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Northern Ireland26262 Posts
On August 17 2025 21:51 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2025 16:28 TeamMamba wrote:On August 17 2025 04:27 Mizenhauer wrote:On August 17 2025 00:50 WombaT wrote:On August 16 2025 21:03 MJG wrote:On August 16 2025 11:12 WombaT wrote:On August 15 2025 22:52 MJG wrote:On August 15 2025 22:30 TropicalHaze wrote:The discussion here has gone to a weird direction of "was Serral #1 player for every single second, minute and hour counting from 2018 to now". The main point being IMO that we can easily agree that for the most part he was and still is and taking a look at the thread we are currently on - in hindsight calling Maru #1 has aged like a milk even though it was already a controversial pick back when this thread was created  In hindsight the SC2 scene has aged like milk since 2016. Aye, it’s a shame everyone forgot how to play the game after 2016, and there weren’t innumerable tournaments with good prize pools for progamers to shoot for. Personally I think for a game’s pro scene to be legitimate, Korean players should have the advantage of sponsored team houses, that nobody else has. In a game with both a bigger playerbase and viewer base internationally. I must have hallucinated the EG Lair and all the other foreign team houses... Speaking of EG, and of Koreans competing against Foreigners, a mid-tournament series like Jaedong vs. NaNiwa probably generated a dozen times more interest than the entirety of EWC did. That's what I'm referring to when I say that the scene aged like milk. I'm still passionate about this game, despite all of its many flaws, but I'm not going to fool myself into the belief that what we have now is anywhere near as great as what came before. + Show Spoiler + Proleague’s numbers weren’t always stellar, if we’re going off interest as a metric. It’s a competition I personally loved, and also loved what the Kespa teams brought. But also, something of a distorting aberration. The scene has always been more individual than team focused, by a huge margin, and regular international LANs a huge part. Kespa come in, Proleague is king now, to the degree it’s prioritised over things fans are more invested in. Another problem, it wasn’t organically sustainable. So you get a dual problem where foreigners (the bigger audience and playerbase) can’t compete for a while really, but also that that system gave Kespa players a basically insurmountable edge versus the next Korean generation too. Going back to team houses, foreign ones did exist, but as per my previous post on the scene not being team competition focused, you see problems in maximising that. And how some of their rosters look. EG being one example. InControl (RIP) brings a ton of value to EG in various capacities, and fully merits his place, but say, Idra isn’t going to hugely level up grinding games against him. And many foreign rosters look similar, to this day. A big hitter or two, a solid pro or two, and a few guys who can play, but are there for other reasons, a historic staple, they help manage the team or whatever. Another problem is, there isn’t an atypically strong non-Korean country, so where do you do a team house? If, arbitrarily speaking Korea had 20/30 of the top players, and say, France had 5/30, well you’d probably have some French all-star team, which would be a lot of fun given how passionate the French fans are! But we don’t have that. Say Basilisk wanted to make a team house environment. Who’s moving, and to where? Serral doesn’t seem to much like spending too long at a time outside Finland, Reynor seems more down with travel. Trigger’s likely going to have to suck it up and cross the Atlantic. And just players. They tend to be young so not too many kiddos are around, but partners might not want to relocate to another country or continent. I’m not ragging on Kespa, although it may appear thus! But not my intent. My contention is merely that the scene is potentially healthier without it. One of the problems is that nobody put up plans and money to enable that transition. I’d argue if it were any other game, and Korea wasn’t historically StarCraft Mecca, people would be way more critical about how Kespa went about things. Region lock worked! Which saved the scene for many years, since the Korean scene was dying due to their own fault. Matchmixing, uneven prize pool distribution etc It's not really their fault that people stopped playing sc 2 and started playing league. The last KeSPA draft was held in 2013 and, of the six player drafted, Bunny is the only one who did anything individually. The players a) stopped coming in and b) the ones that did try didn't have the ability to catch up to established pros (stagnant water theory).
Which kinda is somewhat zoning in on the points I was making earlier, and probably didn’t make very well re that system not generally being a good fit IMO.
