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Hello,
Me and my friend were recently trying to get a mutual friend into Starcraft 2. He said it seemed to difficult and he had no prior experience with it and that he never had played BW. We then started to discuss his previous gaming experience, and he stated that he played Warcraft 3 quite a lot.
So while Warcraft 3 is not identical to Starcraft 2, it still seems like the transition is not that difficult, seeing as we started to discuss how the Warcraft 3 pros were doing in Starcraft 2.
This lead to a long and interesting discussion, which brought up quite a few questions I'd like to bring up here aswell.
First of all, let us look at the current foreign SC2 pros, or more so the most succesful ones. Have you guys ever noticed that most of them are actually former WC3 players?
I mean Stephano was long regarded as the best foreigner and still is by many. Some of the best Swedish players are mostly former WC3 players aswell. (Naniwa, Thorzain, SjoW, Sase)
Actually I will just list some names now:
Lucifron
Vortix
Demuslim
Targa
Bly
Kas
ToD
NightEnd
Grubby
Harstem
HasuObs
Socke
Happy
Elfi
MacSed
While obviously not all the listed are the top players right now, I still think it shows that in general the WC3 players seem to be the most succesful foreigners.
But if we go to the Korean scene, this does not seem to be the case.
When Moon switched to SC2 he was hyped so much for being the best and most succesful WC3 player, but unfortunately he never really made a name of himself in SC2. He had a good IEM run and that is about it.
I think the only noteable Korean ex-WC3 players are violet and polt.
So to sum it all up: How come the most succesful foreigners seem to be former WC3 players, while the former WC3 Korean players seem to have failed?
Also it is odd that while the foreign BW players (Nerchio, Socke and so on) are definitely doing good, and especially in the beginning of SC2 the foreign BW players were obviously doing best, it seems that the WC3 players are just way more dominant on the foreign scene.
I mean this could probably just be explained by WC3 players catching up, but I still find it strange how big difference there is between the successrate between the Korean WC3 players and the foreign wc3 players in general. And considering so many former foreign WC3 players seem to be doing very good in SC2, I can't help but think they have a different mindset.
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Not 100% sure on this, but I would say its mostly a matter of scenes.
WC3 wasn't huge in Korea, although it was big in china, and had more of a foreigner scene.
BW was the opposite, HUGE in Korea, very lackluster foreigner scene.
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SC:BW was mostly about macro and multitask, while WC3 was about strategy and decisionmaking. So SC2 is alot closer to WC3, its just another setting.
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United States8476 Posts
It's fairly simple. The WC3 scene was much more established in Europe compared to the BW scene in Europe. Conversely, the BW scene in Korea was much more established than the WC3 scene in Korea.
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You can actually see that the most successful foreign progamer are old WC3 player.
Very few of the BW days are still relevant.
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There was almost no pro BW scene outside Korea, but there was a good deal of WC3. So if you're looking for the best foreigners, of course you'll get mostly WC3 players. In Korea there was very little WC3, but tons of BW, so if you look at the best players there you get tons of BW players. If you look at overal best, of course Korea will come out on top because they have a history of much more serious progaming in general, established teams and pro houses and so forth.
In order to know which game was actually better preparation, you'd need two sets of people who were playing both games, but were similiarly professionalized with equally big tournaments and so forth, and then have them switch at the same time. Both games are good preparation for SC2. I think that BW is better, but there's just not the data to really be sure.
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On June 19 2013 04:21 StarMoon wrote:
Not 100% sure on this, but I would say its mostly a matter of scenes.
WC3 wasn't huge in Korea, although it was big in china, and had more of a foreigner scene.
BW was the opposite, HUGE in Korea, very lackluster foreigner scene.
Pretty much this. It should also be said that since BW was huge in Korea so the Kespa teams already have excellent practice regimes established and a very high skill pool to practice against. Where as the Korean WC3 teams probably didn't have practice regimes/training even close to comparable to the kespa teams. As far as EU WC3 players doing well it could be a matter of just more time/practice being put into the game. Aside from Strelok/White-ra I don't remember very many EU BW pros but then again I mostly just followed the korean scene.
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^ MaNa
Also titan (NE from mouz) could be added to that former wc3 players list.
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United States8476 Posts
A bit of history: The obvious reason WC3 isn't as popular in Korea is that BW was around when esports came to Korea. Similarly, WC3 is way more popular in China than BW because WC3 was the game when esports was coming to China.
However, what most people don't know is that Korea tried out WC3. Unfortunately, there was a big scandal that tainted WC3 forever in Korea, second only to Savior's match-fixing scandal. Back in the day, Moon and other Night Elves were winning every Korean WC3. Because this was the case, one guy at MBC thought that it would be more interesting if players of other races won a tournament. So he basically rigged all the maps so that Orc would get slight buffs and Night Elf would get slight nerfs. These changes were virtually undetectable:
The reason why the effects were not apparent to the players, was that they were made to things such as hit point regeneration, rotation speed of units, production speed, cooldown and range of magic. All the Night Elf units were nerfed down.
