WCS qualifiers start today in the SEA region and then tomorrow in Europe (you can see the full schedule here). I really enjoy the qualifiers and I'm looking forward to the upsets and storylines that get built through them. It will be interesting to see if Jaedong and StarDust romp through the NA scene as expected, or if they struggle through it ala Polt in season one (speaking of which, what poor arbiters those struggles were for both he and TLO). The impact of the swarmhost change will be felt--will Zergs stay away from the unit or find a new way to abuse it? Time will tell. For those unaware of how WCS operates now, all Premier players (except the winner) will have to play a BO5 against a qualifier, so there's no immunity for the top-16 as in the past. I like the change, as it presents more opportunities for players to get into the system and also ensures the best players of the moment are in Premier.
I've been watching a lot of LOTV (Artosis has posted a second blog with his thoughts about it; also, TL posted strategy ideas), and enjoyed it despite the balance problems (as predicted, Husky is back casting games of the beta). I'm not sure when Blizzard will start tweaking the game, but I find it much more fun to watch casually than HOTS in terms of player streams--there's always something going on in-game.
Drama is never too far away and a very salty Totalbiscuit let his rage at the GSL get the better of him on Twitter as he made an offhand comment slamming foreign players (you can see a more measured TB via The Late Game from earlier this week). MorroW made a brief response to it, but in general I think there's no point in delving into the specifics. It's clear that TB wasn't really thinking about what he said and there's no question he wants both SC2 and its foreign scene to succeed (his Clan Wars tournament is a lot of fun, btb). It's unfortunate for him that the WCS system changes have screwed things up so much for Axiom (the lineup isn't talented enough to make deep runs in Code S). I still believe the foreign scene needs an important tournament without Koreans to play for. Yes it's protectionist, but the scene needs to grow at this point and I'm not sure that's possible when foreigners have no chance to win meaningful tournaments. I wonder if something a bit smaller than WCS that worked like the EPS would do the trick.
Congrats to BaseTradetv on hitting 10 million views. They are the best community stream in the scene and deserve praise for all the work they do. As an aside, I have no idea why they are virtually the only people who use the Game Heart overlay (which is so much better than any other).
A bit off topic, but I think everyone in the community is a fan of number-cruncher Jakatak, but all I can think about when I see his "tea time" segments are Dodger's "coffeh time" ones. I don't know if it's an homage to her or if the concept is so simple there's an abundance of such shows.
This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)
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