The Swarm Host change that has been needed since Beta is on its way. It's incredible that Blizzard has managed to drag its heels nerfing a broken Zerg unit in each of its SC2 releases (the infestor in WOL, the swarm host in HOTS). It's apparent that until something heavily impacts the Korean scene, there's little to no interest in tackling major balance problems. Will LOTV be different? We can hope.
TotalBiscuit is bringing SC2 back to MLG tv. This will be Clan Wars, which he ran last year. I wish TB would also play SC2 again, but given how stressful he finds it, I'm not surprised he's avoided it while battling cancer.
Around the same time came word/rumour that many of the old school SC2 personalities are poised to return to the game once Legacy of the Void hits. The shit hit the fan when Destiny talked about it on The Late Game, which made its way to Reddit. You can listen to Destiny's own words via the link, but in essence he was upset that some of the personalities would reappear for a cash grab without having done anything to prevent the game from sliding in the interim (there's a hilarious mock article taking this argument to its logical extreme). I couldn't say what said personalities did or didn't do in WOL (I came in at the end of it), but on the whole I don't really care if peripheral people return so long as it doesn't come at the expense of those who have soldiered on. Of the personalities Husky deserves the least amount of criticism, as his absence was largely due to personal issues he discussed last November. I've always been puzzled by Day9's silence on why he was no longer producing regular SC2 content (something he stopped last May); I would have understood if he'd said it simply wasn't cost-effective or if his interests had moved on, but I'll be happy to have him back in LOTV (I think he's good for the game and community).
On the heels of this storm the scene exploded as proof of Winter's viewbotting came to light. I don't think anyone was surprised by it, although the fallout is more than I expected (being delisted from Team Liquid and then losing his Nvidia sponsorship). There are strong feelings on the fallout itself, with some members of the community seeing it as an unnecessary witchhunt, while others think it's completely justified. It does make him talking about how he achieved his success hilarious in retrospect. Will Winter soldier on? I think it depends on if his subscriber base sticks with him, but it's certainly going to limit his career in SC2 in the short term. If he vanishes from the scene it will be interesting to see if his subscribers migrate to other streamers or not, but I would hope so.
I'm curious to see what will happen to the casting community once LOTV comes out. There's been a huge overhaul on that score since HOTS came out. Former MLG caster Axslav seems to be completely out of the scene (ala IPL casters Kevin Knocke and Kibbelz), but Axeltoss re-emerged at the Lone Star Clash about a year ago and may seek to reinsert himself. Both Frodan and Gretorp (NASL alumni) have returned in some fashion--Frodan back from the collapse of ESGN and Hearthstone coaching, while Gretorp returns from poker. I'm not sure if Khaldor is permanently attaching himself to the Heroes of the Storm scene, but it looks like Mr Bitter (NASL) is remaining off-camera in his work with Red Bull. Of the names above, Bitter is the only one I'd like to see back. Day9, despite the lack of content on his channel, still casts Redbull and BlizzConn, so has never been completely absent. How much will these folks impact community people like Rifkin and ZombieGrub (BaseTradetv) remains to be seen.
It was a little weird seeing Paul Chaloner hosting IEM just after announcing his move from ESL to Gfinity. IEM Katowice was a great tournament, even if we were stuck with a mirror match-up in the finals (which wasn't too bad as far as PvP goes). The best series were in the R16 and R8, but that's not much of a surprise since players in the R4 and final have had time to see what strategies their opponents are going to use. You can watch the replays here.
Finally, both Lycan and desRow have been running weekly cups recently and, assuming the former wants to keep paying for them, I think his is the most likely to last. As much as I like desRow, he's not a caster and unless he wants to improve on that he's a drag on viewing his event.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
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