An example of such changes is that the Orc units' hit point regeneration rate was upped from 0,25 to 0,45 while the Night Elf hit point regeneration was lowered to 0,40 from 0,50 (the Night Elves only regenerate during night time). Another example is that the build time of the Great Hall was reduced to 138 from 150 seconds, while the Tree of Life build time was upped to 115 from 110 seconds.
Funnily enough, Moon met an Orc in the finals and still won the tournament. Soon after though, these changes were discovered by Dayfly and the scandal broke, tainting WC3 forever in the minds of Koreans. Soon after, the leagues gradually began dying out until no major leagues ran at all after WEG3.
Link to an article about the scandal
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On June 19 2013 04:34 Lukeeze[zR] wrote:
^ MaNa
Also titan (NE from mouz) could be added to that former wc3 players list.
Yeah TitaN was beast  And XlorD was wc3 player too. Naama also, etc.
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I'd like to add that I wish both games still had big scenes, as I enjoy watching them as much as sc2. At least when the WC3 metagame isn't super lame.
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+ Show Spoiler +On June 19 2013 04:17 eurTsItniH wrote:
Hello,
Me and my friend were recently trying to get a mutual friend into Starcraft 2. He said it seemed to difficult and he had no prior experience with it and that he never had played BW. We then started to discuss his previous gaming experience, and he stated that he played Warcraft 3 quite a lot.
So while Warcraft 3 is not identical to Starcraft 2, it still seems like the transition is not that difficult, seeing as we started to discuss how the Warcraft 3 pros were doing in Starcraft 2.
This lead to a long and interesting discussion, which brought up quite a few questions I'd like to bring up here aswell.
First of all, let us look at the current foreign SC2 pros, or more so the most succesful ones. Have you guys ever noticed that most of them are actually former WC3 players?
I mean Stephano was long regarded as the best foreigner and still is by many. Some of the best Swedish players are mostly former WC3 players aswell. (Naniwa, Thorzain, SjoW, Sase)
Actually I will just list some names now:
Lucifron
Vortix
Demuslim
Targa
Bly
Kas
ToD
NightEnd
Grubby
Harstem
HasuObs
Socke
Happy
Elfi
MacSed
While obviously not all the listed are the top players right now, I still think it shows that in general the WC3 players seem to be the most succesful foreigners.
But if we go to the Korean scene, this does not seem to be the case.
When Moon switched to SC2 he was hyped so much for being the best and most succesful WC3 player, but unfortunately he never really made a name of himself in SC2. He had a good IEM run and that is about it.
I think the only noteable Korean ex-WC3 players are violet and polt.
So to sum it all up: How come the most succesful foreigners seem to be former WC3 players, while the former WC3 Korean players seem to have failed?
Also it is odd that while the foreign BW players (Nerchio, Socke and so on) are definitely doing good, and especially in the beginning of SC2 the foreign BW players were obviously doing best, it seems that the WC3 players are just way more dominant on the foreign scene.
I mean this could probably just be explained by WC3 players catching up, but I still find it strange how big difference there is between the successrate between the Korean WC3 players and the foreign wc3 players in general. And considering so many former foreign WC3 players seem to be doing very good in SC2, I can't help but think they have a different mindset.
The main problem is, that people constantly forget, that there are a huge variety of factors other then the differences between WC3 and BW.
Additional factors which come to mind include amount of training (europeans back then trained even less than today), general acceptance and size of E-sport in general (WC3 was the newer game so more europeans played it, hence talented player where less likely to play BW. In korea BW was the game Period) and game switches (as said before, WC3 was new, so many people actually switched from BW to WC3 due to lack of succes and/or extrinsic incentive.
The variety of things that have changes is too big to give a definite answer. I, personally, think that BW players did better in general. That being said, this applies to the switch from one game to another, the progamers you named have been playing sc2 for years now. Transition is no longer an issue, rather factors refering to training and aquisition of tactical diversity.
That being said I think that we are way way way beyond the transition phase and SC2 has been around long enough for it to pretty much nullify the previously aquired abilities.
Therefore think, that at least on a pro level, this topic is not relevant anymore.
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You forgot Stephano as well!
Edit: Er Nevermind he's right there.
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On June 19 2013 04:39 monk wrote:A bit of history: The obvious reason WC3 isn't as popular in Korea is that BW was around when esports came to Korea. Similarly, WC3 is way more popular in China than BW because WC3 was the game when esports was coming to China. However, what most people don't know is that Korea tried out WC3. Unfortunately, there was a big scandal that tainted WC3 forever in Korea, second only to Savior's match-fixing scandal. Back in the day, Moon and other Night Elves were winning every Korean WC3. Because this was the case, one guy at MBC thought that it would be more interesting if players of other races won a tournament. So he basically rigged all the maps so that Orc would get slight buffs and Night Elf would get slight nerfs. These changes were virtually undetectable: Show nested quote +The reason why the effects were not apparent to the players, was that they were made to things such as hit point regeneration, rotation speed of units, production speed, cooldown and range of magic. All the Night Elf units were nerfed down.