SC2 wasn’t Brood War, from day 0. It was more international, a bit more open, you had much more openness and exposure to players. Players streaming, talk shows and all that. You’ve your prestige league over in Korea, and big, hyped up LANs that rotate through a bunch of places. And people had their teams, and team leagues for sure but individual premiers were generally the currency of hype.
If we just excise the whole StarCraft thing for a second (I mean obviously, in reality one cannot), but just consider the characteristics of SC2’s scene.
If you wanted to take its characteristics and general appeal, audience and player demographic and distribution, would one conclude that what it really needed is:
1. A (largely) closed shop teamleague, sponsored by Korean blue chip companies.
2. Kinda pulling back a bit from the openness and international links that was a big part of how things were done prior.
3. A training environment that makes for great StarCraft players, but basically raises the bar too high for others to compete with outside of that environment. And those others come from the bigger overall market of the game.
Again, doesn’t mean I think Kespa = bad, far from it some of my favourite SC2 moments and players were forged in it.
Something can still be great and be appreciated even if it has flaws.
The Kespa system makes a lot of sense in Brood War, it’s gigantic there, the playerbase is also there.
Even if they have structural advantages, it’s sorta fine in that scenario simply because there because (and it would hold for any sport), if that sport was magnitudes more popular, and had more folks by far at a grass roots playing, and a lot talented enough to potentially go pro, and there isn’t a huge scene elsewhere, it is a system that makes sense there.
In SC2, that wasn’t really the case.
Being not Korean was a huge impediment to becoming a top player even in the eSF days, and a bigger one with Kespa coming over.
However, a lot of good progamers being locked out of being competitive by region lock, also totally unfair to those individuals.
The game itself has declined a lot, but I don’t think the structure is too bad, indeed some variant, earlier might have helped
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Since korea is still the stronger region to this day, you could actually argue that investing in non-korean scene so much was a mistake. We have a strong online scene but here it matters less where ppl are from.
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I appreciate all the time spent on this series, it is a great read. But Serral is definitely a distance ahead of Maru by now. The :no Korea: argument holds no weight - he has been mooshing Koreans on their own soil and abroad for years. Marus code s wins were good but were mostly at a time of historically weakest participation. You can put him 2nd is fine though there are a few other strong candidates like Taeja.
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United States1913 Posts
On August 28 2025 07:34 dave4reborn wrote:
I appreciate all the time spent on this series, it is a great read. But Serral is definitely a distance ahead of Maru by now. The :no Korea: argument holds no weight - he has been mooshing Koreans on their own soil and abroad for years. Marus code s wins were good but were mostly at a time of historically weakest participation. You can put him 2nd is fine though there are a few other strong candidates like Taeja.
zzzz
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On August 28 2025 07:37 Mizenhauer wrote:Show nested quote +On August 28 2025 07:34 dave4reborn wrote:
I appreciate all the time spent on this series, it is a great read. But Serral is definitely a distance ahead of Maru by now. The :no Korea: argument holds no weight - he has been mooshing Koreans on their own soil and abroad for years. Marus code s wins were good but were mostly at a time of historically weakest participation. You can put him 2nd is fine though there are a few other strong candidates like Taeja. zzzz
Thanks for your analytical contributions and time spent. This is a great series. Are you doing a 2025 update at all?
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On August 28 2025 07:34 dave4reborn wrote:
I appreciate all the time spent on this series, it is a great read. But Serral is definitely a distance ahead of Maru by now. The :no Korea: argument holds no weight - he has been mooshing Koreans on their own soil and abroad for years Marus code s wins were good but were mostly at a time of historically weakest participation.
You clearly didn't realise this, but what you've basically just said is that Serral beating the Koreans doesn't matter, because if that logic applies to Maru's Code S wins then it also applies to Serral.
You've successfully mental gymnastic'd yourself into a knot.
The truth is that "historically weakest participation" is exactly why no one from this era is great, let alone the greatest.
