Ask TL Staff Anything - Page 167

On July 07 2012 06:07 Xxio wrote:
Nestea, MVP, MC and MKP are all great players. For the first three, their old achievements don't mean as much as the championships today because of the low skill level of the players at the time. Similarly, I think that we will look back on the tournaments of 2011-2012 in one or two years time and go "wow, people really weren't very good back then". But more than that, nothing about them stuck with me, I suppose. Same goes for Stork and other, older BW pros.

I think that there is still a vast amount of untapped potential in StarCraft 2, strategically and mechanically. Hopefully this trend of (mostly foreign) players running from one weekend tournament to the next will be replaced by something more sedentary. Players need to live in proper team houses and play in tournaments that don't start and finish over the course of three days if they want to improve their skill and invent exciting, new styles that push StarCraft 2 to its limit. Practicing on ladder is not good enough, and the huge difference between the tournament structures of MLG and GSL is always overlooked.

A major reason why StarCraft tournaments like the OSL are so exciting is because the players have time to practice and create strategies specifically for one or two opponents, and play their games in peak condition. Right now, tournaments like MLG are just a grind. Many of the top players were probably at a different tournament a week or two before and they will use the same strategies and tactics that they always have until someone's ingenuity or a patch forces them to innovate. The winner is determined by a different (and less interesting and laudable, imo) set of skills and circumstances than those of the winner of a GSL or OSL.

You can equate it to the difference between a huge war in medieval times where the warriors just go from castle to castle and fight in huge free-for-all brawls, and a samurai duel in feudal Japan. Another example is in professional Go, where there are amateur tournaments with time limits on games and the players have multiple games in a day. But at the highest levels, the best players have long drawn-out games with months of preparation. Personally, I think that the MLG format is great for amateurs and the GSL format is unquestionably the ideal for the top players.

Coach Park (SKT1 coach) said that one of the biggest factors in why KeSPA players will come to dominate the SC2 scene is that they are working in structured and time-tested team house environments, and I believe him.

On July 09 2012 15:09 Aerisky wrote:
Nice, nice salle :D

What does JWD stand for, if anything?

On July 11 2012 11:57 JWD wrote:

JWD are my initials. I got mad creative.

in spoken word "JWD" is a bit of a mouthful, and it's just a reference to my actual name, so I'm kind of surprised that people I know through TL (HB especially, haha) will almost always use it to refer to me. "Joe" seems simpler! (then again...I find myself referring to HB as "HB" or "Hot_Bid" instead of his monosyllabic name. maybe this is always natural, for people who met under aliases.)

I think R1CH got it right. no tough choices there.

On July 11 2012 11:57 JWD wrote:

JWD are my initials. I got mad creative.

in spoken word "JWD" is a bit of a mouthful, and it's just a reference to my actual name, so I'm kind of surprised that people I know through TL (HB especially, haha) will almost always use it to refer to me. "Joe" seems simpler! (then again...I find myself referring to HB as "HB" or "Hot_Bid" instead of his monosyllabic name. maybe this is always natural, for people who met under aliases.)

I think R1CH got it right. no tough choices there.

On July 11 2012 12:12 Kiett wrote:

I dunno. Are-One-Tch is much more of a mouthful than "Rich." I wish I had gotten to know him as Rich, so I wouldn't have to bother trying to pronounce his complicated screenname.