04.11.2012: ESWC '12 is Mana's
04.11.2012: Life dethrones Leenock, wins Fall Championship
11.11.2012: The Lone Star Clash throne defended
13.11.2012: Heart of the Swarm launches March 2013
15.11.2012: MLG, ESL, DreamHack announce partnership
18.11.2012: Parting wins the $100,000 of BWC
20.11.2012: MMA, Cella join team Acer
21.11.2012: Balance testing: Fungal nerfed, Raven buffed
24.11.2012: HerO sweeps Taeja, defends his winter crown
25.11.2012: Sting sits atop Singapore
27.11.2012: Ret suspended from IPL 5
04-17.11.2012: Replays of the Week [Feature]
16.11.2012: BWC: War of the Worlds [Feature]
22.11.2012: IEM: Six stories from the Lion City [Feature]
FROM THE WORLD OF ESPORTS
Overall, Europeans events of 2012 have been kind to Mana. Wherever there was silver there was now gold and after enjoying two wonderful DreamHacks, the Polish protoss flew to France to compete on another familiar territory for him – ESWC.
In 2011, Mana went as far as the second place, losing to Stephano in the grand final while the Frenchman was one of his best forms ever. This time around, however, Mana had something to say and repeated the scenario from DH Summer ’12 semis: he came, he saw, he de-infested. Crushing ForGG in the closing match was just a bonus to the $20,000 check.
Great men are never satisfied with little, the concept of enough is foreign to them and this is often the root of many professional successes.
Putting this principle and the premise that Life is one such great man together, one could not possibly imagine that one royal road would be enough for him. Why not another one at the other side of the world? Seriously, they’ll even throw in the last champion and like the fourth person to carry the “best zerg in the world” title, just for the kicks of it.
Because other colleagues of his revisited one tournament scenario or the other, Stephano decided to try that on his own. While Mana and Life upgraded their previous achievements or explored new tournament grounds, EG's ace sticked to simplicity - visit a tournament you've conquered before and win it again by playing yet another Korean terran in the final.
PartinG's ascension in the WCS has been a steady one and, truly, seeing a gold medal at the very end was not too huge a surprise. He started with a 3rd place at WCS Korea, upgraded to 2nd place at WCS Asia and, in accordance to the natural order of things, lifted the trophy at the World Championship. A stellar performance without a doubt but catch this fun fact: if only November was two days longer, he would've become world champion twice in the same month.
If Artosis could sit behind my keyboard he would say that that's almost too much for someone's whose not NesTea.
I swear, the amount of all those "excel where you've excelled before" paradigms is getting scary by the second but it's just how it was that month. At the very end of November, Liquid`Hero travelled to Jonkoping to see if the host city of DreamHack Winter will treat him as kindly as it did last year.
In light of how all previous tournaments in November turned out, it was almost unsurprising that it did. DreamHack offered HerO the very same meal as in 2011: stellar performance in the group stage as entree, lots of foreigners as the main course and the best terran in the world as dessert.
Check please (along with that big ass star trophy that looks incredibly uncomfortable to hold).
Thankfully, IEM Singapore didn't go according to everybody's plans. This autor will shamefully admit that he dared ask the question "I wonder who will lose to MC in the final" but at the same time be joyful about said admission. All because IEM sticked to their renomee once again - they didn't have the line-up of DreamHack and were almost entirely overshadowed by the competition in Sweden but what they did was find a possible star in "second tier Korean" Sting, aleviating him to some extent from that sour label.
In addition, this was also Grubby's chance to truly shine by beating the tournament favorite and almost ending the champion as well. A high premier placement and a reward for one's dedication that, as many will agree, is long overdue.
IN PEOPLE'S MOUTHS
With near zero streaming and tournament activity, the Heart of the Swarm beta came quietly and failed to live up to its predecessor’s fame. Consequently, the announcement of the launch didn’t have the same impact either and I even catch myself not remembering it by hard.
There are four more months to get excited about the expansion so things will change for certain but in November 2012, the news barely made it to the “Most read”.
As I mentioned in the introduction, there was plenty to get excited about in November as it was truly a perfect month for eSports. Not three week ago, three of the largest tournament organizers outside Korea shook hands over a joint partnership, making the next step towards a unified eSport.
