StarCraft News & Notes

DreamHack Leipzig is in the books and was thoroughly enjoyable to watch.  Along with learning I've been pronouncing the city's name wrong my entire life there were a number of upsets, great game play, and a first time (foreign) champion in PtitDrogo.  Prior to the event there was an initial player list posted fthat was littered with errors (virtually all of which concerned NA players coming to the tourney).  A moot point perhaps, but odd.  Before getting into the numbers here are various upsets/surprises:
-Aussie Probe beat TLO 2-1 in the group stage to win that group--this forced The Little One to go through a very difficult part of the bracket, beating Scarlett (3-0) and Snute (3-2), before falling to the eventual champion PtitDrogo 3-2; the Aussie overcame Lillekainen 3-2 before losing to Bly 3-1
-Basior knocked out Lambo (2-1) in the group stage (he then lost 3-1 to eventual champion PtitDrogo)
-HuK beat MarineLord in the group stages (the French Terran would then get knocked out by ShowTimE); the Canadian followed that up by knocking out Beastyqt (3-1) before getting wrecked by Serral (3-0)
-Both Hydra and viOLet wound up on the weak side of the bracket and while the latter cruised through the semi-finals before getting demolished by Bly 3-0 (beating Welmu, Elazer and Serral), the former struggled--nearly losing to Namshar (he would have lost if it was a best-of-three) and then losing to Bly 3-2 after going up 2-0; the ROOT player's jitters reminded me of early 2015 when he lost to MorroW (back when the Swede was still a Terran), but that was simply a blip until he collapsed in the WCS final against Polt
-With Bunny unable to participate uThermal turned into the Terran hero as he punched his way through Tefel, Harstem, and ShoWTimE, before dropping a great series 3-2 to eventual champion PtitDrogo
-What a great story Bly was here--after pushing through some lesser lights he knocked out both Koreans to reach his first final since 2012 in the days of Wings of Liberty (something that should give older SC2 players some encouragement)
-As for PtitDrogo, his road wasn't much easier, facing match point against TLO, uThermal, and Neeb

What about balance?  From the R32 onward's, here's the breakdown (win-losses followed by map scores):
PvT 6-2 (19-15)
ZvP 6-3 (22-14)
TvZ 1-1 (5-3)

So what about viewership?  The numbers (via Fuzic) were good, with a 19k average day one, 30k day two, and 31k for the finale (holding the final until Sunday and playing it early in the morning European time didn't help).  Comparing it to recent events, it topped HomeStory Cup in December, came close to the ROCCAT DreamHack in November (comparing the two is difficult given how they were structured, but essentially Leipzig loses day one, wins day two, and loses on the third day--I think in the latter case when the event was played and the length of time for each makes the comparison difficult).  More to the point, the numbers are better than all the DreamHacks of 2015 (Stockholm, Valencia, Tours), and by a large margin save for Tours:
Leipzig (19k, 30k, 31k)
ROCCAT (23k, 23k, 36k)
Stockholm (13k, 22k)
Valencia (14k, 20k)
Tours (17k, 28k)
For those who prefer visuals:

These are better than solid numbers, as what little LOTV hype there was got channeled into the earlier ROCCAT tournament.  Leipzig built and then held its audience in a way no DreamHack event could in 2015 and I think the new WCS format played a role in that.  It's a complete success and we can only hope for more like it moving forward.

Apparently there are still people fretting about Korean pros who didn't make the GSL or SSL this season, with an underlying assumption that they are owed some sort of tournament activity irrespective of their results in Korea.  It's a perplexing attitude, particularly given that some of the
players cited have both a salary and comfortable past earnings to carry them through to the qualifiers later in the year (assuming they choose to ignore open events like the Ting Open, OlimoLeague, etc etc).  I'm not sure how those fretting can get beyond statements like this:

the top Koreans only want to focus on proleague and Korean leagues, so why should western tournaments focus on them?