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On August 28 2025 15:36 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On August 28 2025 07:34 dave4reborn wrote:
I appreciate all the time spent on this series, it is a great read. But Serral is definitely a distance ahead of Maru by now. The :no Korea: argument holds no weight - he has been mooshing Koreans on their own soil and abroad for years Marus code s wins were good but were mostly at a time of historically weakest participation. You clearly didn't realise this, but what you've basically just said is that Serral beating the Koreans doesn't matter, because if that logic applies to Maru's Code S wins then it also applies to Serral. You've successfully mental gymnastic'd yourself into a knot. The truth is that "historically weakest participation" is exactly why no one from this era is great, let alone the greatest.
That is pretty disrespectful of you to Serral tbh. He has the advantage of beyond ludicrous win rates against all top opponents. So even if you say that he is gulfs above them. There is no need to troll.
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On August 28 2025 19:23 dave4reborn wrote:Show nested quote +On August 28 2025 15:36 MJG wrote:On August 28 2025 07:34 dave4reborn wrote:
I appreciate all the time spent on this series, it is a great read. But Serral is definitely a distance ahead of Maru by now. The :no Korea: argument holds no weight - he has been mooshing Koreans on their own soil and abroad for years Marus code s wins were good but were mostly at a time of historically weakest participation. You clearly didn't realise this, but what you've basically just said is that Serral beating the Koreans doesn't matter, because if that logic applies to Maru's Code S wins then it also applies to Serral. You've successfully mental gymnastic'd yourself into a knot. The truth is that "historically weakest participation" is exactly why no one from this era is great, let alone the greatest. That is pretty disrespectful of you to Serral tbh. He has the advantage of beyond ludicrous win rates against all top opponents. So even if you say that he is gulfs above them. There is no need to troll.
You are the one who felt the need to discredit Maru's GSL wins.
You are the one who didn't realise that you'd be discrediting Serral's achievements at the same time.
It's not my fault that you didn't realise you were doing it.
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dave4reborn you have to understand the korean bias on this site is unbreakable, cultural roots are stronger and koreans dominated the BW era. there's just no way a guy from finland could be #1 in tl.net eyes  (I realize I'm biased too lol no need to point it out)
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Northern Ireland26262 Posts
On August 30 2025 10:23 TropicalHaze wrote:dave4reborn you have to understand the korean bias on this site is unbreakable, cultural roots are stronger and koreans dominated the BW era. there's just no way a guy from finland could be #1 in tl.net eyes (I realize I'm biased too lol no need to point it out)
Yeah it’s so biased that one of TL’s writer’s revised GOAT list literally had Serral at #1…
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On August 30 2025 10:23 TropicalHaze wrote:dave4reborn you have to understand the korean bias on this site is unbreakable, cultural roots are stronger and koreans dominated the BW era. there's just no way a guy from finland could be #1 in tl.net eyes (I realize I'm biased too lol no need to point it out)
Luckily we have you, the unbiased voice of reason, to tell us the truth. (Yes, I felt the need to point that out, it is funny).
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United States1913 Posts
On August 30 2025 10:33 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On August 30 2025 10:23 TropicalHaze wrote:dave4reborn you have to understand the korean bias on this site is unbreakable, cultural roots are stronger and koreans dominated the BW era. there's just no way a guy from finland could be #1 in tl.net eyes (I realize I'm biased too lol no need to point it out) Yeah it’s so biased that one of TL’s writer’s revised GOAT list literally had Serral at #1…
dave4 briefly returns and suddenly the writing staff is a faceless hive mind like the old days.
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Nah Serral is number 1 and Maru is second but far from the goat, which was cemented even further in recent years. This is not a matter of speculation, but a fact. I would think that even the biggest Maru fans would agree.
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On August 13 2025 22:02 Charoisaur wrote:
Trap won 6 premier tournaments + NeXT Winter which also had a stacked field during a time span of 7 months. During those runs he beat everyone including winning bo7s against Serral, Reynor and Stats. He was by all means the strongest player in the scene during that period.
Serral btw back then had a weaker phase and didn't win a single tournament during those 7 months (being knocked out twice by Trap). It's absolutely revisionist history to say Serral was still stronger at that time
Hey just catching up, didn't realize this thread was still active lol
You're mis-contextualizing what really happened here. In 2021 Trap and Serral played 8 times - Serral won 6, Trap won 2. Trap won a bo5 and a bo7 early in the year.
Those are the only career wins Trap has v Serral.
