herO “Everyone says that Serral is the GOAT” - Page 7

On June 26 2024 20:44 Balnazza wrote:


I was thinking about answering to all points in detail, but it's just too hot here, I'm sorry. So I will give general answers and hope to cover everything.

"The money Blizzard put into GSL was laughable"

When Blizzard stopped the funding for SC2 at the end of 2022, the Prizepool between GSL seasons dropped from 123K to 52K, essentially being halved. And remember that already includes crowdfunding for GSL from '23 forward. So you *might* want to reconsider the statement that Blizzard wasn't paying anything. Pirzepools for ESL events btw dropped only about 25%. So either ESL put in a lot more money into the game than Afreeca or Blizzard didn't fund ESL as heavy as GSL.

"The Blizzard licensing killed TOs"

I will admit, I wasn't around in the first year or something like that for SC2. Back then I was admin/caster for WC3CL and was a bit anti-SC2 and anti-change. Our league was thinking about putting up a second league for SC2 though right from the get-go and the licensing was already a topic. So I'm almost certain that the fact that Blizzard wanted to run the show to a degree was the plan from release on. Either way, this means Blizzard did not kill any TOs that were already running SC2 competitions - they all operated under that label.
That was at the time rather new. Pre-2010, no game developer really invested anything into Esports. It was all about ESL, DreamHack, ESWC, WCG and so on...private companies, usually barely in communication with the developer at all.
Today, every big developer controls their Esport. Riot started it together with Blizzard (or Blizzard was even first?), but it is the industry standard by now. Valve for example did a string of decisions recently regarding CS2, for example they decided that partnership-depending tournaments were forbidden from 2025 onwards. And you know what? ESL and BLAST both had to follow and accept that decision. That basically really is like the FIBA saying "no, Franchising is banned now" and the NBA goes "haha, okay boss, will do!".
Anyway, back to Blizzard. They wanted to run the show for multiple reasons. And they clearly envisioned SC2 as a global Esports. They didn't look towards BroodWar, which was extremly bad in that regard. They looked towards WC3.
And still, at the start, they let it run its course, with multiple tournament organizers doing their things. A lot of them probably vanishing because Esports isn't a particularly suistainable business and the Financial Crisis of 2014. WCS got introduced a good chunk later and remember, the first one was this national into regional into global system that was actually really cool, but not particularly thought-through yet. Only after that developed the WCS-system.

Now, you might think and say the Licensing-Rules were greedy or whatever. Might be. But there is another aspect of it. Grubby recently talked about this in a video, I think it was about "What's good an bad in SC2?". And one thing he said was that Blizzard essentially ended the Wild-West regarding Esports-Events. Please don't quote me on it, but I think Grubby mentioned that he like almost missed like 25% and up to 50% of the prizepool he technically earned in WC3, because TOs wouldn't pay him out. He said "you would just show up to an event an play and simply would not get paid at all". Either because TOs really just scammed the players or because they went bankrupt. ESWC for example had a rule in their player contract that they only had to payout prizemoney in a timespan of two years. And I think ESL also wasn't particularly fast in paying out back in the day. Goody protested that once, I think he mentioned a delay of six to nine month?

With the Licensing and Blizzard taking over, that stopped. Now players would not only get their money, but they would get it in a reasonable timeframe. I'm pretty sure if you ask a player if he or she prefers to either play ten events for ten different TOs or three events for the same but get paid all three events guaranteed...I'm pretty certain there is a clear favorite here.

"Money shouldn't be taken from the top and awarded to lesser regions to such a degree"

You need to if you want a global playing field to entertain a global viewership. You bring up the NBA: You are forgetting something here though. The NBA isn't the only basketball-league in the world. It's of course the largest, most important and financially strongest, zero doubt about that. But there are basketball leagues all around the world, especially in Europe. So if you are an aspiring basketball player in Germany, you don't need to hope to get a scholarship for an american College and then either go into the NBA or stop playing Basketball. You can make a career playing Basketball in Germany. Then maybe in Europe. And eventually, you might get to play in the NBA. In return, lots of americans aren't starved out of Basketball if they don't make it into the NBA, but they can go abroad. Again, in Germany, I know for a fact that every team in the third highest Basketball league, which is basically the first one that plays somewhat professional, each team has usually two or three US-players. Now you might say "aha, so region lock is bad, see!", but there is a region-lock. Teams are only allowed that many non-EU-players. Exactly to help develop own talent and protect the local players.

