StarCraft News & Notes

It has been a busy busy time in SC2 land, so let's get to it.

I love the ladder element of WCS--it's not perfect by any means, but I like the idea of ladder heroes getting to make their run against the pros and everyone knowing who they are playing against (a few streamed their efforts, which was nice).  This time we had a lot more drama as MarineLorD, DnS, and MajOr were all disqualified (here and here) for suspected win-trading.  The evidence for the former two is apparently pretty solid, while the latter has been protested quite a bit from Juan (you can read his response and Destiny's rebuttal here).  The win-trading, if true, is pretty stupid, but it's the tip of the iceberg of the kinds of things that can happen (eg teammates snipping those close to qualifying, or those already safe snipping potential opponents); I'm not sure that there's a foolproof way to prevent such shenanigans from happening.  I don't think these instances should sour people on the process, but obviously there's room for improvement.  As for the results, here's EU with where they finished the last time in brackets (if they were top-25):

EU
1. Nerchio (1)
2. VortiX
3. Snute (12)
4. MarineLorD (13)*
5. ShoWTimE (3)
6. uThermal (23)
7. Elazer (9)
8. Happy (2)
9. DnS*
10. Bunny
11. souL (19)
12. Lilbow (4)
13. Dayshi (10)
14. MaNa (8)
15. LucifroN
16. SortOf (16)
17. barcode Protoss
18. Bly (7)
19. MajOr (5)
20. Guru (21)
21. Botvinnik
22. Strange
23. Lambo (14)
24. TLO (24)
25. Zanster (17)

*both disqualified

Players from the previous top-25 who don't appear: PtitDrogo (6), Harstem (11), Serral (15), Tefel (18), Welmu (20), GunGFuBanDa (25).  Both Harstem and PtitDrogo will get invites to the tournament due to their place in the WCS standings, so their non-participation makes sense (although I don't like that players get slots for that).  VortiX didn't attend the last tournament he qualified for, so if he qualified I was unsure whether he (or his brother) would actually attend, but it's fun to see both back in the game and competing at a high level.

As for the results of the subsequent qualifying bracket, Nerchio won in top spot while ShoWTimE  won in the losers bracket.  The games were generally quite good, although Dayshi stands out as the only player who failed to win a game.

Here's how NA panned out:
1. Neeb (3)
2. Hydra (1)
3. MaSa (10)
4. PandaBearMe (5)
5. PiLiPiLi (6)
6. puCK (12)
7. Scarlett (17)
8. Polt (2)
9. HuK (9)
10. Bioice
11. Bails (13)
12. NoRegreT (8)
13. Drunkenboi (18)
14. KoMA (15)
15. JonSnow (7)
16. ViBE
17. EJK
18. State (11)
19. RoO
20. Pokebunny
21. scv
22. RuFF (20)
23. Zan
24. GAMETIME
25. Raze

Players from the previous top-25 who don't appear: viOLet (4), Intense (14), qxc (16), RayReign (19), Semper (21), noname (22), Jig (23), PiG (24), and Xenocider (25).  All three Koreans will get invites from their WCS standings (viOLet, who is in Korea, was the only one who did not participate).  Pokebunny offered an interesting retrospective of his effort to qualify, while, State somehow struggled with time zones and started his run too late (reminscent of Scarlett from the previous ladder qualifier).

The subsequent qualifier included the most surprising results, as both Koreans were "knocked out" (they both qualify anyway) in the process.  Neeb finished first (needing to beat Polt along the way), while puCK wound up beating Hydra twice and then defeating Polt in a re-match for the final slot (which I believe he would have received anyway given the Koreans position in the standings--I really hate that part of the WCS system).  Bioice apparently no-showed for his initial match before getting 3-0'd by ViBE in the losers bracket--I haven't seen an explanation for this so I don't know what happened.  Scarlett, who qualified this time around, was bounced early and still seems a long way from her 2013 form.

Immediately following the above we had the NA qualifiers for DreamHack Austin (not ideal scheduling).  This was passport locked so there were no Koreans (although there were delays again as people unable to play signed up).  I missed watching a lot of this qualifier, but what I did see was excellent.  In the end Neeb once again qualified, this time alongside JonSnow.  The aforementioned Scarlett did better in this qualifier, but still failed to make it through (Bails just narrowly missed it).

Clearly Blizzard read Stuchiu's piece on maps as the latest community post responds to points brought up in it.  I think they've saved themselves a lot of headaches by moving away from the "standard/non-standard" labeling and focusing more on diversity.

Ketroc is apparently returning to SC2 streaming and I'm always happy when someone comes back to the scene (mass raven fans take note!).

Jakatak launched a website which he talks about here.  I hope it does well--it's an interesting idea and certainly the aggregator will be useful to anyone interested in learning more about the game.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)