I watched both American qualifiers (which was well-covered by the community and ESL). Day one saw Kane, Guitarcheese, Xenocider, and viOLet make it through (beating Phog, SaroVati, EliGE, and Catz). Guitarcheese and Xenocider had easy paths through the qualifier (the latter in particular); Kane and viOLet return to Challenger from last season.
Day two saw qxc, Nony, Suppy, and hendralisk make it through (beating NayA, Cowman, Koma, and Siphonn). Nony is the only surprise, as he hasn't participated in WCS since failing to make the first season qualifier last year. Suppy and qxc are returning to Challenger. None of the successful qualifiers had particularly difficult brackets.
A couple of players not mentioned above of interest: Sheth, who hadn't played a competitive game since December of 2012 (he took part in the day one qualifier and didn't win a game). Also interesting as a non-participant is hellokitty, who came just short of making challenger last season and was in Premier for season one last year.
The wildcard ladder qualifier turned into an all-Korean affair as JYP (who tried and failed to qualify for WCS America season one last year), Check (who returns from last season), and Pigbaby (could not crack Code A last season) made it through (Ryung, who failed to qualify for Code A last season, lost the final placement match to Check).
Fourteen Players failed to make Challenger from last season (those in italics did not participate in a qualifier this time around): Bails, Apocalypse (back in Korea), Cowman, Koma, Sage (inactive), SaroVati, Jig, Catz, Astrea, Drukenboi, Tassadar (back in Korea), PiG, EnDerr, and iAsonu. The surprise for me is Catz not making it through.
From the other region qualifiers we have: Jim and Courage (China, both returning), iaguz and KingKong (SEA, the latter returning), Slam and Ian (Taiwan, both returning).
In total there are 10 Zergs, 4 Protoss, and 3 Terrans entering Challenger (echoing predominance of Zerg from last season). Of the 17 qualifiers, 7 players are new to Challenger this year (41%), which is slightly less turnover than season one. The exact same number of Koreans made it through the qualifiers (5) as before, although as there are less players qualifying this season so there are proportionally more.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
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