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Northern Ireland26994 Posts
On June 03 2025 10:52 JJH777 wrote:
To the above post one minor correction is the wildcard qualifier for Bellum was played after the announcement that it would have an EWC seed and still had pretty abysmal participation for some reason. I initially made the same exact complaint you just made except on Reddit that it wasn't fair to the players to have an event award and EWC seed when that wasn't known at the time the qualifier was running. Someone replied and pointed out the wildcard qualifier was going to be played after so I thought that was at least better than nothing but very few top players actually participated. I was shocked we didn't see a lot of the top Koreans go for it even if you have to pay your own travel for the chance at an EWC slot.
Though one aspect that was still unclear until very recently is that the seed would just roll down to the highest placing player not already qualified. There were rumors I've seen posted both here and Reddit that slots in that scenario would go to the global qualifier not just roll down in the same event which turned out to be incorrect and I wonder if that impacted players decisions to participate.
Thanks for the correction! I’d assumed the wildcard was to replace some of the forfeits, and wasn’t done after the EWC announcement.
Checking here the wild card did occur after the EWC reveal, by approx 3 weeks. Although from memory I can’t remember what the gap was between ‘EWC is back’ and ‘here’s how you qualify’. It is still possible that the latter only occurred after the wild card, which tbh looking at the field seems more likely to me. If I am wrong, I stand corrected but my guess is that the Redditor who pointed this out to you was correct on the EWC announcement date, but assumed that how qualification would happen occurred around the same time. I’m not sure it did, just from memory I think there was at least SOME lag.
There is also the possibility that, signups close. So maybe the signup deadline passed, EWC announcement, then qualifiers actually happen. Tbh I think that’s also unlikely, if EWC qualification suddenly became a factor, I’d imagine they’d re-open them. Aside from anything else they want their tournament to attract the best field possible.
Unless stuff like this is privately communicated to the relevant stakeholders and we just don’t hear of it, which is possible I do find it frustrating how little myself, or you or whoever posts regularly here definitively know about certain things. These should be questions that someone who occasionally dips their toes in and loves the big tournaments might have, not somebody like me who, on current trajectories may just become a disembodied consciousness who lives on TL in a few years.
As a big general sports fan, generally once some new tournament is announced, or tweaks to formats are made, there is no room for speculation, only ‘is this a good thing’? The World Cup in football is being expanded. I know how that tournament is structured years out, I know the ratios of who qualifies from which regions, and I know which cross-continent playoff tiebreaks will occur.
As someone who doesn’t follow other eSports, I wonder if there’s near these levels of confusion on these kind of questions for other titles who’ll be played out at EWC
It’s just frustrating. Look, I’m pretty on-record in not being a fan of Gamers8 and EWC for other reasons, but, while it does somewhat augment some of my criticisms from those domains, I’d really rather not be also moaning about things like tournament format (like come on what was that format last year?) and qualification formats and basic communication. For those who have ethical issues and don’t wanna watch, fair fucks, I’m still on the fence again this year. For those who just want the best SC2 possible, I’d rather they get that, personally.
Whether one agrees with all of Blizz’s and subsequently old ESL’s calls in terms of structure and how to distribute the monies, organisationally it’s night and day really
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As someone who doesn’t follow other eSports, I wonder if there’s near these levels of confusion on these kind of questions for other titles who’ll be played out at EWC
No, not really. EWC was and is just a collosal mess. Just a remember: Last year, we didn't know how the EPT Championship would look basically until the end of the year. Throughout 2023 players played for EPT points and had no idea how much they would actually need/what place they would need to hit and where they would even go. I understand that the EWC announcement was a bit of a secret, but it was still silly.
Other Esports are much more organized in that regard, which kind of makes sense, because SC2 is in a bit of a unique space. But just a few examples:
LoL (and Valorant) run a full circuit through the year, so everything is mostly planned out way ahead. For the first time in a while the LoL Worlds are not fully flashed out, they will get a new system this year (since they have been downsized from 20 to 17 teams), but atleast every team in every region knows the path to qualification.
Counterstrike implemented a new system this year, called the Valve Ranking. The system itself is controversial, but it basically structurs all invites months ahead. So for example, the current June Ranking decided the invites for IEM Cologne at the end of July.
Even Age of Empires, which does not have any kind of real circuit in any of its entries, is still relatively structured. There is a Tournament Director working for Microsoft who is in charge of giving out the funds from MS/Worlds Edge/Forgotten Empires to TOs. Because of hat, there is an event calendar that features all bigger events in AoE 1 to AoM (so essentially six games!) throughout the year. Sometimes even events that aren't announced, so it could just be "AoE 2 S-Tier 1v1 Event in July" or something like that as a placeholder.
That way though, most players know throughout the entire year when what will be played, which is particularly important considering how few players actually play all the AoE games full time.
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As frustrating as the qualification process is, I think we got the correct player pool for EWC this year. Most of the big names already qualified or in the Global Qualifier, with the exception of a few like Rogue/Gumiho who still has a chance to make it.