I do find it funny that going 7 months without a premier win is considered a 'weaker phase', even by Serral's detractors.
On August 14 2025 00:35 Charoisaur wrote:
If Trap wins 7 tournaments in a period in which Serral wins 0 tournaments, then he should be the favorite over Serral in the next given tournament, no?
It's funny you mention that, because the next tournament they played together Serral won and he beat Trap to do it. I'm not suggesting this proves anything or arguing Trap wasn't the favorite, just a funny thing I noticed when checking the records.
Editing to add thoughts without bumping with a new comment:
This thing with Trap in 2021 is a perfect example of why people tend to view Serral as dominant from 2018 onwards. It's not that he was winning everything for 7 years, it's that even when someone else had a great run (like Trap) it was always bookended by Serral beating that player time and again, and coming back to win yet more tournaments. Trap had a phenomenal 2021, yet his record v Serral that year was 2-6. Trap's best year yielded him the only 2 wins he ever got 1v1 vs Serral.
The only winning sprees other players have had since 2018 were thanks primarily to winning tournaments Serral didn't compete in - Trap included. Fact check me on that if you're so inclined and let me know if I've missed something, but Trap, Rogue, and Maru all had sprees in Korea but couldn't keep it up in DH and Kato during that period. Clem was a DH:EU monster, but that didn't translate to winning the season finals except once. Between DH, Kato, and IEM, Reynor's had more success than people these days give him credit for, it's just been spread out so we don't have an 'era' to point to. Always dangerous, never dominant.
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On September 02 2025 03:48 sc2turtlepants wrote:Show nested quote +On August 13 2025 22:02 Charoisaur wrote:
Trap won 6 premier tournaments + NeXT Winter which also had a stacked field during a time span of 7 months. During those runs he beat everyone including winning bo7s against Serral, Reynor and Stats. He was by all means the strongest player in the scene during that period.
Serral btw back then had a weaker phase and didn't win a single tournament during those 7 months (being knocked out twice by Trap). It's absolutely revisionist history to say Serral was still stronger at that time
Hey just catching up, didn't realize this thread was still active lol You're mis-contextualizing what really happened here. In 2021 Trap and Serral played 8 times - Serral won 6, Trap won 2. Trap won a bo5 and a bo7 early in the year. Those are the only career wins Trap has v Serral. I do find it funny that going 7 months without a premier win is considered a 'weaker phase', even by Serral's detractors. Show nested quote +On August 14 2025 00:35 Charoisaur wrote:
If Trap wins 7 tournaments in a period in which Serral wins 0 tournaments, then he should be the favorite over Serral in the next given tournament, no?
It's funny you mention that, because the next tournament they played together Serral won and he beat Trap to do it. I'm not suggesting this proves anything or arguing Trap wasn't the favorite, just a funny thing I noticed when checking the records. Editing to add thoughts without bumping with a new comment: This thing with Trap in 2021 is a perfect example of why people tend to view Serral as dominant from 2018 onwards. It's not that he was winning everything for 7 years, it's that even when someone else had a great run (like Trap) it was always bookended by Serral beating that player time and again, and coming back to win yet more tournaments. Trap had a phenomenal 2021, yet his record v Serral that year was 2-6. Trap's best year yielded him the only 2 wins he ever got 1v1 vs Serral. The only winning sprees other players have had since 2018 were thanks primarily to winning tournaments Serral didn't compete in - Trap included. Fact check me on that if you're so inclined and let me know if I've missed something, but Trap, Rogue, and Maru all had sprees in Korea but couldn't keep it up in DH and Kato during that period. Clem was a DH:EU monster, but that didn't translate to winning the season finals except once. Between DH, Kato, and IEM, Reynor's had more success than people these days give him credit for, it's just been spread out so we don't have an 'era' to point to. Always dangerous, never dominant.
While Serral 6-2 Trap is true for the whole of 2021, Serrals wins all happened at the end of 2021. During the 7 months period I specified Trap was 2-0 against Serral
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On August 15 2025 22:52 MJG wrote:Show nested quote +On August 15 2025 22:30 TropicalHaze wrote:The discussion here has gone to a weird direction of "was Serral #1 player for every single second, minute and hour counting from 2018 to now". The main point being IMO that we can easily agree that for the most part he was and still is and taking a look at the thread we are currently on - in hindsight calling Maru #1 has aged like a milk even though it was already a controversial pick back when this thread was created In hindsight the SC2 scene has aged like milk since 2016.