Why indeed.  It's hard to understand the sentiment.  There's very much a "sky is falling" sense from those complaining, whose confused arguments are either wanting a return to the chaos of the original WCS system (Koreans everywhere) or a bizarre belief that somehow Blizzard is restricting what GSL and SSL do.  Anyone who believes that the Korean scene in Korea is somehow being strangled by Blizzard has entered into a conspiracy realm where nothing makes much sense.  I probably shouldn't waste time going over this, but with an incoming patch to end complaints about Protoss and parasitic bomb there's nothing else for the community to complain about--we need drama of some sort, apparently.

We'd been teased that a former pro was returning to the scene and it's now confirmed that VortiX has returned.  For those who are new or don't recall, VortiX retired at the end of 2014 to become a Heroes of the Storm pro player.  I'm not sure why the Spanish pro didn't participate in the the DreamHack qualifier (or, indeed, DreamHack at all) once he decided to return, but presumably he doesn't feel up to it yet.  It's good for the scene when popular players return.

I'm not sure if Catz has unofficially come out of retirement, but as he's decided to play in Copa America again the matter seems moot (and makes for a very short period of "retirement").

Sirlin talks about SC2 on his podcast (it's a long, rambling piece, containing some amusing shots at those opposed to the 12-worker start for LOTV (RIP Jakatak?) as well as at supporters of manual chronoboost and larva inject.  I'm not sure having a discussion where everyone has the same opinion is particularly valuable, but that's what you have.  I was amused at him citing Idra as an SC2 pro, incidentally.

Like a lot of people I've been mainlining Nathanias' stream lately and a week or so ago he was talking about avilo and stated what should be obvious (c.3:25 into the stream):

There are people who shit-talk Avilo all the time. But would you really watch his stream--if you showed up to his stream today and he was super quiet--didn't say anything really really outlandish or crazy and he was just chill, you know, he was just normal, chill David--would you watch his stream as much as you do now? ... If he was just some Terran player, okay, some mid-GM Terran with no results in tournaments and...like that's it?  I think I'd have a pretty hard time being a big fan of this guy.

That's precisely it.  Avilo isn't an idiot--he understands that he'll never be a pro, but he's developed a brand that works (a distinctive Terran style mixed in with a lot of raging and balance-whining).  Whether you like the guy or not (I find him entertaining when he's not whinging), he's established a brand that's completely attached to SC2, so in that sense he's fully committed to supporting the scene.

Before Throin got into a childish screaming match with Destiny on Twitter, he talked about the perception of coaches and experts who don't play the game and it's an interesting discussion.  In virtually every competitive field there are prejudices against those who haven't played the game and I think the complaints are far too broad--I agree with Thorin that the insight of a player tends to be very specific and very nuanced, but that does not grant them insight above and beyond that achievable by those who either never played or who never reached the highest level.

TotalBiscuit posted a video discussing five terms he thinks should be eliminated from gaming discussion: pay-to-win (he wants the definition changed), cinematic (the adjective; mostly he just complains about how it's used to disguise 30 FPS), overrated (this is something I think most people would agree on), Rogue-like (a term I've never heard so I have no real opinion on it), and beta (his main target being games that charge for the beta).  This all seems a little too deeply personal to be useful, but I do think cutting down on cliches is something those in the industry should do.  As an aside: as much as I enjoy TB he does say some remarkably silly things at times (such as this--you can't post something on social media and expect it not to circulate).

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

DreamHack Leipzig Qualifiers

The qualifiers DreamHack Leipzig are now complete and I have a few thoughts before we look at the results.  The most obvious issue was the random bracket, something mitigated when there was a losers bracket, but even so I think weighted seating would have been a better approach.  Otherwise the qualifiers were a lot of fun and I was happy to see a few surprise players make it through.  Onto the specifics (I addressed the non-NA/EU qualifiers in a previous post).

