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)

StarCraft News & Notes

I was happy to read that DreamHack Leipzig (January 22nd-24th) is region-locking the first WCS Circuit Event, which avoids the visa loophole that exists in the system.  This provoked comment from the inestimable TotalBiscuit:

It will be interesting to see whether the 2016 "no Koreans" gamble pays off in viewership. I have my doubts

This is from Twitter and he subsequently posted audio on soundcloud about it which expanded on this idea considerably (it's clear, btw, from listening to TB that he hasn't watched much, if any, foreign SC2 this year).  Most people who talked to Blizzard, he said, agreed that WCS needed to be region-locked, but the same sentiment was not made about IEMs etc.  It seems pretty logical that if the first element is understood but there's no ESL-run WCS, then the other events have to fill-in, but TB doesn't address this point.  His argument for the Twitter comment above is that he believes viewership comes from quality of competition in SC2, which is an odd tact to take given the laundry list of unremarkable Koreans who have won these events the last three years (much like Stuchiu, he claims his point in inarguable).  He then dovetails into an argument that events like HomeStory Cup avoid the aforementioned problem by being unique and pushing forward the personalities of the players, but doesn't make the connection that a personality has to be backed by a modicum of success or no one cares (just one example, Neuro has a very distinct persona, but his viewership has been capped for quite a while because there's no results backing it--people like avilo who thrive despite a lack of results came into the scene before that door existed).  We then get this nonsensical statement:

We are going to see a lot of [Korean] B-teamers [retire] that are not being paid and they're kind of slaving away at a skill level which is higher than foreigners and yet the foreigners are reaping the rewards, you know they're rolling in the cash

This is pretty silly--there are very few foreign players "rolling in the cash" (other than Snute and Lilbow all the players are below the poverty line for 2015 based on winnings, which makes TB's subsequent comment that foreigners don't need the money a little ridiculous).  He then goes on to parrot that old chestnut that the Korean ladder is the be-all, end-all to results (see my previous post challenging the idea), and suggests adding Koreans to the NA ladder and then having it used to qualify players for tournaments, which is the best way I can imagine to asphyxiate the scene entirely (using the ladder as a qualifier is fine, but foreigners need to qualify to have incentive).  If SC2 is going to grow as an eSport the foreign scene needs a boost and nothing that permits parachuting Koreans is going to make that happen.  More fundamentally, his initial assumption is one that doesn't come from any evidence (which doesn't make it inherently invalid, but means it's just a guess).  There hasn't been a region-locked premier event since...WOL?  The biggest ones I can find in HOTS are SHOUTCraft (America was the last in December of 2013), but they were only 10k.  Here's what TB said about it:

As a pure business venture, SHOUTcraft America Winter can be considered a failure.  It did not provide the requisite ROI for the company providing the sponsorship [mobile service provider Ting].

The viewer numbers (not available on Fuzic because the event was run on MLG) topped out at 26k concurrent.  For those who haven't kept an eye on numbers, that's in-line with current DreamHack and IEM viewership (and keep in mind TB's was an online tournament).  It paled in comparison to the viewership of the European version TB ran in July (viewership for that was 32k and 49k), but I think what he said about it still applies broadly now:

Just to give you an idea of how potent the EU audience is, the EU viewership for SHOUTcraft America, beat America

And why is European viewership so strong?  It's the one scene Koreans can't play in with any regularity.  None of this guarantees that the upcoming DreamHack will post great numbers, but I find it puzzling why some fans don't make the connection that the only strong foreign scene is also the only one that local players are able to make money.  Virtually no foreigner outside Europe can really afford to be a full-time SC2 pro.

One thing TB's comments got me thinking about (unrelated to his specifics) is how much impact the casters have on SC2 events.  There are plenty of smaller tournaments floating around, but if you aren't Basetradetv these days the odds are you won't see much viewership regardless of the quality of the tourney.  This poses a conundrum for community content, as it means quality of players or event concept is not enough to sway viewers to come to your stream.  Poor Feardragon, the hero of the NA scene, has battled this particular problem for years.

