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)