There were 164 participants in the EU qualifier (which I sadly missed), whose brackets were almost as silly as NA's (see below), but without a losers bracket to make up for it.  Unsurprisingly there were two zergs who qualified from the battle royal (both qualifier finals were also ZvZ's, which certainly fits my perception of where balance is at right now).  Surprise finalist Namshar took out Snute while Serral overcame the other surprise finalist HateMe.  Here's the significant players each finalist had to beat on their way:
HateMe: Majestic
Namshar: Sortof and Welmu
Snute: elazer and ShoWTimE
Serral: Dayshi and Bly

There were some interesting non-participants, such as Lilbow, MarineLorD, HeRoMaRinE, uThermal, TLO, and PtitDrogo.  Given how easy it is for many Europeans to simply travel to Leipzig, the absences aren't that big a deal.  There were some inactive (or not very active) players who also reappeared, such as TitaN and DarkHydra.

Here's where other top players fell: Bunny was knocked out by ShoWTimE in the R64; GunGFuBanDa in the R64 via Welmu; Nerchio in the R128 to elazer; and FireCake to Dayshi in R16.

I really enjoyed the NA qualifier, which featured virtually every player who wants to be taken seriously (63 participated; notables missing were Drunkenboi and Intense).  With Basetrade unable to broadcast due to technical issues and the event early enough for Europe to watch there were a wide range of coverage (the laconic Wardii has improved a little since I last saw him, but Nathanias was the casting highlight).  The seeding for the qualifier was ridiculous--how do State and Neeb meet in the R64?  How does JonSnow meet the winner of puCK/desRow in the R32?  Thank god for the losers bracket (the best two players wound up qualifying).  MaSa couldn't compete due to DreamHack admins (or, as Nathanias said in his cast, not talking to the admins a month ahead of time to get an exemption).

On the weak side of the bracket popular streamer MCanning made his way through players like EJK, RuFF, and KiFirE to the finals before losing consecutively to Scarlett and Neeb.  Speaking of the Canadian Zerg, players that tried to go into macro games with her (Semper, State, and HuK) got wrecked, although each of the aforementioned used virtually the same mid-game builds against her each time (marine/tank and zealot/archon--HuK was the only one to adapt within the series).  As for the other qualifier, Neeb, after getting sent to the losers bracket by State (who was knocked out by Scarlett on the winner's side and then puCK on the losers), took out Semper, JonSnow, HuK, and puCK to make it through.

Here are all the qualifiers by race:
Zerg: Scarlett (NA), iAsonu (China), Serral (EU), Namshar (EU)
Protoss: Neeb (NA), Nice (Tai/HK/Mac), Probe (SEA)
Terran: Kelazhur (LA)

[A note about iAsonu--he can't make it to the tournament due to a scheduling conflict, but it's as yet unknown if Clannad is available to replace him.]

In terms of the raw stats there were distinctive edges for Protoss over Terran (57%), and Zerg over Protoss (58%), both of which fit the balance complaints people have been making (unfortunately there were far fewer PvT's than the other matchups--132 vs 218 ZvP's and 212 ZvT's).  TvZ was almost even (a slight edge for Zerg).

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

StarCraft News & Notes

Activision, Blizzard's parent company, bought MLG saying:

"MLG’s ability to create premium content and its proven broadcast technology platform – including its live streaming capabilities – strengthens our strategic position in competitive gaming."

The article speculates:

The acquisition of MLG represents a desire to oversee all aspects of the eSports tournament process – much like Riot Games

Whether this will mean that SC2 events will be broadcast on the MLG platform remains to be seen, but it seems likely (if not, perhaps, exclusively).