An example of such changes is that the Orc units' hit point regeneration rate was upped from 0,25 to 0,45 while the Night Elf hit point regeneration was lowered to 0,40 from 0,50 (the Night Elves only regenerate during night time). Another example is that the build time of the Great Hall was reduced to 138 from 150 seconds, while the Tree of Life build time was upped to 115 from 110 seconds. Funnily enough, Moon met an Orc in the finals and still won the tournament. Soon after though, these changes were discovered by Dayfly and the scandal broke, tainting WC3 forever in the minds of Koreans. Soon after, the leagues gradually began dying out until no major leagues ran at all after WEG3. Link to an article about the scandal
Dayfly and Moon found out about those modification before the final... Moon vs Romeo was played on normal maps! Damn, I was so happy when Romeo reached the final after beating Freedom with some crazy strategy like TC first or SH first, only to be more dissapointed after hearing about this scandal.
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Nearly every former top korean wc3 player dislike sc2 (Lyn, Moon (both are back to wc3), Check retired 6months after sc2 release) or went to military short before sc2 release (FoV, Susiria). Other haven't entered sc2 (Lucifer, Remind and Focus dont like sc2 and they never entered sc2 officially).
What about Soccer?
Very very similiar to the chinese wc3 pros (TeD, Th000, Sky). Apparently HotS change the mind of some top chinese player to switch from wc3 to sc2 (Infi).
For me: they have hard time to leave wc3.
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I remember the wol beta days when everybody was qqing about sc2 being "wc3 with starcraft skins".
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don't forget about xlord, BoO, Lucifer, and Moon
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On June 19 2013 04:24 Noocta wrote:
You can actually see that the most successful foreign progamer are old WC3 player.
Very few of the BW days are still relevant.
I don't know, MaNa, Nerchio, IdrA and DIMAGA are/were top foreigners. There are probably fewer BW players among the top 20 foreigners (because of the BW/WC3 scenes out of Korea) but their presence is still solid.
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On June 19 2013 04:39 monk wrote:A bit of history: The obvious reason WC3 isn't as popular in Korea is that BW was around when esports came to Korea. Similarly, WC3 is way more popular in China than BW because WC3 was the game when esports was coming to China. However, what most people don't know is that Korea tried out WC3. Unfortunately, there was a big scandal that tainted WC3 forever in Korea, second only to Savior's match-fixing scandal. Back in the day, Moon and other Night Elves were winning every Korean WC3. Because this was the case, one guy at MBC thought that it would be more interesting if players of other races won a tournament. So he basically rigged all the maps so that Orc would get slight buffs and Night Elf would get slight nerfs. These changes were virtually undetectable: Show nested quote +The reason why the effects were not apparent to the players, was that they were made to things such as hit point regeneration, rotation speed of units, production speed, cooldown and range of magic. All the Night Elf units were nerfed down.
An example of such changes is that the Orc units' hit point regeneration rate was upped from 0,25 to 0,45 while the Night Elf hit point regeneration was lowered to 0,40 from 0,50 (the Night Elves only regenerate during night time). Another example is that the build time of the Great Hall was reduced to 138 from 150 seconds, while the Tree of Life build time was upped to 115 from 110 seconds. Funnily enough, Moon met an Orc in the finals and still won the tournament. Soon after though, these changes were discovered by Dayfly and the scandal broke, tainting WC3 forever in the minds of Koreans. Soon after, the leagues gradually began dying out until no major leagues ran at all after WEG3. Link to an article about the scandal
Was WC3 successful relative the bw at the time? Or was it like Halo is to us
Edit: I like reading bits of history about bw and wc3. If you have anything more that you think might be interesting.. don't hesitate
I played the fuck out of those games but had no idea of a pro scene until early 2011
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On June 19 2013 04:56 Boucot wrote:Show nested quote +On June 19 2013 04:24 Noocta wrote:
You can actually see that the most successful foreign progamer are old WC3 player.
Very few of the BW days are still relevant. I don't know, MaNa, Nerchio, IdrA and DIMAGA are/were top foreigners. There are probably fewer BW players among the top 20 foreigners (because of the BW/WC3 scenes out of Korea) but their presence is still solid.
If you actively participated in the BW scene? Yup, it was pretty substantial in terms of competitiveness/pool of players. You really had to know where to look though and all of us were pretty scattered. Several leagues & ladders and it was more hobby than anything else because there was practically no money in our scene at all. It was about the love & passion for the game and to get better. Nothing to write off, but yeah WC3 was definitely a lot bigger and had more money involved globally as a kick starter. It really doesn't matter what background you have in RTS as long as you played a half decent one.
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EPT