I mean, no one is forcing anyone to watch and comment on a game that they dislike. You wrote, that you are still passionate, but passion sounds different to me 
Skill ceilings, how post-military players triumphed, new legacies being built, the engagement from all the content creators... There are a ton of positive things about the scene. Aging milk is utterly distasteful, so perhaps the analogy simply sounded wrong to me.
Of course, there is less money involved and the player pool isn't as big... but to me, the games are still insanely good.
Looking at Stormgate's start, we are still blessed with an extremely diverse and balanced RTS, even after 15 years. I get the impression that people sometimes still fail to realize what an amazing job Blizzard made back then (not you in particular).
On August 17 2025 21:45 HeroSandro wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2025 21:24 Drahkn wrote:
Maru reigned when SC2 competitiveness was at its height. The competition was 100 times fiercer. Serral has dominated in an era that is not even comparable. You already lose the GOAT discussion right there imo Your argument would have more strength, if you specified the years of Maru’s dominance.
Or if he explained how Maru reigned, if he wasn't even the most dominant Terran player for extended periods at peak competitiveness.
On August 17 2025 23:44 Moonerz wrote:Show nested quote +On August 17 2025 16:28 TeamMamba wrote:On August 17 2025 04:27 Mizenhauer wrote:On August 17 2025 00:50 WombaT wrote:On August 16 2025 21:03 MJG wrote:On August 16 2025 11:12 WombaT wrote:On August 15 2025 22:52 MJG wrote:On August 15 2025 22:30 TropicalHaze wrote:The discussion here has gone to a weird direction of "was Serral #1 player for every single second, minute and hour counting from 2018 to now". The main point being IMO that we can easily agree that for the most part he was and still is and taking a look at the thread we are currently on - in hindsight calling Maru #1 has aged like a milk even though it was already a controversial pick back when this thread was created In hindsight the SC2 scene has aged like milk since 2016. Aye, it’s a shame everyone forgot how to play the game after 2016, and there weren’t innumerable tournaments with good prize pools for progamers to shoot for. Personally I think for a game’s pro scene to be legitimate, Korean players should have the advantage of sponsored team houses, that nobody else has. In a game with both a bigger playerbase and viewer base internationally. I must have hallucinated the EG Lair and all the other foreign team houses... Speaking of EG, and of Koreans competing against Foreigners, a mid-tournament series like Jaedong vs. NaNiwa probably generated a dozen times more interest than the entirety of EWC did. That's what I'm referring to when I say that the scene aged like milk. I'm still passionate about this game, despite all of its many flaws, but I'm not going to fool myself into the belief that what we have now is anywhere near as great as what came before. + Show Spoiler + Proleague’s numbers weren’t always stellar, if we’re going off interest as a metric. It’s a competition I personally loved, and also loved what the Kespa teams brought. But also, something of a distorting aberration. The scene has always been more individual than team focused, by a huge margin, and regular international LANs a huge part. Kespa come in, Proleague is king now, to the degree it’s prioritised over things fans are more invested in. Another problem, it wasn’t organically sustainable. So you get a dual problem where foreigners (the bigger audience and playerbase) can’t compete for a while really, but also that that system gave Kespa players a basically insurmountable edge versus the next Korean generation too. Going back to team houses, foreign ones did exist, but as per my previous post on the scene not being team competition focused, you see problems in maximising that. And how some of their rosters look. EG being one example. InControl (RIP) brings a ton of value to EG in various capacities, and fully merits his place, but say, Idra isn’t going to hugely level up grinding games against him. And many foreign rosters look similar, to this day. A big hitter or two, a solid pro or two, and a few guys who can play, but are there for other reasons, a historic staple, they help manage the team or whatever. Another problem is, there isn’t an atypically strong non-Korean country, so where do you do a team house? If, arbitrarily speaking Korea had 20/30 of the top players, and say, France had 5/30, well you’d probably have some French all-star team, which would be a lot of fun given how passionate the French fans are! But we don’t have that. Say Basilisk wanted to make a team house environment. Who’s moving, and to where? Serral doesn’t seem to much like spending too long