This excourse is an example of course. But the think is, that Esport doesn't work like that exactly. For one, money isn't as big as it is in Basketball, so you can't particularly lower the money per region over and over before there is no money at all. But SC2, like all Esports, has other differences to regular sport aswell. It is usually less "grassroots" and more top-heavy and internationally oriented. There is no "natural distribution" of money in SC2, the money is were Blizzard puts it (atleast in the past, now there is actual natural distribution, with ESL pumping money into it while the korean scene struggles).
And as I said before: The goal wasn't to recreate Proleague and OSL/MSL. The goal was to recreate the global success of WC3, with a global playerbase. And it somewhat worked. We have an international viewership and lots of foreigner players. Which I'm certain we wouldn't have if Blizzards entire plan would have been "here Kespa, take our money and do what you want, the rest of the world will git gud on their own and eventually join Proleague LUL."

"There should be smaller tournaments and also teams can provide the money players need"

There always have been regional, smaller tournaments. Often though they didn't pay out enough money, which makes sense. With the rise of Twitch and the heavy promotion of international tournaments, local TOs struggled to provide a product that could earn money.

And as for teams...well, they simply can't provide said money. Easy as that. There are reasons for that of course.
First of all, they did that in the past. In WC3, prizemoney was often incredibly top-heavy. We are talking events with 50+ players and only the Top 3 got any prizemoney (hi ESWC again!). So teams filled in to a heavy degree. But in turn, the teamleagues that existed nearly didn't pay out enough money to fund said teams. We are talking finals that teams had to win to even cover their travelcosts.
But Esport was brand new and a lot of sponsors were ready to pump in the money to finance teams like MYM and 4Kings. And then 2008 happened and a lot of companies cut their fundings. And the WC3-moneybubble bursted, with an incredible shutdown of teams.

For SC2, teams and organisations that survived tried to be healthier. But the money they didn't pay anymore needed to come from somewhere and that were tournaments. Proleague of course didn't have any of these problems. For one, being entirely offline and very popular in Korea, I assume Proleague generated quite the revenue. And then all teams were owned by the big korean Groups, who had a PR-based interest to invest. Be it SKT (I was shocked to learn that this does not stand for "South Korean Telecom" btw...anyone else?), the KT Group, Samsung...you get it.

With the focus of SC2 being even more on 1v1 competition, teams had a harder time generating revenue...not that it is easy to generate revenue in Esports anyway. So it would be suicide for the scene to put all the "develop talent"-duties on teams who can't really afford that.


I'm sure I've missed some of your points, but again, this is already taking too long in the heat. So I hope I covered the important things.

In which world (...) Oliveira are better SC2 players than Cure, soO, Shin and Cure??

On June 27 2024 08:41 sc2turtlepants wrote:


Look at that list you made, and find which of those players has been or currently is the world champion. Oliveira peaks fucking high

On June 27 2024 08:55 WombaT wrote:

Once, literally once. He’s never made another premier final. Not an international weekender, not an old merged WCS either.

He’s probably hotter than some of those names minus Cure these days to be fair but his overall body of work isn’t even close to a soO or a Classic or a Cure.

On June 27 2024 03:26 WombaT wrote:

He had one good match against Serral, he’s never beaten him in a tournament. Granted Cure isn’t doing much better with like a 2-16 match record.

I mean style does come into matchups too, player a may > player b who owns > player c, but it doesn’t necessarily mean a > c

Personally I think SHIN Rag is pretty underrated for his results over his career, probably down to his style. For whatever reason it’s ruthless strategic genius when Dark does some naughtiness, but cheesing out better players when Rag SHIN does.

Conversely I think Oliveira is a tad overrated, largely off one big tournament run, partly because he does play a thrilling style when he’s on song.

Cure has more Ro4+ performances in premier tournies since 2023 than Oliveira has had in his whole career, I’d have a real hard time placing Cure behind him.

If Maru’s still absolutely the Terran god unless one is a maniac, Cure is the clear next in line if we’re talking consistency and a rounded game if not quite hitting the heights Mary does, and Clem can hit those heights but not as frequently. Oliveira can hit huge heights too but it’s really infrequent

On June 27 2024 05:12 Poopi wrote:

I mean, you just have to compute the odds of Maru's run on aligulac and the odds of Serral on the same website, and it'll become obvious which run was harder.

On June 27 2024 10:05 Balnazza wrote:


I will try to keep it quick aswell:

1. Prize money was where the viewership was and where Blizzard saw the opportunities to grow. Was that completly fair? No, but that wasn't the goal. Blizzard idea also wasn't wrong as proven by Riot: They essentially do the same, even though the Korean LCK is atleast at the top much stronger than the EU LEC. But you have a global playerbase, global opportunities to join the pro-scenes and therefore also global viewership with lots of "local heroes".