It will not be until 2013 that we’ll see the fruits from this ESL/MLG/DreamHack cooperation but there’re things to look forward to aplenty. A universal ranking system across all tournaments, coordinated tournament calendar and unified competition structure are all to be scratched off the list of “What StarCraft needs to do to be considered a real sport”.
Once the most renowned SC2 player on the planet, MMA was nowhere to be seen in 2012 as while other players were fighting, well, other players, the famed terran was leading a battle against the management of his own team.
Suffering by B-team demotion and SlayerS’ inner turmoil can’t have been good to MMA but it was not until the disbandment of Boxer’s legacy that he, along with ex-SlayerS coach Cella, found a new home.
While Koreans signing with foreign teams is not a big deal anymore, this particular move left a stronger echo. In times when zergs rule the world, how grand a comeback can a TvZ legend actually make when he gets Nerchio and Scarlett for practice partners?
And God said "Let there be fungal" and there was fungal
God saw that fungal was too good and separated it from the other spells
And he called the fungal "imba" and put it to testing in hope to restore peace back to Eden
For a short time, this passage made many advocates of SC2 imbalance rejoice: the most problematic unit in the game was targetted while a terran spell caster was getting buffed. A fix was finally coming to TvZ.
This test version of the game lasted a little more than a week before it got reverted, making a lot of people angry I would assume. The only thing I am grateful for is there are no Pacino-quoting atheists eager to say how God/Blizzard does/do experiment on people for his/their own sick amusement.
Never there is a month without a pinch of drama and it was Liquid`Ret who got the attention this time.
After Nony got suspended for two months due to his “unprofessional behavior” during GSL WC qualifiers, Ret decided to follow suit at DreamHack Winter. And similarly to Nony, Ret suffered the consequences as, apparently, Liquid do not find pausing the game for ten minutes and investigating whether or not you have chances of advancing amusing.
Poor Ret, considering how much it took him to do the calculations and then throw the game away he could’ve just played the god damn thing.
FROM THE GOSUGAMERS OVEN
Our search for the best games possible continued throughout November as well and we caught up with a large menagerie of players like Sea, MC, HyuN, Dimaga, WhiteRa, Polt, Sage and Sheth. We seeked beauty in every storm, every fungal, every marine drop and we found a lot of it. With DH Winter and IEM Singapore replays in our possession, the future is looking even brighter!
Previously on "VODs of the Week":
Edition #1
Edition #2
Edition #3
Edition #4
Edition #5
Edition #6
Previously on "Replays of the Week":
September 2-9
September 9-16
September 16-23
September 23-30
September 30-October 7
October 7-14
October 14-21
October 21-28
October 28 - November 4
November 4-11
Tournament previews do not usually make it here but in a month so rich on premier competition we barely wrote anything else. In mid-November we sat down, magnifying glass in hand, to look at the first ever Blizzard World Championship. With so many countries congregating in China baited by a $250,000 prize purse, we couldn't be more hyped.
- Ever since the WCS NA Continentals, it became very clear what the distribution of power is like in North America: There’s Scarlett and there’s everybody else.
Sasha’s rise to the ultimate North American power has been so swift and so convincing that it can very well carry her even beyond the dangers of Group H. Having won two WCS golds by beating protosses and zergs almost exclusively, there’s certainly a solid reasoning behind that premise. Moonglade is likely to not be a problem, she’s beaten Koreans before and she’s certainly familiar with how Nerchio plays mirrors being his teammate and all. In the group of death or not, if Scarlett finds even the smallest cracks in Nerchio’s and Creator’s plays, she’ll surely be taking the playoffs train.
Befallen by many ills in the form of cancelled participations, poor on stardom line-up and the shadow DreamHack Winter which took place in the same weekend, it looked like IEM Singapore would not end up the greatest event the world has known. As we now know, it wasn't any kind of disaster either, and how it could've been: there were so many stories neatly hidden from the glancing looks of the masses that it was actually impossible for the tournament to turn out bad.
- While the Moreno/Moreno match-up has been a given in Spanish cup finals for a while now, it wasn’t until this year’s Battle.net World Championship Series that both players stepped into the limelight of the European scene at an equal pace. Starting with the finals of the Spanish qualifiers, the two brothers butted heads at every stage of the tournament, making for some of the most exciting in each of them. When the duel culminated in the “Brothers cast Brothers” match last weekend, it was already apparent that even though VortiX is slowly but steadily getting the better of his brother, this match is something we can all hope for in the play-off stages in Singapore.
