniwa and Neeb bravely fighting Koreans on their turf.
Whereas a certain GOAT contender refuses to attempt at GSL. To count him as GOAT simply based on games on his own turf is crowning a team that only plays home games as champion based on win percentage (while every other team plays both home and away games in the league and have a lower win percentage dragged down by away games). Or imagine Nadal only plays in Roland Garros and we should crown him as GOAT purely based on comparing his number of Grand Slams with every other player's Rolland Garros wins.
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This is better! Rain made absolutely no impression on me and inspired virtually no interesting memories, even though I was watching consistently during his peak. But TY is someone who not so many years ago I would have put ahead of Maru as the best Terran in the world. I had forgotten his whole list of accomplishments, though, and this article is a good refresher.
One could argue for putting TY even higher imo, but I acknowledge that the top ten is stacked enough as it is. Just a brilliant all-around player, fun to watch, intelligent and effective in every area and every era he played in: one of the best to ever play the game, without question. One of the first people I think of when I think "Korean Terran."
Really enjoying this series so far and looking forward to finding out who makes it! I will riot if my boy sOs gets gypped, but other than that I'm pretty open to being convinced about inclusion and placements.
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EPT