2. The entire world had to share for some time the same amount of BlizzCon-Slots than Korea. Korean Topdogs also dominated every global qualifier. We really don't need to pity the korean scene at these times...

3. I mean, eventually it was GSL/GOM/Afreeca who run it into the ground, so yeah, feels like they fucked that up big time?

4. Literally every developer did that. Riot started out with cooperations with ESL, Counterstrike was run by so many different orgs etc. And now, every developer dictates the rule of their games, the entire economy and scene. Some cooperate with others, some just do it themselves.

5. The entire thing got massively better with Blizzards envolvement. Sure, there were still hiccups (still are today), but it got SO much better for everyone involved. I also don't understand how you don't want Blizzard involved, but at the same time they "should have collected the money" for each event? That feels contradictory...
And paying them to run their game? That's not only a weird idea on a general basis, but they literally put millions of dollars into the game, essentially paying ESL and GSL to run their game?

6. As I said before: You can cut the payment of a NBA player many times for each individual national league before you reach a salary that the player can't live from anymore. How much money can you take from the GSL prizemoney before a player can't live from that?

7. "Region-lock would have been okay if the Money was where it was supposed to be" - it was. And it is honestly a weird take to think Korea just had the natural rights to be the center of SC2. What if Blizzard had actually followed your train of thought? Their own Proleague, their own Starleague...but in the US. Basically like the Overwatch League. All Koreans would have needed to come over and play? Would have that been fine for you? All the money at one point, that point just happened to be not Korea?

8. Of course Blizzard hoped that BroodWar "dies". Blizzard actively killed WC3 for SC2. Because they released their new game and hoped it would be the next big thing. So of course they wanted BroodWar gone...not that there was much BroodWar to kill outside of Korea. Same as Valve killed 1.6 and Source with Global Offensive...why would you compete with yourself?
And sure, Blizzard was riding the Twitch-Hype...multiple times btw, I sometimes feel Hearthstone invented the "modern streamer". But that alone didn't guarantee the success of the game. Blizzard invested heavily, even pre-WCS. But sure, maybe things could have gone better without WCS...could have gone a lot worse aswell. Remember that GSL got its massive prizepool also from Blizzard. Maybe without Blizzard-intervention at all, there is no GSL. They run two seasons and fail miserably, while Kespa has no interest to switch to a new game. So there is no incentive to play SC2 in Korea and the game is gone from there, with maybe players like Mvp trying to make it outside of Korea. That is, in my opinion, a completly realistic scenario.

9. And what would that change? You can't even get all big team spors into one room, why would it work with gaming? EWC Foundation will surely try, but Valve, Blizzard and especially Riot are far too stubborn for that. What we need in Esports is very hands-on developers. I know not everyone likes it, but I will always defend that Riot created the perfect esports scene for their game.

10. Teams in CS2 are not profitable. Most orgs literally bankrupt themselves, needing constant input of cash from the outside. Even ESL burns through massive amounts of cash each year.
Riot recently adressed this problem for LoL and tried to push for more sustainability, opening more revenue options for themselves and the teams. But in general, Esports is still sadly a business in constant need of investment.

It feels like you put a lot of blame on Blizzard, while simultaneously ignoring all the work they have done for the game. And while you might hate Blizzard for their investments into the foreign scene instead of spending every dim on Korea, eventually that was the right call, as the korean scene was far too small to support a potentially global success like SC2. And if anything, the korean scene might be thankful for the money sunk into GSL instead of Blizzard just saying "well, if you want to play, just move to Europe, there are the viewers anyway."

On June 27 2024 09:23 NoobSkills wrote:


Okay he is certainly overhyping Oliveria for sure, but some of the guys you listed have little more than one big win and some have none, unless when I double checked I missed something.

Cure - GSL
Soo - MLG + Kato
Shin - Nothing
Classic - clearly dominates 2x GSL, IEM Schenzhen, WESG, and 2x super tournaments

Might have missed something, but largely excluded weird events and team stuff and based it off competition.

On June 27 2024 11:02 WombaT wrote:

Oliveira has made one Premier final in his career, granted he won it and won big, he’s only made 2 other premier Ro4s (outside of the old merged WCS, where he made a couple of Ro4s too)

It’s not nothing obviously!

Personally I actually think it’s cool to have if not a ‘one hit’ wonder, something kinda like that as a big fun hyped storyline, and he’s a great talent no doubt.

