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Greg “IdrA” Fields gives his opinion on how both events were organized this past weekend.
Short Excerpt -
"This past weekend MLG and the American finals for the WCS were both hosted at the same venue at the same time in Anaheim. I have never played multiple live tournaments over the course of one weekend like this, but I assumed going into the event that MLG and Blizzard were well aware of the potential scheduling difficulties and would be prepared to deal with them. Blizzard advertised the opportunity to also participate in the MLG open bracket as encouragement for players to qualify for and attend the WCS finals. Players were in no way discouraged from playing both or told that playing both would lead to an unreasonable schedule or tournament conditions. As it turned out they were in no way prepared to handle the situation and it led to a terrible, nearly unplayable event for many of the players who participated in both tournaments." Greg "IdrA" Fields
Read the rest HERE.
Greg “IdrA” Fields commented in this thread about the choice to play both WCS and MLG:
"mlg and wcs arent really a choice. ones a massive international tournament run by blizzard that comes with the title "american champion" and the other is one of the major events of the premier non korean league.
its like hosting wimbeldon and the french open on the same weekend and telling players to choose which to play. except here theyre hosted in the same location, which makes it seem like you can play both. the intent of this article is to show why you cant, and that it is just as unreasonable as holding 2 unmissable tournaments at the same time in seperate locations."
My (fams) personal comments to those that arguing players could have chosen to play one tournament or the other:
+ Show Spoiler +
1. EG is a professional team. These players make a living by making appearances in the biggest tournaments. MLG is one of the most important Starcraft 2 events - especially this event with all of the media attention and promotion. It would be a bad idea to skip the MLG event in this regard.
I understand Nony did skip MLG for WCS, and he is also a high profile player on a professional team. However, I would argue that Nony himself also explained that he had little to no practice before the event (for one month). He also reasoned in his interview with HoT_Bid that it was obvious going into the weekend event that WCS and MLG would be an extremely hectic ordeal. Him choosing to focus all of his energies on WCS instead of MLG was the right move.
2. There shouldn't have been a choice in the first place. I do understand that as far as costs and logistics were concerned, hosting the tournaments in tandem was ideal for Activision/Blizzard and MLG.
That said, I do think each tournament should have separate days for two reasons:
1. The players. The players need rest, they need to be at the top of their game in order to not only perform for themselves and their teams, but for the fans as well. Watching a burnt out IdrA is not the same as watching a rested IdrA. The same goes for any other player or athlete.
2. The amount of content available. If WCS was focused on more as its own tournament (which it should have been considering the prize pool offered) we would have had even more high level content to enjoy. For instance, if they had rented out the Anaheim convention centre for two additional days - either before or after the MLG-KeSPA tournaments, players would have had a much easier time.
As a result, we would have been able to enjoy more matches, better matches, more interviews and exhibitions. This would also have given a higher level of exposure to North American stars and up-and-comers, which I personally feel is a high priority right now.
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First, and this is very interesting
User was warned for this post
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true i did notice players games that i was able to see via the streams that players who were playing back to back matches in both tournaments seemed to be getting burnt out at a much faster pace then players just playing in MLG
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I was at MLG in person and saw how drained IdrA looked when he was playing vs daisuki... this does need to be fixed.
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United Kingdom20343 Posts
Glad to see pros speaking out like this
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Yeah this is dumb. Blizzard of all people should know
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On June 13 2012 11:46 imEnex wrote:
First, and this is very interesting
what the fuck is this "first" shit o___o
I love this, I love blogs. I hope EG brings more. I remember the Grubby/Cassandra blogs and they were, personally, very awesome to read.
I wish they had a chronicler writing all the adventures EG have on a daily basis.
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Normally I'd be inclined to say something like "IdrA, quit complaining, etc." but it was pretty painful watching some of the later MLG games who had just finished WCS games, and Sheth's blog also commented a lot on the difficulty of playing dual tourneys at once, and not knowing when the next match would be played, or who was the opponent.
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It's unfortunate that it didn't work out in favor of everyone. There are definitely +'s to this double tournament system, however what Idra is talking about (player quality? fatigue something or other) should definitely take priority over those forementioned +'s.
I believe MLG will realize this and change it but like Idra said they probably won't be able to alter their schedule by Summer Championships/MLG Raleigh.
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Glad idra has the balls to speak up
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On June 13 2012 11:46 imEnex wrote:
First, and this is very interesting
i believe TL ban for something like this so be careful with the 'first' stuff.
yea it does seem unreasonable to play until 2:30 am then play again at noon the next day. i think a lot of players will skip out on mlg open just to play the WCS at MLG raleigh
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My thoughts exactly. People were telling me that Daisuke and Vibe deserved to be in the finals because they made it and Sheth, Idra, etc got knocked out. But Daisuke and Vibe were too bad to get any meaningful MLG time, so they had the advantage of playing half the games as these guys.
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A part of me agrees with what he says but it's not like Blizzard or MLG are putting a gun to your head forcing you to play both tournaments at the same time. You made a CHOICE to play both tournaments. You even say yourself you heard the horror stories of having to play late into the next morning and you STILL decided to play in both. What do you expect?
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T.O.P.
Hong Kong4685 Posts
They should have just played the WCS matches on saturday + sunday
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On June 13 2012 11:51 Whatson wrote:
Normally I'd be inclined to say something like "IdrA, quit complaining, etc." but it was pretty painful watching some of the later MLG games who had just finished WCS games, and Sheth's blog also commented a lot on the difficulty of playing dual tourneys at once, and not knowing when the next match would be played, or who was the opponent.
I don't really see how it wasn't obvious that it would be hard to play both, especially when people like Nony skipped MLG to concentrate on the Blizzard tourney. Also we have players like Sase that had to play an enormous amount of games, so I can't say I feel sorry for them.
On June 13 2012 11:51 Torte de Lini wrote:what the fuck is this "first" shit o___o
Will probably get edited out.
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Wow, that does look very very bad. His point about the psychological effects of losing a tournament going into a match and losing another as a result is definitely well taken.
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Jesus sounds awful and I read the blog sheth made to. Playing 12 hours straight then getting 5 hours of sleep and playing another 12 hours sounds terrible. Feel bad for the pros who play both tournaments xD.
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I have yet to see any pro (or caster even) say it was a good idea, and plenty who said it sucked. Chances are it won't be any different next MLG championship though.
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Seems like a fair criticism. But on the state of the game right before this tournament Idra was excited about the qualifiers because he thought the quality of opponents was crap while the reward for winning the tournament was quite rich. Seems like he either severely underestimated how tired he would be or simply chose to try to win as much money as possible in the same weekend and ended up under performing in the easiest tournament while more or less performing as expected as the MLG.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/Ge7L7.jpg)
