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Okay, so, hear me out.
This is an idea that I've been bandying around with for a long, long time. Having heard Day9's call to "make e-sports happen" (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=182499) and having a large amount of free time to spend over the next few months, I thought "Hey, why not try and see what my time can do?".
One of the only issues I have ever had with the Starcraft scene is that being a beginner can feel very isolated. Unless you have a friend who plays the game, its difficult to find a practice partner of your level and its difficult to find any sort of "meaningful" competitive environment where you regularly play against names that you know and recognise. Beyond playing for the sheer joy of the game, this gives you no reason to continue playing aside from collecting achievements and advancing up an impersonal ladder.
My vision of an attempt to help this is a regular team-based league competition for beginners, beginners being defined as either bronze through gold or bronze through platinum. Given that I am from the EU, it would be based on the EU server. Users presently in the lower leagues would enter the competition and be assigned to a team of perhaps 10-15 players. Teams would be encouraged to play and practice together and there would be a number of weekly "social" competitions to try and encourage this. Each weekend, teams would face off against each other in a BW Proleague-style format. Thus, your week of SC2 gaming would be dedicated towards training for your "big match" on a Saturday or Sunday. Hopefully, we'll see some of our rough diamonds grow into beautiful diamond leaguers by the end of the season, and have a lot of fun in the process.
If the GSL is Premier League football, then this would be sunday league pub football.
Teams would probably be based on nationalities and given American-style silly sports team names (e.g. UK Monarchs, Sweden Vikings). This sorts out time differences, language divides and, hopefully, fosters some outside interest as viewers will be able to support their national team.
With a bit of hard work, probably from me, a highlights youtube video could be produced give the entire competition a sense of cohesiveness, as opposed to a bunch of random games being played each week. I could see the tournament also acting as an opportunity for those interested in trying out casting games to get a bit of experience, too.
So: Is this a format that appeals to anybody?
Do people feel there is a place in the Starcraft biosphere for a competition like this?
Is anybody reading this interested in competing?
Does anyone have any other suggestions, thoughts or comments whatsoever?
I'd be really, really enthusiastic to hear people's feedback.
If this is uneccessary and unwanted, I'm happy to drop it. If there's a good amount of people willing to give it a go, I think it would be a great deal of fun to give it a try.
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I would be very interested in something like this. As you've said it's very hard to find practice partners at the lower levels and this would give a great incentive for players to work together and practice. Playing in a competitive environment would also be a great experience as I've so far been unable to participate in any of the lower league tournaments that have been going every so often.
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I'm glad to see a fellow UK gamer who was also inspired by Day9's call to arms! I'm interested in getting involved and the first step is to gather people together so we have a team of people who will work to get things started and promote this.
I think your idea is good, but it will take a lot of work and time (which I'm sure you're aware of). I recommend starting small (maybe in the UK?) and then working your way up. I would love to see the UK community grow and organise itself, and I think the new chat channels will help with this.
I definitely relate to the feeling of being isolated. Only a few of my RL friends are gamers, but none play Starcraft. I met most of my gaming friends through WoW, and some of these play SC and will practise with me. However, they're mostly based in Holland and Sweden, so when they organise LAN parties I can't attend except for maybe once a year. I would love to see more LANs in the UK - just small gatherings of people getting together, playing some SC and maybe having our own mini-tournaments. When the community gets to know each other and communicates more, it'll become easier to find practice partners and organise bigger events.
In order to get this off the ground I think you'll need to promote your idea a lot and really encourage people to get involved. I've seen other SC players trying to get UK / EU tournaments off the ground. Maybe get in touch with them and see if they're interested in working together?
Finally, I think what you're suggesting isn't just a tournament, but a community. I would love to see it succeed and I'm happy to support it.
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Really good idea here tbh. I often feel that one of the things lacking in the sc2 community is something to introduce people to tournament play and giving them something to build further upon. I got quite a few gamer friends these days, and some of them even got sc2, but getting them to do anything other than play teamgames is kinda hard cause they all find 1v1 to be "boring". Stuff like this would really give newer players, and people mostly interested in teamgames, a chance to branch out in 1v1 and not have it just be this isolated experience where you work on your own.
I have seen some other ideas like this one thrown around, but it really didn't seem like any of them ever got of the ground. Organizing something like this will off course be rather difficult and it might be a good idea to just start small and have it more like the current sc2 team matches go. Both teams choose 4 players to play, and you play BO1s where the loosing player "dies" and the team with the loosing player chooses a new one. This wouldn't require as many players to get started, but would still provide all the players with practice partners and something to work towards. Having a team captain or something would probably also help alot with the organisation part.
Not quite sure if it's supposed to be an online or offline thing with the social gatherings, but if it's meant to be online i'd be interested in helping out with this as I got a school schedule this semester that's pretty chill, i get off at 12 every day almost <3, so yeah, get in touch here on TL or something if you're looking for some help. 
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If I was going to be in the UK I'd be all over this, unfortunately I won't be around at sociable hours for that to happen. But I love the Idea, Your right in your thought process comparing it to lower league sports. Not everyone can play at the highest level, but they still like to compete, and occasionally a Diamond in the rough is found through this system.
I'm all for growing E-Sports in any way possible. Good luck organising this. Excellent Idea. Hopefully others think so too.
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I'm in gold and I think it would be funny to play so matches from time to time . Good luck with your project !
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I would participate.
But it would be great to let all of the teams sign in, no matter the skill.
The biggest teams won't bother joining in anyways as their players have a busy schedule anyway.
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I'd be interested in helping to form a NA team.
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I think it's a really good idea.
I'm in silver and I'd love to participate.
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You had me at "sunday league pub football". I think this is a great idea, will take quite a bit of effort to get underway though, but great idea nonetheless. I think there are plenty of people that feel isolated and this could really help bring out the best in the community.
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Many thanks for your comments thus far. Seems like there's an appetite for this, I'll start planning carefully how I'm going to try and make it happen.
@Krikan. Should have clarified that I mean "online" "social" gatherings. Ideas would be something like an organised series of Day[9] Funday Monday team monobattles or a 2v2v2v2 BGH tournament. Something where you're forced to play in a team with your teammates, over skype or teamspeak, having fun. The idea is that it would be relatively quick, so you can fit in some practice games afterwards. Undoubtedly going to need huge amounts of help to pull this off to my satisfaction, so will be in touch.
@TheMariner, a NA team would be an interesting logistical challenge. With a smurf account or two, it could be made to work though.
@All, what do you feel should the skill cut off should be? Gold? Platinum? Is there an argument to trying to get a small number of diamond players involved in the team, essentially acting as coaches. For the games, I'm feeling there should be some sort of requirement to play weaker players, so that everyone gets a piece of pie each weekend.
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I would love to see an open team series / pro-league format EU league, even without the low level restrictions.
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I am diamond, so IDK if i would be able to play. But i kind of wanted to do something like this awhile ago. Would love to help but dont have EU Account  if it came to USA i would be glad to be Manager and coach, as Im in diamond so might be able to help. Also wouldnt mind trying to cast some stuff.
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i would love this mate , been looking for a team recently but with these leagues i wouldn't have to , you should setup a irc channel for this , would be great :D
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I'm Silver and got quite a busy schedule, but I'm willing to put some extra hours to help setting this up :}
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This sounds cool, count me in
I'm in plat/low diamond kinda level so even if i couldnt participate it would be a cool way to get people to practise with.
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I'm interested in this. After reading all these "I'm interested" replies you must now be thinking about laying the groundwork for such a thing no?
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I'd love to be involved with this too, great idea.
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I'd be up for this, sounds like a good idea!
Keep us updated.
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EPT