But as a consistent presence at the business end of the higher quality competitions he’s closer to a Heromarine or a Special than he is to some of these blokes.

On June 27 2024 12:48 Balnazza wrote:


Won't answer to each point, since essentially they start to meddle a bit.

1. Prizepool distribution

We won't find a common point here. To get your point across, you would have needed to half if not more the prizepool of EU and AM, which essentially stops it being worth for a larger playerbase. Which would in return just led to the BW-Korea-Circlejerk that barely anyone cared about globally.

2. Blizzard "run away"

Blizzard paid SC2 Esports for ten+ years. TEN YEARS. And to a point when SC2 long stopped being profitable. Blizzard run away from Heroes of the Storm, that is true. But SC2? No, just no. Calling that "they leeched off and then left" is false and honestly disrespectful.

3. Blizzard and BroodWar

Blizzard didn't kill OSL/MSL/OPL. They weren't forbidden to run. The entire conflicht was about who is in charge of Starcraft. Kespa wanted to keep their position, so they refused SC2 in the beginning. But eventually, the change to the new game had to be made. It's not like BroodWar was doing amazingly well either. In the two seasons prior to the switch to SC2, Proleague lost four teams. And it is not like Proleague suddenly returned with SC:R.
Blizzard stopped caring for BroodWar long ago, then they stopped caring for WC3, just putting all efforts into SC2. And only after SC2 stopped being a relevant project SC:R got done. And Blizzard even paid for that game with some tournaments, including their own Starleague in Korea.

Again, I'm really not sure what you wanted here? Apparently that Blizzard goes to Kespa/OGN, gives them all the money in the world and says "don't worry, the global playerbase will surely catch up and soon play in Proleague aswell"? Why would they do that if the goal is to create a global enviroment? OGN didn't care at all about the global playerbase, why would they? They are literally Korea-only.

4. Korea should be the focus.

You are mistaken if you think tournaments are just hosted were the highest level of skill is. CS2 is spread out all across the world, the next Major will be in Shanghai, even though literally no Chinese team (and barely any Asian team) will have a shot at the title. Europe usually gets the most qualifying spots, but the entire game tries to present itself globally.
Riot is present in all regions, but yet again, Worlds for example wander between regions. The Overwatch League was dominated by korean players, but the League itself got based in the US. With CoD you are correct, but there is the snatch: CoD is mostly big in the US, in terms of Esports it isn't particularly interesting in Europe. So it doesn't make any sense to host games here.
You host your tournament where it makes the most economical sense. And for SC2, Korea isn't particularly a hotspot. In the end, it is easier to get ten korean players to a hyping arena in Dallas than the Dallas-crowd to Seoul.

You can see that in traditional sports aswell. For example, the NFL is currently trying to expand to Europe, especially Germany. Hosting multiple games per season in german football/soccer stadiums. Are they doing that because the NFL wants to harness the great potential of germanys American Football players? No, but in the last ten years, the Super Bowl has become kind of a trend here and people get more interested in American Football...so the NFL tries to capitalize on that.
And while it is easier said than done...that would have probably been something the GSL and Proleague needed to be doing. Have one of three GSL finals per year in America and Europe (I think they one-time had GSL Finals at BlizzCon or something like that?).

5. CS2 teams are profitable

They are in fact not. They all are costing off sticker-money. The T3 scene is collapsing with ESL pulling out of national events and now with Valves changes towards the Major qualification, even more teams are disbanding. One of the best teams in the world (FaZe) just recently had to be sold, since the entire org was down in the shits and needed fresh cash.

BW Proleague worked because, as you said, it was marketing towards the home-market. But how many of the Proleague-sponsors are even operating outside of Korea? I can only really think of Samsung. It was cool and amazing, but it was also only working in a niche. A niche you can't really build your new big game around.

On June 27 2024 16:16 Argonauta wrote:


I made that list (which lacks a Serral win vs Shin, my bad!) to respond a person that emitted a deranged comment. GSL is still an on pair tournament to ESL big events (besdies kato and the Saudi cup this year).

ESL Dallas is wider in terms of amount of players, but at the end of the day, if you are seeded, the depth of the Tourney is similar as this year's GSL. Even in terms of the quality of contender players, both are quite similar, with 5 out of 8 ESL playoffs occupied by GSL participants. (6 if we take into account Reynor's participation in GSL).

On June 27 2024 04:49 Argonauta wrote:


In which world Nice and Oliveira are better SC2 players than Cure, soO, Shin and Cure??

Besides that yeah, the depth of the tournament (aka number of matches one has to play to get the title) is an important factor.