News & Notes (April 2nd)

New ladder maps are coming in for WCS season two, as Polar Night, Daedalus Point, Heavy Rain, and Yeonsu are removed (of the four I thought Heavy Rain and Polar Night produced the best games in season one).  The new maps are quite varied (three are already in circulation in Korea), with Merry Go Round and Waystation being the most unique--I'm not sure that the latter will ever be played in tournaments given that it has islands.

WCS Korea's final is set with Zest facing soO, making Aligulac and my predictions 1-1 for the semi-finals.  Neither player has much cachet, but it's not a mirror matchup so hopefully it will be an exciting series.

 

There was a great Shoutcraft Clan Wars game played between Catz and Nxz that's worth checking out (here)--it includes lava and nydus play--what more do you need?

 

The numbers for the top streamers from March are out and the WCS stuff is worth looking into.  Rounding off the numbers:

Europe R32 (avg 28k)

F 32,000

G 28,000
H 26,000

Europe R16 (avg 25k)

A 24,000

B 29,000

C 24,000

D 23,000

America R32 (avg 14k)

E 15,000

F 15,000

G 13,000

H 12,000

The dip in NA numbers are surely due to the abrupt death of NASL, while I think the R16 numbers in Europe are down because of ESL's decision (influenced no doubt by taking on NA) to cram the entire round into four consecutive days.  There's no time to build up hype or a day off to reflect on prior matches--which I think helps something as drawn out as WCS.  Of course, that's just a theory.  The fact that a lot of fan favourites have fallen out can't help either, but there's always room for new players to take their place so perhaps we'll see that going forward.

 

A couple of "if you missed it" from previous News & Notes:

-Jinro talking about the state of SC2 (among some other things)

-Totalbiscuit talking about the state of SC2

 

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)