Speaking of events, Nation Wars cancelled their live finale.  It's a smart move as attempting a live event for this concept doesn't make a whole lot of sense.  One of the problems Nation Wars has is we already know who will win it, so it's simply a matter of the process--who is in the final--along with enjoying the casters.  The change has altered the dates of when the matches will occur, but I don't see that as a big deal (there's no competition in early January).

I was curious what numbers the NA Koreans (or potential ones like TRUE) put up in 2015 against foreigners (in series) and it's staggering:

Hydra 126-15 (89%) - 4 of those losses were to Lilbow
TRUE 118-14 (89%) - 3 losses were to Neeb
Polt 47-6 (88%) - didn't lose to the same foreign player twice
Jaedong 55-8 (87%) - lost to Lilbow twice
StarDust 28-10 (73%) - lost twice to qxc
viOLet 44-19 (69%)

The top-four have insane winning percentages, as you'd expect, and the first two played an insane amount of games.  There have been a few funny loses from the collection: Hydra somehow lost to the now-inactive Scandicain as well as PandaBearMe; TRUE lost to EJK; StarDust lost to whoever WArchief was; and viOLet lost to Moosegills.  Regardless, it's easy to see how deflating it must be for most foreign players to face the top-four.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

Thoughts on the WCS Changes

At long last Blizzard has announced the changes to WCS and there is a ton of information to absorb (TL tries to break it down, as does Stuchiu--I agree with the latter that they way things were disseminated could have been done better).  I was a fan of last year's WCS system (with a couple of minor reservations), but there's no denying that it had problems.  The major change for 2016 is the removal of the dominating structure that's existed throughout HOTS, so no more Challenger and Premier running most weeks of the year.  WCS will still have three championships a year driven by regional qualifiers, but these will occur in much tighter timeframes and rather than the ESL umbrella IEMs etc will run them.  There will be one less GSL/SSL, but more money pumped into those tournaments.  Along with those changes, the attempts to restrict the access of parachuting Koreans have been ramped up.  Korean players now must spend most of their time residing in the region they play in, and they must also play on the local ladder on a monthly basis (100 wins a month under their own ID, so 1,200 over the course of a year).  This won't prevent Hydra et al from dominating most tournaments, but it will mean that he and the other Koreans will be forced to invest more time playing against local players, giving them a chance to improve their play.

While I see the changes as positive, there are those who disagree.  From what I've seen and read these fans are either those only invested in the Korean scene (as ZombieGrub passionately makes clear), or those continuing to express the popular idea that in order to improve players need to be on the Korean ladder (generally you see these two views together).  I'm frankly blown away at how passionate this small group is about the first point, given that it translates to them apparently enjoying mid-tier Koreans destroying foreigners in lopsided events.  These fans show little to no interest in how much devastation parachuting Koreans have caused the foreign scene.  There also seems to be limited understanding of how other leagues have successfully grown their sport/eSport beyond its dominant region or country.  Let's explore both points in a bit more detail:

1. For the first point, while I can understand the disappointment of rarely seeing Koreans at foreign events (it's not mine, but I can empathise--I'd rather watch the GSL/SSL if I'm going to watch Koreans), it's beyond obvious that the foreign scene needs this change.  Despite hearing rhetoric that having Koreans participate in regional scenes can help, the reality is that it's virtually killed NA (and everywhere else that isn't Europe, which has also declined).  There's no evidence that the over-saturated version of WCS (2013-14) encouraged the growth or development of foreign players--instead there were mass retirements and vanishing viewership.  You simply cannot have growth outside of Korea without an existing structure that gets players paid (to give just one example from pro sports, European hockey nations that heavily restricted foreign participation have thrived and become competitive while those that did not remain stagnant).  Given that SC2 is not a team eSport, and SC2 foreign teams that pay are few and far between, there needs to be multiple tournaments where local players have a reasonable chance to make a living--otherwise a true pro scene is impossible.  Interestingly enough, critics worry about the economic fate of mid-tier Koreans without tangibly sharing that same concern for their foreign counterparts--when thinking of the latter suddenly the sentiment becomes the best players should win.  Stuchiu tells us:

Finally there doesn’t seem to be any plans to help low to mid-tier Korean players, so we should probably be getting another wave of retirements again as GSL and SSL continue to be top heavy.

