A bomb has been dropped: a big announcement is coming from Blizzard in less than two weeks' time. Thus, we collect all the rumors and speculations in attempt to be clairvoyant about the future.
“
Hello, Blizzard Entertainment prepared a place for a new leap of SC2 e-sport with you journalists, and Mike Morhaim, the CEO of Blizzard will also visit Korea. Revealing the new direction, we invite you to make the environment that everyone goes together. Please come and give us some cheer. Thank you.”These were the words that first onset the wave of speculations about what the mysterious announcement by Blizzard will be about (translation courtesy of egernya).
As convoluted the message is, the phrase "environment that everyone goes together" immediately triggered a conviction within the community that some sort of unified league system is coming to the StarCraft 2, either affecting the Korean scene only or being of worldwide affect.
It was at the very same time that Daily eSports came in to support that rumor. In an article from March 25th named "Blizzard foretells eSports restructuring", the adjustment and consolidation of the Korean individual leagues (namely GSL and OSL) is mentioned, hinting that the two tournament might indeed either become one or be tied with common rankings and/or seeding system.
It is within the same source that the negotiations between Blizzard, OGN and Gretech were mentioned, saying that while Gretech has given their hosting rights to Blizzard, OGN has not yet done so. As a result, OGN might end up becoming - with the financial support of Blizzard - a supervising media company to whatever the new tournament structure ends up being. Yet with all that talk, one party seemed to be excluded, both financially and negotiation-wise: KeSPA and their Proleague.
The first wave of concerns
Shortly after the initial batch of hinting, worrisome tweets came from the house of Axiom-Acer as Sasha "Scarlett" Hostyn and John "TotalBiscuit" Bain tweeted that there might be bad, even saddening news for Korean StarCraft.
everyone in axiom house is depressed after hearing the news today T_T;;;;;;
— Scarlett Maeve (@AcerScarlett) March 25, 2013
I am hearing a lot of bad rumours coming out of Korea regarding Sc2 right now. I hope they are wrong
— Totalbiscuit (@Totalbiscuit) March 25, 2013
- "The reason you aren't hearing anything specific is because we don't know for sure," TotalBiscuit followed up with his next tweet but the community was already worried. Putting the previous news about restructuring the scene and the bad spirits over at the Axiom-Acer house led to the speculation that GSTL might be shutting down at some point in the future. This would leave Proleague as the only team league in South Korea and it would be near impossible for a team like Axiom-Acer to enter because of financial requirements from KeSPA's side.
Although grim, those speculations were not without reasoning. While we can imagine an easy and convenient way to unify OSL and GSL, team leagues in StarCraft 2 have usually been of lesser importance so eliminating one (either entirely or merging it with the other) seemed possible.
Just one hour later, however, the concerns were kindly dissipated by TotalBiscuit. In two more tweets, Bain assured the community that the bad rumors are false and a result of misinterpreted fact.
OK, I spoke with Blizzard. Under embargo on the main announcements, but the bad rumors appear to be incorrect interpretations of fact
— Totalbiscuit (@Totalbiscuit) March 25, 2013
So no, the sky is not falling.
— Totalbiscuit (@Totalbiscuit) March 25, 2013
If tournaments are not being shut down, then what?
The first sources to further support the GSL/OSL unification theory and also suggest some regional scene segregation appeared on March 26th in a Daily eSports article named "Blizzard's strategy looking like Riot's".
Through it, we almost get a confirmation that GSL and OSL will indeed come together (though the two brands will continue to exist) and their job will be to feed players into WCS Korea, essentially replacing the Korean preliminaries for the World Championship. The article also mentions how because of the likely seasonal nature of the competition (like OSL and GSL are as compared to the preliminary tournaments which are a one-time thing), players will need to maintain a good form and fight for a longer period of time if they want to make it to the WCS.
While Daily eSports' post alone did not imply regional scene segregation, a reddit post by news reporter and manager Michael "TorteDeLini" Cohen certainly did so. According to Cohen, WCS Korea will not be the only tournament that will be fed players from local premier tournaments but same will be the case with North America and Europe. MLG and NASL will serve as "root tournaments" for WCS NA and DreamHack and IEM will be bound to WCS EU, so each region will have season-long leagues that determine who will play in the World Championship and who will not. Blizzard's strategy indeed looked like Riot's as it basically imitates how the Season 3 circuit for League of Legends is structured.
The aforementioned reddit post also cites a translation from Fomos.kr, saying that no party, even KeSPA and their Proleague, is left out and encouraging people to not make false assumptions: everything will be revealed on April 3rd.
Does it all make sense?
Looking from afar, this potential "segregation by league unification" sounds as logical as it is massive. Those who followed the 2012 WCS closely will remember that bar WCS Europe, none of the regional or continental preliminaries had the intended impact as fans simply did not care enough: for them, following GSL, OSL or MLG was much more interesting. That was where stories really developed.
Thus, taking aforementioned premier tournament stories and directly associating them with WCS by binding the two sides with a sort of a ranking system can be a smart move by Blizzard. The preliminaries that were not getting enough attention will be eliminated in favor of known and established brands. A lengthy pre-World Championship season will furthermore mean more (and longer, and better) stories than those created within a single WCS qualifier. Finally, strict scene segregation where each player is tested multiple times elevates the esteem of the ultimate title of World Championship even more.
We'll have to follow Fomos' advice and wait and see how and if all this will be accomplished, of course but we'll bring you more information once such is available. Have in mind that none of the rumors and speculations mentioned in the articles have been officially confirmed.
Links
TL.net - Source (article translations)