at a time outside Finland, Reynor seems more down with travel. Trigger’s likely going to have to suck it up and cross the Atlantic. And just players. They tend to be young so not too many kiddos are around, but partners might not want to relocate to another country or continent. I’m not ragging on Kespa, although it may appear thus! But not my intent. My contention is merely that the scene is potentially healthier without it. One of the problems is that nobody put up plans and money to enable that transition. I’d argue if it were any other game, and Korea wasn’t historically StarCraft Mecca, people would be way more critical about how Kespa went about things. Region lock worked! Which saved the scene for many years, since the Korean scene was dying due to their own fault. Matchmixing, uneven prize pool distribution etc I mean it's not like the foreign scene was/is running organically. Blizz/esl were pumping money in. So I would say while it is slightly healthier it's not like the foreign scene was popping and the kr scene was just dead. The kr scene obviously took a huge nose dive because without pro league how is it possible to sustain the amount of players who were playing? And then I do agree that the prize pool distribution is a factor because unless you are a top top player you probably won't make much if any money in the individual tournaments
Korea was also sponsored by Blizz money, especially early on in the WCS years to guarantee prize pools.
Until 2012 Blizz made hardly any direct contribution to prize pools and GOM carried the game in Korea... all that money came from sponsors, tickets, subscriptions and ads, similar to the foreign scene.
Pre-region locks, Koreans could make Blizz-funded money at home or fly out to win foreign money (basically, there wouldn't have been as many Korean pros, if the foreign scene wouldn't have quasi-subsidized them, at the same time draining foreign talent).
To counterbalance this, following 2013 Blizz pumped more money into the foreign scenes and eventually region locked it to give talents from there a fighting chance against the million-dollar-machine from Korea. In my opinion, that was a much needed move.
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I wouldn't say reigned as that is suggesting like a king, and he wasn't so since there was also innovation. But in 2015 he was top 2 without question and he was far more popular. Basically, every ladder terran was trying to be Maru and to their detriment. Then he reigned as king from 2018 and forward, and much more like a king than you can say about serral.
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On September 07 2025 05:59 ejozl wrote:
I wouldn't say reigned as that is suggesting like a king, and he wasn't so since there was also innovation. But in 2015 he was top 2 without question and he was far more popular. Basically, every ladder terran was trying to be Maru and to their detriment. Then he reigned as king from 2018 and forward, and much more like a king than you can say about serral.
Top 2 Terran or overall in 2015 in your opinion? Because sOs, INno, Rain, Life and even herO or Classic could all be placed above Maru's 2015, depending on which metrics/accolades one focuses on.
What exactly do you mean by Maru reigning more like a king than Serral? A crown-less king, as he never won a World Championship?
On a more serious note: I think Serral's post-2018 needs to be much stronger in the context of Miz' analysis (in my opinion it is in all relevant metrics... by far). How else could Serral have overtaken Maru in the update, given that Maru definitely "scored more points" up until 2018?
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On September 07 2025 15:00 PremoBeats wrote:Show nested quote +On September 07 2025 05:59 ejozl wrote:
I wouldn't say reigned as that is suggesting like a king, and he wasn't so since there was also innovation. But in 2015 he was top 2 without question and he was far more popular. Basically, every ladder terran was trying to be Maru and to their detriment. Then he reigned as king from 2018 and forward, and much more like a king than you can say about serral. ink Serral's post-2018 needs to be much stronger in the context of Miz' analysis (in my opinion it is in all relevant metrics... by far). How else could Serral have overtaken Maru in the update, given that Maru definitely "scored more points" up until 2018?
Because he didn't. It is just the narrative of the talking heads of the scene driven several factors:
* The need to create a sense of "game is healthy as ever".
* The idea that a foreign dominated scene will revitalize the game.
* The proximity of the majority of casters/media of the esports towards the non-koreans players in terms of friendship or acquaintance.
That is it.
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