The foreigner narrative in SC2 can never be as strong as it was in the past because of the region-lock. It seems counter-intuitive as there will be more events with foreigner-only events, however in the case of the best foreigners, the book has been closed. The reason is simple. While some people are trying to equate the region locked 2016 tournament circuit to the 2011/2012 circuit, that is simply disingenuous as it ignores one simple facet. Almost all of the LANs from 2011-2015 weren’t region-locked so foreigners could play against the best and prove they could beat the best..

This is one of those 'it's true but misses the point' statements--and trying to cram in the Korea/foreign situation from HOTS to that of WOL is absurd.  He knows full well that Korean participation in WOL was limited and didn't involve the KeSPA players--the foreign scene was also flush with money in the early days so players weren't as dependent on tournament winnings.  There's no attempt to explain why Blizzard needs to protect the livelihoods of the mid-tier Koreans (who may or may not need this protection), but not foreign players.  It smacks of regional bias, but one I think he's unaware of (I assume he believes a healthy scene is one where the money isn't stuck at the top, but this is exactly the problem in the foreign scene, but much more cripplingly so).  It's simply a fact that part-time players will always lose to full-time players and the skill-gap between Koreans and foreigners will only get worse the harder it is for foreigners to become full-time pros.

2. The Korean ladder is one of those funny arguments that's been around forever; let's quote Stuchiu:

The fastest way to improve as a player is to constantly play against better players over and over and Korea has by far the most depth of any server—that’s inarguable. It’s a great tool for anyone to practice on and one of the reasons as to why Koreans are always so sharp. With the lock down, players that had access to such a tool will naturally devolve.

There are two problems with this argument (which apparently is "inarguable"): 1) unless Stuchiu believes regions should settle on only playing on the Korean ladder, Blizzard's plan is the best way to improve and develop local ladders (he doesn't propose a way for foreign ladders improve); 2) our only evidence actually indicates the reverse of this argument: the best foreigners play in Europe, where the ping to Korea is unplayable (the benefit of both an insular ladder and a financed scene seems to allude him).  Rather than Europeans going to Korea and becoming the best, instead you see Europeans go to Korea when they are already the best.  Pros echo his sentiment, so I think it's one of those "facts" that's repeated so often that no one actually questions it anymore (you see this in professional sports as well, until enough evidence accrues to challenge it).  To me it's evident that targeted practice with good players (which you see within Korea), along with having no other obligations (school, work) is a big part of what develops the best players (the latter is one of the reasons you see older pros past their prime still do okay in the foreign scene).  That said, I don't expect many people to reject Stuchiu's point, as it's become almost an article of faith in the community.

Maybe Stuchiu (and others) have constructive arguments and plans, but all I've seen thus far are emotional reactions expressing a lot of fear for the Korean scene.  Time will tell if the current approach is right, as there's no guarantee that what Blizzard is doing is going to work, but it's clearly a move in the right direction (viewership numbers recovered slightly in 2015 with most of the Koreans pushed out; 2016 will now give foreigners outside of Europe a chance to get paid).  I've seen no alternatives proposed that doesn't essentially give us the same system we're leaving (which everyone acknowledges doesn't work).  StarCraft needs to grow if it wants to survive as an eSport.  None of this is going to make those disappointed by the changes any happier and I'm sure we'll hear their voices all year long about it, but if there were enough fans who shared their sentiments SC2 wouldn't be struggling the way it is.  I'll give Destiny the final word here:

People keep mixing this up. Blizzcon/WCS is supposed to produce the best player in the world, HOWEVER, the top 16 players are not supposed to be the 16 best players in the world, they're supposed to represent the regions they came from. There's a huge difference.  For a lot of people, it's more fun than watching 16 Koreans they don't care about.

With a rhetorical add:

College football players are nowhere near as good as NFL, so no one would ever watch them play, right?