Qualifiers for DreamHack Leipzig have begun and have witnessed some interesting results.  In SEA Probe won the spot over Seither; he had an incredible route to victory, losing his opening match to Wally and then overcoming players like PIG, Blysk, KingKong, and iaguz (essentially a who's-who of the SEA scene).  It's Probe's most significant result in the scene, although he did win ACL 2015 Melbourne back in September.  Seither, the other player in the final, I'm less familiar with as he's been active for less than a year competitively, but it's nice to see new blood in the SEA scene (he beat KingKong and iaguz on his way to the finals).  In Latin America there weren't any surprises as Kelazhur and MajOr fought for the qualifier, with the Brazilian winning when it mattered.  In Taiwan the relatively unknown Nice knocked off Sen to earn the spot (Has was knocked out early).  iAsonu won the Chinese qualifier over Clannad (who returns to SC2 after taking almost two years off); TooDming also fell to the eventual qualifier.

Nation Wars III is in the books and I, like most people, assumed it was going to finish with a Korean stomp in the final.  Instead, there was a shocking 5-0 by MarineLorD as he did something not seen since Stephano was riding Broodlord/Infestor bullshit back in WOL.  This result produced a great deal of buzz and viewership, but also some counterbuzz which prompted Nathanias to go on an epic rant about it right afterwards (around 2:15 of his stream):

All sorts of excuses for why the Koreans lost.  People just love shitting on foreigners first of all.  But MarineLorD had to play a match as well--they [he and INnoVation] both had to play semi-final matches.  MarineLorD also had to play six of seven games, whereas PartinG played two games, Hydra played literally one game... Innovation played two games was it?  So if you really think about it MarineLorD is the one who had a really really hard time.  He had to play five games in a row and win against players who were all fresh, you know what I mean?  I think that's an achievement, and trying to take that away from MarineLorD is just a bitch thing to do, because it wasn't easy for him to have that level of success.  For that reason alone I refuse to stand with the people that are trying to diminish MarineLorD's accomplishment.  Just because it's late in Korea doesn't mean that suddenly MarineLorD winning five-games in a row against players who have been able to watch him play.  Like, people want to diminish his result because people are trying to find excuses to hate on WCS this year.  People want excuses to hate on WCS, people want excuses to hate on Blizzard, people want excuses to say that foreigners don't deserve money that they shouldn't be able to play and that Koreans are the only people that are worth watching in StarCraft, and MarineLorD winning makes all those Korean circle-jerkers look so bad.  Like MarineLorD is such a god that all those Koreans--all those people that just sit there dick-riding Koreans endlessly about how great they are--"oh you know see look Koreans are the best at StarCraft--don't you see?"--but then MarineLorD wins and suddenly all of those people that just circle-jerk Koreans all the time, they're all scared now--"oh my god, he didn't even cheese our Korean overlords!  He beat Innovation in a macro game, he beat PartinG in a macro game--oh no Tasteless!"  That's where the anti-circle-jerk comes in.  All these people that want to believe that the Koreans are the literally gods, all these people that want to shit on WCS all year long basically get told to go fuck themselves, because MarineLorD just walks in, big swinging dick, and just wrecks them.  He played phenomenally well--MarineLorD played so well, and it is an embarrassing--it is embarrassing that there are people in this community that would immediately look to try and dismiss his accomplishment.  Honestly what kind of bully are you really?  Like you have nothing better to waste your time on then to try and talk down one of the best accomplishments a non-Korean has had in the last long-period of time?  How can you justify that?  Where do you get the right to suddenly shit-talk somebody for having a run like that?  Anyway I think it's frankly fucking embarrassing that there are people out there that are ready and willing to just shit on the accomplishments of such an awesome player like that, for no reason other than "well my favourite Korean player didn't win this tournament!"  That's a shit excuse--grow the fuck up. ... I absolutely hate the people that only want Koreans to play in tournaments [and what they] do to our community.  I for one hope we get more tournaments that require less Koreans to be able to play because I understand that the people that watch the streams aren't Korean and they want to see people like MarineLorD beat Koreans, so diminishing their accomplishments isn't going to do anything for you.  Just remember that all the sponsors who pay for all the shit you guys watch...those of you who really hate the idea of a foreigner being successful in StarCraft 2, I'd just like to remind you that all the sponsors who pay for all the content that you watch and bitch and whine about--obviously your Korean content is paid for my Korean companies--but those are all paid for by companies that expect to have an audience and viewership composed of aforementioned non-Koreans.  Those tournaments are not run...by people that "oh yeah I only want Koreans to play in this tournament that I'm going to sponsor"...can Koreans even buy your products?  "Oh no, no, we don't sell in Korea dude.  We're like an American company or we're a European company"--it's like, come on, get your head out of your ass.  If you only want to watch Koreans play don't watch tournaments like Nation Wars then. ... I've always been all about, and will continue to always be all about the non-Korean scene.  I believe our non-Korean players deserve respect for the time that they put in and I believe that they deserve an environment that caters to hard-working non-Korean players that want to be successful, that want to be pro-gamers, and that want to positively contribute to a scene in an active way, and I think that people who are opposed to that are the same people that are going to kill StarCraft if it ever dies.  People who only want to watch Koreans play should circle-jerk somewhere else.

