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On July 27 2025 04:44 dedede wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2025 23:16 WardiTV wrote:On July 26 2025 22:48 Poopi wrote:
I mean winning IEM Katowice was harder or same as winning BlizzCon, and the prizepool was similar so I don’t see how they don’t count as WC.
If the argument is: « oh but there would be multiple WC in a year, that’s dumb », then having no WC in 2020 seems just as dumb, especially considering IEM Katowice 2020 was offline while the official 2021 Katowice was online Katowice 2020 had no circuit that led into it in the year leading to it - the official circuit was the recently concluded WCS year as it was only 2-3 months after 2019 Blizzcon - so yes there is no "2020" world championship, but mostly just because of how the timeframe for the season changed from having an end of year world championship to one closer to the start of the year. Yes it's just as hard to win Katowice as it was to win Blizzcon, that's why we consider it on the same level of accomplishment, but not the title of world champion. Who exactly is “we,” and who counts as the “official”? Is it ESL, Blizzard, EWC, or just a group of ESL hosts/casters talking? Honestly, ESL has way too much power play when it comes to casting and producing content, the amount of biased hype they pour into foreigners is on another level, something you’d never see in Korean leagues, where foreigners are treated equally, if not better, than Koreans.
Well, official as in the circuit launched by the creators of the game which lead to a tournament designated by them as the official World Championship aka BlizzCon, I guess. After that it was handed to ESL/DreamHack by Blizzard, which had IEM 2020-2023 for a 3 year contract, followed by the ESL Pro Tour leading to Riyad in 2024 and 2025.
I often read that one of Inno's shortcomings is that he never won a WC. The same is true for Maru...
Counting WESG as a world championship is a stretch in my opinion. In a title way, but also for lack of prestige or depth of the field.
Katowice is a little bit different. IEM Was around before SC2 was released, but as it was said in this thread already, it fed into the WCS circuit. But caliber-wise it was always regarded as WC-caliber as Wardi said.
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United States33584 Posts
On July 26 2025 22:45 WardiTV wrote:
I think the official world championship for each year is always just the conclusion of the biggest circuit that took part that year (with regards to scope, prize pool etc.) This was pretty much always WCS/Blizzcon until EPT took over.
We have always considered Katowice a "world championship calibre" event, but I don't think we've ever called it THE world championship during the blizzcon years. Stuff like WESG etc usually gets discounted because of the spread of competition, only 3 Koreans taking part typically made the Korean qualifiers harder that the actual offline event.
WESG is an interesting example of how subjective these things can be.
The prize money for 2016/2017 was $400,000 total, which made it the second biggest tournament of all time behind BlizzCon (up to that point in time), and actually BIGGER than BlizzCons 2013-2015 before they increased the prize pool. In terms of buying legitimacy with money (something we should all be very familiar with right now), it's hard to beat that level of spending.
But the tournament was on at a bad time zone for the West, promoted very poorly outside of China, had so-so production, and didn't hire the 'prestige' casters of the scene at the time. I genuinely believe if WESG had been played in the exact same format, but just been produced and casted like a BlizzCon or Kato, the Western scene would put it in the equivalent world championship-tier/supermajor-tier.
I'd actually be interested to know how it's regarded in the Chinese scene, given that it was probably a more accessible and well marketed tournament to them.
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On July 27 2025 06:36 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2025 22:45 WardiTV wrote:
I think the official world championship for each year is always just the conclusion of the biggest circuit that took part that year (with regards to scope, prize pool etc.) This was pretty much always WCS/Blizzcon until EPT took over.
We have always considered Katowice a "world championship calibre" event, but I don't think we've ever called it THE world championship during the blizzcon years. Stuff like WESG etc usually gets discounted because of the spread of competition, only 3 Koreans taking part typically made the Korean qualifiers harder that the actual offline event. WESG is an interesting example of how subjective these things can be. The prize money for 2016/2017 was $400,000 total, which made it the second biggest tournament of all time behind BlizzCon (up to that point in time), and actually BIGGER than BlizzCons 2013-2015 before they increased the prize pool. In terms of buying legitimacy with money (something we should all be very familiar with right now), it's hard to beat that level of spending. But the tournament was on at a bad time zone for the West, promoted very poorly outside of China, had so-so production, and didn't hire the 'prestige' casters of the scene at the time. I genuinely believe if WESG had been played in the exact same format, but just been produced and casted like a BlizzCon or Kato, the Western scene would put it in the equivalent world championship-tier/supermajor-tier. I'd actually be interested to know how it's regarded in the Chinese scene, given that it was probably a more accessible and well marketed tournament to them.
On top of the Saudi money, we also have the ESL circuit feeding into EWC.
WESG was a simple qualifier with a lot of fodder in the tournament... with that it is harder to generate hype.
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On July 27 2025 06:36 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2025 22:45 WardiTV wrote:
I think the official world championship for each year is always just the conclusion of the biggest circuit that took part that year (with regards to scope, prize pool etc.) This was pretty much always WCS/Blizzcon until EPT took over.
We have always considered Katowice a "world championship calibre" event, but I don't think we've ever called it THE world championship during the blizzcon years. Stuff like WESG etc usually gets discounted because of the spread of competition, only 3 Koreans taking part typically made the Korean qualifiers harder that the actual offline event. WESG is an interesting example of how subjective these things can be. The prize money for 2016/2017 was $400,000 total, which made it the second biggest tournament of all time behind BlizzCon (up to that point in time), and actually BIGGER than BlizzCons 2013-2015 before they increased the prize pool. In terms of buying legitimacy with money (something we should all be very familiar with right now), it's hard to beat that level of spending. But the tournament was on at a bad time zone for the West, promoted very poorly outside of China, had so-so production, and didn't hire the 'prestige' casters of the scene at the time. I genuinely believe if WESG had been played in the exact same format, but just been produced and casted like a BlizzCon or Kato, the Western scene would put it in the equivalent world championship-tier/supermajor-tier. I'd actually be interested to know how it's regarded in the Chinese scene, given that it was probably a more accessible and well marketed tournament to them.