This is similar to what iNcontroL and others have said as well.  All-in-all I'm looking forward to seeing how the new system works out.  One final little aside: these changes should be a boon to the Olimoleague, as top Koreans will have more time and incentive to play in it; this should create space for other smaller Korean tournaments as well.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

StarCraft News & Notes

It has been awhile since I posted--I've been waiting for the WCS announcement and while hints and rumours have been floating around there's been nothing definitive (Richard Lewis reported that the ESL-run WCS-style tourney is gone).  Amongst the various bits of panic TotalBiscuit, CatZ, and others have appealed for calm and patience and that's where I stand as well.  There's no question that a WCS-system of some sort will continue, it's simply a matter of in what form.

I watched some of DreamHack Winter, which suffered from far too much down time.  Viewership was okay (a touch higher than Tours which was the prior 2015 high), but without a noticeable LOTV bump--I think the reason for that is a mix of the game's current balance along with the aforementioned dragging broadcast.

On a more positive note Nation Wars has been a blast and a small window into the form of various players in LOTV (from Stephano being terrible to Serral excelling).  It was also interesting to see PartinG lose to two foreign Zerg players (the aforementioned Finn as well as Petraeus).

BaseTrade has been running $100 regional cups via Corsair--I would have preferred them all region-locked (doesn't matter as much for EU because of the lag, admittedly), but c'est la vie (the NA-locked tourney suffered a bit from running just before ROOT's $2,000-tourney).  Regardless, lot's of fun and I've enjoyed them casting regularly again.

The Rival StarCraft League continues (you can see replays here); their Invitational was a few weeks ago with Bly beating PiLiPiLi in the final.

Kotaku wrote about the life of pro and semi-pro gamers focusing on Pokebunny (but also talking about former streamer Ms Spyte), and what stood out for me were the former's comments:

In the summer of 2012 I was going into my senior year of high school, and I thought that as soon as I finished I’d jump fully into StarCraft and go live in a team house and all that stuff. I didn’t think I wanted to go to college. I just wanted to keep playing, and that slowly changed over the course of that year. As more and more Koreans got involved it became harder for Americans to stay relevant who didn’t play full-time. Pretty much all I did was go to school and play StarCraft, but I still wasn’t full-time. It was inevitable that at a certain point I wouldn’t be able to keep up.

The American Terran hasn't kept completely out of the scene since he ended regular play in the summer of 2012--he last competed in the WCS qualifiers in season one, 2015.

Speaking of ex-pros, TitaN has re-emerged with LOTV.  I don't know if he's returning to competitive play or simply to streaming, but I'll never forget him losing to Snute in the old swarm host days where 12 bases to 4 wasn't enough.

I stumbled across MCanning's stream recently and highly recommend it (he was recently added to Flipsid3 Tactics).  I recognized the name from WCS qualifiers, but he normally streams too late for me so it was serendipity I found his stream.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

StarCraft News & Notes

BlizzCon was a fantastic success as the last WCS tournament in HOTS featured both the best lineup since the system was created along with the best final we've seen.  In terms of predictions Zerg players, particularly Life, wrecked Aligulac (and my) calls throughout the bracket, although I did successfully predict the winner in sOs (overall I was 10-5 and Aligulac was 11-4--albeit the latter failing to pick the winner).  sOs went 13-5 in the tournament, winning a nailbiter against PartinG along the way, while Life was 12-6, with Classic posing the main threat before the final.  In general aggressive play dominated the tournament and Terrans fell by the wayside early.  The casting and hosting was excellent and the stage looked fantastic--all bodes well for LOTV moving forward.  As for viewership it was better than 2014, but came a short of 2013:

Interestingly enough, 2014's peak viewership remains the high for HOTS (155k), as MMA's clash against Life was apparently the biggest draw (2013 peaked at 142k, this year at 149k).  What the numbers do indicate is that while HOTS failed to grow the game, it remains relatively stable with its core audience.  As for HOTS in terms of performance, when it came to best-on-best competition (GSL, SSL, this year's BlizzCon, and 2014's IEM finale):
2013: Soulkey, Maru, Dear
2014: Zest, sOs (IEM), Classic, INnoVation
2015: Life, Rain, Classic (SSL), herO (SSL), INnoVation, sOs
Overall Protoss took the most championships (8), with Terran and Zerg roughly even (3 and 2).  I'd gauge sOs and INnoVation as the best/most consistent players of the expansion.  The era also witnessed the virtual death of the NA pro scene and the falling off of most well-known foreign WOL pros; on the positive side we also saw new talent rise en masse out of France.