This can all be summed up with this: 1) MarineLorD's achievement is worthy of praise, 2) the foreign scene can't thrive if it's asphyxiated by parachuting Korean players, 3) the loud minority that is only interested in Koreans tend to be toxic to the foreign scene.  I agree with all of that and it's been comically sad seeing the aforementioned fans bending over backwards to explain away the loss--accept it and move on--it doesn't diminish Koreans or the Korean scene.

The Late Game

Speaking of embarrassing performances, Wolf's confused, incoherent explanation for why the new WCS system was bad for Korea and Koreans on The Late Game was pretty sad to watch.  iNcontroL used the kid gloves in slapping him down, but if I'm Wolf and I'm that clueless I'd keep my comments short and more open-ended (talk about how it seems worse and then let people more informed provide you the information and context).

KeSPA published how much it pays pro-players (providing averages rather than specifics) and their 25 SC2 pros average just over 39k per year, which is more than the average household income in Korea (the average is 19.5k in disposable income).  I'd be interested to know how that's split between the players, but it does provide some perspective.  There was a response on Reddit that encapsulates my thoughts quite well:

Well, first thing's first, that's a terrible sample. Next, we can see that they are paid a lot more than foreingers [foreigners] in terms of base salary alone, and a fuckload more if you consider that they have no living expenses at all. The "foreigners getting rich off WCS" narative [narrative] needs to stop, none of the players who aren't paid ever really made money from foreign tournaments. Only EG players ever got paid more than this average. It's not as good as it should (or could) be, but we do need to remember that they get bed, board and travel to events paid for no matter what level they play at in KeSPA. The cases where they aren't should be thoroughly investigated and the people operating the teams need to be forced out of the sport (cough SlayerS cough). There needs to be a base mininmum [minimum] salary for KeSPA players, but I don't have a clue how to say what that is, they are all arguably paid a living wage already.

LADDER

There was some support for my belief that practice in Korea is not necessary for foreigners to improve, as Scarlett Tweeted about it:

foreigners dont need to play in korea to be able to compete with them. try thinking about how you play the game instead

GSL Code A

Speaking of Korea, the initial list of Code A participants included all the Koreans who played outside of Korea in 2015, but when the matches occurred only Jaedong participated.  I'm not sure if the NA Koreans signed up as a joke or if the person listing the participants had bad information.

Thorin posted an interesting video discussing how the term "Bonjwa" was ruined for SC2 by the narrowing of the definition to the point that essentially no player qualifies.  He then goes ahead and offers his own definition to rescue the term for use and applies it these SC2 players: MVP, Life, Taeja, MMA, and NesTea.  I don't really care about crowning players as Bonjwa or anything else, but it is excellent marketing so I'm interested to see if the term will get used on an active player.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)