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Northern Ireland26994 Posts
On June 03 2025 23:23 tigera6 wrote:
As frustrating as the qualification process is, I think we got the correct player pool for EWC this year. Most of the big names already qualified or in the Global Qualifier, with the exception of a few like Rogue/Gumiho who still has a chance to make it.
I think broadly yeah we have so far, which doesn’t limit my moaning but the end results are pretty much who you’d expect.
Dunno why it didn’t occur to me before now, there is one further solution that would be cool, although I imagine not viable at that venue.
Open bracket to get into the main tournament proper and face those who qualified already. If you’re going to have basically one mega tournament, that would be sick. Yes, yes I know, complete pipe dream :p
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On June 03 2025 23:53 WombaT wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2025 23:23 tigera6 wrote:
As frustrating as the qualification process is, I think we got the correct player pool for EWC this year. Most of the big names already qualified or in the Global Qualifier, with the exception of a few like Rogue/Gumiho who still has a chance to make it.
I think broadly yeah we have so far, which doesn’t limit my moaning but the end results are pretty much who you’d expect. Dunno why it didn’t occur to me before now, there is one further solution that would be cool, although I imagine not viable at that venue. Open bracket to get into the main tournament proper and face those who qualified already. If you’re going to have basically one mega tournament, that would be sick. Yes, yes I know, complete pipe dream :p
Honestly, not a fan of that idea for the "World Championship". I know the "Circuit" is extremly short this year, but still. If you can just show up and qualify it doesn't have the same gravitas as having to work before to qualify
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Northern Ireland26994 Posts
On June 04 2025 00:09 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On June 03 2025 23:53 WombaT wrote:On June 03 2025 23:23 tigera6 wrote:
As frustrating as the qualification process is, I think we got the correct player pool for EWC this year. Most of the big names already qualified or in the Global Qualifier, with the exception of a few like Rogue/Gumiho who still has a chance to make it.
I think broadly yeah we have so far, which doesn’t limit my moaning but the end results are pretty much who you’d expect. Dunno why it didn’t occur to me before now, there is one further solution that would be cool, although I imagine not viable at that venue. Open bracket to get into the main tournament proper and face those who qualified already. If you’re going to have basically one mega tournament, that would be sick. Yes, yes I know, complete pipe dream :p Honestly, not a fan of that idea for the "World Championship". I know the "Circuit" is extremly short this year, but still. If you can just show up and qualify it doesn't have the same gravitas as having to work before to qualify
When we had two WCs it was great. Katowice was the one where you could be on a hot streak coming in and do well. Blizzcon/WCS was the one where you had to be solid all year to make it.
I’m fine with both approaches, and to have two WCs with a slightly different niche was cool
If a ton of non-qualified players turned up for a last-chance qualifier, offline, and made it through the gauntlet is that really lacking the gravitas of (potentially) being the highest placed player in a 16 man field at Bellum who hasn’t already qualified, when 5 players already have?
I’d feel rather differently if this had been announced months ago, more tournaments were incorporated, and players knew more in advance of how to qualify.
Maru played Protoss in an Asian qualifier with 4 participants, qualified and forfeited his spot. That just doesn’t happen if it’s known at the time that here’s a potential EWC ticket. It was a sensible call at the time for some to skip it, prize pool isn’t huge, Clem and Serral and Reynor are there, you might be losing money playing that tourney. Maybe not a call some make if it’s a good shot at EWC and guaranteed cash just for showing up there.
Of players not qualified, I think maybe only Gumiho not making it would feel a bit ‘unfair’ to me as he’s won an HSC, albeit not the most stacked we’ve ever seen, and made a GSL Ro4, so he has some results others don’t have despite not quite getting over the line yet. He may still yet though.
Others if they fail to make it, I wouldn’t say it’s unfair but given SC2 is seemingly now one giant tournament in the desert, it’s a shame they won’t be.
Come on, something like military veteran Rogue, gradually getting his powers of old back, seizing the last chance of the open bracket and going on a tear would be sick city! And I’m not even a fan (although not an antifan either)
This EWC structure is absurdly, absurdly top-heavy. Which is fine if you’re Serral, or Clem. You’re a level above most, you’re going to qualify.
Lost in the sauce a bit is that the ‘middle class’ of pros, you’re A and B tiers are very, very close in level. And there’s a lot in that class.
This is fine if it’s a 50/50 toss up matchup for glory. At this point it’s basically a 50/50 match where it’s financially viable for the winner to be a progamer, and the other not.
With that in mind, the more shots someone has to make it, the better.
Of course this is coming from a PoV of a big StarCraft fan. Very few moves made by the organisation behind Gamers8/EWC are moves I’d have made, and i imagine that’s an opinion shared by many.
But of course this isn’t any endeavour or passion, or even commercial viability really.
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Chinese protoss player Jim(he admitted to being immersed in betting since 2014) revealed a long-term matchfixing scandal about Firefly in Chinese sc2 forum just now. Maybe he will be disqualified.
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EPT