The Future of StarCraft panel talked about what's coming to LOTV and the most significant thing are upcoming changes to the ladder:

Currently, we plan on combining all of the Grandmaster and Master league divisions into one. In this new large division, the top 200 player are Grandmaster players. However, if you make it to the top, you can't rest on your laurels, because those below you can easily bump you out! This will allow the competitive experience to remain active in this tier of players. 

Players in the middle and lower tiers want to know how close they are to advancing, and so our current solution is for each league to have 10 subdivisions to more clearly define a player’s skill. This means that if you’re a Gold 1 player, you’re among the best Gold players in the world and are close to reaching the Platinum tier. Divisions also won’t have a player cap – so if you’re ranked as Silver 5, you know you belong there because of your skill level, and not simply because another division has filled up. Finally, since rank isn’t currently indicative of skill, we’re looking at different ways of awarding points so that participation matters less than skill. 

For players in the lowest league, improving is inevitable with practice and we want those improvements to be quickly reflected in your rank. In Wings of Liberty, about 20 percent of players were Bronze, so even if you were drastically improving in your skill you were still stuck in the lowest division. With ten subdivisions, it should become clear that you’re improving because you’ll begin moving up through subdivisions that have clear meaning. 

We also plan to reduce the overall size of Bronze, since the difference in skill between someone at the bottom versus the top of Bronze is comparable to the difference in skill between the bottom of Silver and the top of Platinum.

Those are all positive changes and for those players at lower skill levels it will be a relief to not get annihilated by much better players on the ladder with regularity.

TotalBiscuit's latest version of ShoutCraft is almost upon us.  The invitation-only tournament features a variety of Koreans--five are among the top-25 in WCS points (ParTing, Zest, TY, Rogue, and Solar), while there are two fan-favourites in Bomber and Stork, with ByuN thrown in for good measure (perhaps due to his Proleague results).  I'm not sure what quality of games we'll see and I'm not normally that invested in invitation-only tournaments, but given the timing and casters I'll check it out.

With LOTV in its "final" version (at least to start) my primary concern from watching the beta is parasitic bomb in ZvT which seems overpowered--the next few weeks and months should make that clear.

It's funny how player returns to SC2 turn out.  You may recall that CombatEX returned with some fanfare back in June, but he's already disappeared (at least as a streamer).  Whatever his actual intentions he barely put in any effort to stream and hasn't done so since August.  This doesn't mean he couldn't reappear and I think the scene is better the more streamers/personalities it has.

As it has been awhile since my last news digest a few things have been floating around that I'll comment on briefly:
-Chanman has brought back Unfiltered--the cynical part of me thought it might be just after his Reddit ban expired, but that ban may have been for life.  The SC2 content is very light, but I think the show is entertaining
-Speaking of light SC2 content, The Late Game's revamp has been very bland of late, due to  Destiny not playing LOTV beta of late leaving only iNcontroL's very safe (and brief) answers to whatever Lycan asks him--I think the show would have been better off with at least one more person involved to generate conversation.  However, as Destiny is committed to playing LOTV on release I think it will improve going forward
-A couple of months ago Rifkin made what I thought was an offensive and stupid joke at the expense of avilo--a safe target to go after and there wasn't much fallout, but I hope this is the last time something like this comes up
-JaKaTaK (I lost the link, but it's among his semi-recent videos) said he's not going to discuss balance in LOTV, something I found a bit surprising, but it fits the Day9 approach of steering clear of balance and focusing on the other elements of the game

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)