The irony is: WESG was essentially a tournament-format in the way Blizzard originally inteded the WCS to be (if people recall, the first one had this qualifier system that feeded from national to regional to world). It was also a format that was how the big WC3 tournaments were run and those were prestigious as fuck. No one ever complained that WCG or ESWC only had a handful of koreans and chinese players and even BlizzCon only featured six world class players (plus two americans who I believe never managed to pass the first round...)
But when WESG started in SC2, we already were used to BlizzCon and Katowice, who had heavy korean-participation and all of the worlds greatest present. So even with the heavy prizepool it felt cheap. Kind of like the ESWC 2012 . Technically a "World Championship" with 20K for the winner (if they ever paid that *cough*), but....would you honestly count that for anything?
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France12911 Posts
On July 27 2025 06:36 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On July 26 2025 22:45 WardiTV wrote:
I think the official world championship for each year is always just the conclusion of the biggest circuit that took part that year (with regards to scope, prize pool etc.) This was pretty much always WCS/Blizzcon until EPT took over.
We have always considered Katowice a "world championship calibre" event, but I don't think we've ever called it THE world championship during the blizzcon years. Stuff like WESG etc usually gets discounted because of the spread of competition, only 3 Koreans taking part typically made the Korean qualifiers harder that the actual offline event. WESG is an interesting example of how subjective these things can be. The prize money for 2016/2017 was $400,000 total, which made it the second biggest tournament of all time behind BlizzCon (up to that point in time), and actually BIGGER than BlizzCons 2013-2015 before they increased the prize pool. In terms of buying legitimacy with money (something we should all be very familiar with right now), it's hard to beat that level of spending. But the tournament was on at a bad time zone for the West, promoted very poorly outside of China, had so-so production, and didn't hire the 'prestige' casters of the scene at the time. I genuinely believe if WESG had been played in the exact same format, but just been produced and casted like a BlizzCon or Kato, the Western scene would put it in the equivalent world championship-tier/supermajor-tier. I'd actually be interested to know how it's regarded in the Chinese scene, given that it was probably a more accessible and well marketed tournament to them.
So Maru is a world champion and the undisputed goat?
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On July 27 2025 08:19 Poopi wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2025 06:36 Waxangel wrote:On July 26 2025 22:45 WardiTV wrote:
I think the official world championship for each year is always just the conclusion of the biggest circuit that took part that year (with regards to scope, prize pool etc.) This was pretty much always WCS/Blizzcon until EPT took over.
We have always considered Katowice a "world championship calibre" event, but I don't think we've ever called it THE world championship during the blizzcon years. Stuff like WESG etc usually gets discounted because of the spread of competition, only 3 Koreans taking part typically made the Korean qualifiers harder that the actual offline event. WESG is an interesting example of how subjective these things can be. The prize money for 2016/2017 was $400,000 total, which made it the second biggest tournament of all time behind BlizzCon (up to that point in time), and actually BIGGER than BlizzCons 2013-2015 before they increased the prize pool. In terms of buying legitimacy with money (something we should all be very familiar with right now), it's hard to beat that level of spending. But the tournament was on at a bad time zone for the West, promoted very poorly outside of China, had so-so production, and didn't hire the 'prestige' casters of the scene at the time. I genuinely believe if WESG had been played in the exact same format, but just been produced and casted like a BlizzCon or Kato, the Western scene would put it in the equivalent world championship-tier/supermajor-tier. I'd actually be interested to know how it's regarded in the Chinese scene, given that it was probably a more accessible and well marketed tournament to them. So Maru is a world champion and the undisputed goat?
So Serral is a 2x GSL Champion and the undisputes goat?
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France12911 Posts
On July 27 2025 08:25 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On July 27 2025 08:19 Poopi wrote:On July 27 2025 06:36 Waxangel wrote:On July 26 2025 22:45 WardiTV wrote:
I think the official world championship for each year is always just the conclusion of the biggest circuit that took part that year (with regards to scope, prize pool etc.) This was pretty much always WCS/Blizzcon until EPT took over.
We have always considered Katowice a "world championship calibre" event, but I don't think we've ever called it THE world championship during the blizzcon years. Stuff like WESG etc usually gets discounted because of the spread of competition, only 3 Koreans taking part typically made the Korean qualifiers harder that the actual offline event. WESG is an interesting example of how subjective these things can be. The prize money for 2016/2017 was $400,000 total, which made it the second biggest tournament of all time behind BlizzCon (up to that point in time), and actually BIGGER than BlizzCons 2013-2015 before they increased the prize pool. In terms of buying legitimacy with money (something we should all be very familiar with right now), it's hard to beat that level of spending. But the tournament was on at a bad time zone for the West, promoted very poorly outside of China, had so-so production, and didn't hire the 'prestige' casters of the scene at the time. I genuinely believe if WESG had been played in the exact same format, but just been produced and casted like a BlizzCon or Kato, the Western scene would put it in the equivalent world championship-tier/supermajor-tier. I'd actually be interested to know how it's regarded in the Chinese scene, given that it was probably a more accessible and well marketed tournament to them. So Maru is a world champion and the undisputed goat? So Serral is a 2x GSL Champion and the undisputes goat?
Zerg goat for sure, probably goat overall arguably
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EPT