BlizzCon Predictions

It has been awhile since I posted, but with the end of the WCS season at hand it's time to break out the Aligulac crystal ball and see who will be the final HOTS champion.  For the first time in the WCS system we finally have something close to the best sixteen players competing (although no one thinks any of those who played outside Korea would have made it if they had to play there--that said, the three players are good enough to make things interesting).  It's worth keeping in mind that the Koreans participating in the GSL and SSL have been playing on old map pools (the GSL's is particularly ancient).  Because this WCS finale has mostly correct seeding, I wouldn't expect many upsets in the R16.

herO vs FanTaSy - the Smiling Assassin gets the edge (63%), although they are 3-3 against one another and the Terran has been better in TvP of late; that said, if you comb through herO's history this year he's 11-5 in the match-up and I'd put no stock in his loss to Reality at the MCSL tourney in mid-October; in meaningful games he's lost to Maru (twice), Dream, and Bbyong.  FanTaSy has more of a track record to look at, with an overall 16-13 record, which is less impressive in terms of who he's lost too and who he's beaten--so I'd stick with the odds here

ByuL vs Classic - the Protoss is favoured (60%), with a perfect 6-0 record against his opponent; Classic is 12-5 in PvZ this year, while his opponent is 17-6 (!)--ByuL did lose to Classic the one time they faced each other (in May in the SSL) and it was very one-sided (3-0); there's potential for an upset here, but a lot of ByuL's success is predicated on that GSL map pool (8-2 with it, 9-4 without it), so I'll stick with the odds

INnoVation vs Zest - the macro monster is favoured (81%) over his Protoss opponent; the Terran is 21-6 in TvP and he's beat Zest the last two times they played (both fairly recently); the Protoss is 9-7 in the match-up and while he could win this series there's nothing in the numbers to suggest he will

Lilbow vs Life - the Zerg is favoured (55%) and although he's barely played foreigners this year he beat Lilbow twice back in April; the real question isn't about the Korean however, but the French Protoss player--despite a good record against the B-grade Koreans of late, I see no hope for him here (a win here for the Frenchmen would be the biggest upset of the round)

Rain vs Polt - Captain America has avoided serious Korean competition since the advent of the WCS system and despite inflated percentages from doing so he's still the underdog (41%); Polt hasn't played a Korean Protoss since January (losing to herO) and his last significant win was against Rain in early 2014; the Protoss player is very good in PvT (10-2) of late and should have no problem winning against his declining opponent

PartinG vs sOs - quite possibly the most entertaining PvP we'll see in HOTS, sOs is heavily favoured (70%), despite being 5-5 in the matchup of late; PartinG has been worse (3-7), although its fair to say some of those loses were in small competitions he wasn't taking very seriously; the two players haven't faced each other in a series since 2013, but without anything amiss in their recent history the odds seem fair

Hydra vs Dream - the ROOT player left Korea to avoid the difficult competition and here at BlizzCon he'll see if he can do more than simply qualify; he's a heavy favourite (75%), bolstered by his lopsided record against foreigners, but he also holds a 5-2 edge against his opponent (although none of those matches are from this year); almost all of Hydra's wins against Korean Terrans are versus non-GSL competition; Dream's TvZ record is not good (6-9), although most of his loses are against the best Zerg players and he has no results more recent than July; I like the upset here as I think Hydra's play has declined significantly the past few months--this is, however, one of the best opponents he could have hoped for

Maru vs Rogue - the Terran is favoured (61%) with a solid head-to-head history (7-4), including beating him just a month ago in the GSL; both players are 6-4 in the match-up of late; there's nothing here to suggest an upset and Maru is the better player, so I'd stick with the odds here

Aligulac has herO, Classic, INnoVation, Life, Rain, sOs, Hydra, and Maru moving forward.  I agree with all except Hydra (so I have Dream moving forward).  For those keeping track, all eight players Aligulac picked have won premier tournaments this year (my pick lost one)--all three GSL and both SSL champs move on in either scenario.  There's certainly potential for other upsets--ByuL, Zest (largely on the basis of his opponents stubbornness when it comes to strategy), PartinG (because he's PartinG), and Hydra/Dream (depending on which prediction you prefer), but for the most part the higher seeded player is the better player.

Here's the Round of 8 following the predictions above:

herO vs Classic - the latter is favoured (64%), with a slight edge head-to-head (13-10), but having beaten him the last three series they've faced each other; Classic is also 8-2 in PvP of late, so while this could easily go either way the trends are with the favourite

INnoVation vs Life - once again the Terran is heavily favoured (80%), and he has the historical edge against his opponent (25-18), having won the last three times they've played each other; Life has been awful in ZvT lately (3-9), although he's one of those talented players who can just dominate at times; still, with an 11-1 record in the matchup recently I'll stick with INnoVation

Rain vs sOs - the former BlizzCon champ is again favoured (63%), although they are 11-11 head-to-head; both players are 5-5 in the match-up of late and split their last two matches against each other; to me this is a toss up, although given how sOs tends to show up when there's big money on the line I see an edge here

Dream vs Maru - not surprisingly the latter is favoured (65%), although they're close head-to-head (13-11) and 2-2 in series this year; Maru is 8-3 in TvT of late, while Dream is 6-4; with the numbers so close reputation and Aligulac have to sway opinions so I'll stick with the favourite; if Hydra is here than Maru is a very slight favourite (50%), which I think is far too generous to the ROOT player (who I think has no hope if he gets here). [With the results of the R16 we have one match-up that I never included, Rogue vs Hydra - Aligulac gives the ROOT player a slight edge (56%).]

I agree with Aligulac here that Classic, INnoVation, sOs, and Maru move forward, but these matches are much more in doubt that the R16 and all four could go the other way.  Going by the odds the most likely upset would be Rain or herO moving forward (no surprise that these are via PvP).

The Semi-finals (R4):

Classic vs INnoVation - once again the Terran is favoured (73%), with a 5-4 edge against the Protoss player; the Terran is 10-3 in the match-up of late, while Classic is 6-6, and while he beat his opponent the last time they played it was in a monthly cup rather than something that really mattered; one bit of notable trivia: the Terran is not particularly good in TvP in BO5s--he's 1-5 the last two years, while the Protoss player is 4-3; I feel like with INnoVation's stubborn playstyle creates an upset here.  Here are the odds of other potential matchups: herO vs INnoVation favours the Terran (70%); Classic vs Life slightly favours the Protoss (51%); herO vs Life slightly favours the Zerg (50%)

sOs vs Maru - this series is likely to be a lot of fun with two super aggressive players; Aligulac favours sOs (58%), although the two have only played each other once (with the Terran winning); both playres are 6-3 in the match-up of late; I like the odds, as sOs seems to lose against slower-paced Terrans rather than the frenetic pace of his opponent.  Here are the other potential matchups: Maru vs Rain favours the Protoss (55%), sOs vs Dream favours the Protoss (56%), and Dream vs Rain favours the latter (53%).  [With the results of the R16 in we have to envision either Hydra or Rogue in the R4, so Rain is a 51% favourite over the former and a 64% favourite over the latter; sOs is a 58% favourite vs the ROOT player and 70% favourite vs the latter.] {Now that we know Rogue is the player here, his Protoss opponent is a huge favourite (70%)}

Aligulac foresee's INnoVation and sOs, while I have Classic facing the former BlizzCon champ.  Following the most likely upsets from the R8, Aligulac would still have INnoVation moving forward and would have Rain in place of sOs.

Finals

Classic vs sOs - the latter is favoured (56%), with an 8-4 record against his opponent; Classic has the better recent PvP record and beat his opponent the last time they played and I think has overall been better at PvP this year, so I'll take the upset.  If Aligulac is right and this is INnoVation they favour  (64%) him, although sOs has an 8-1 record against him and I'd think the master of Protoss cheese would do very well against someone as macro-focused as his opponent, so I'd take the upset here too.  If this is Rain vs INnoVation (following the alternative above) the latter is still favoured (68%)

Classic is my winner, with Aligulac picking INnoVation.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)