From the World of eSports
Oh, DongRaeGu, are you never going to stop being so good? Why do you keep coming back to MLG and making everybody cry? Aren’t you getting tired, do you feel no pity?
Jokes aside, MLG 2012 events have been traditionally won by either DRG or MKP with the little exception of Violet’s Arena 2 success. So when both of them finished first in their groups, fans felt shivers of excitement as the greatest SC2 rivalry of all time was about to make an appearance in the Spring Championship.
MarineKing lost 0-2 to DRG in the Winner’s Final and the reigning zerg overmind advanced to the grand final. His opponent was Alicia and in viewers’ minds, the match was over before it began. And so it was: DRG swept a 3-1 and collected his $25,000, describing the entire experience as “Cool shit”.
And cool shit it was. It is known.
During the very same weekend, seven of the best KeSPA pro-gamers flew to Anaheim to play in an MLG exhibition tournament. There was no prize, of course, but no one really cared. For many of the foreign fans, seeing the living legends playing outside of Korea was an unprecedented experience and it did not matter that there was nothing on the line but pride.
Two months ago we asked this question: “Flash vs Bisu: Who will win?” Under the sounds of the roaring crowd, we found our answer as the Ultimate Weapon, KT’s Young Ho “Flash” Lee played amazingly, did not drop a single game and dominated The Revolutionist in the grand final. After walking out of the booth to receive the audience’s cheer, “unimpressed Flash” was unimpressed no more.
If one foreign win might be nothing more than a coincidence, two in a row starts to look something like tradition in the making. And it’s good tradition, it’s DreamHack tradition.
The largest LAN party in Europe returned to Jonkoping for another almost Korean-less tournament. There were eight South Koreans when DH Summer started, three made it to the playoffs and none were left by the round of four. It was going to be a foreign championed tournament; the only question was who of the four was the most likely candidate. With Stephano as one of the semi-finalists, the average eSports fan need not wonder long.
But Stephano's proclivity to fall in the final stages of a tournament showed its ugly head and Mousesports’ Mana – indisputably one of tournament’s underdogs – trampled the ZvP specialist in a way we didn’t think possible and then, in the grand final, did the same to Dimaga after figuring out and defeating Ukrainian’s characteristic baneling playstyle which had been the undoing of so many players that tournament. Taking revenge for the Assemby final – Check! Winning a major tournament right after finishing school – Check! 11,000 EUR for three days’ work – Check!
We’ll be talking to him in the following days to find out what else Mana is planning on ticking off his list of accomplishments.
The first round of SK Planet’s hybrid Proleague ended with unexpected results. The best Brood War players of all time turned out to be the worst SC2 players for the first five weeks of the tournament. TBLS – the combined name for Stork, Bisu, Jaedong and Flash – finished with an aggregate score of 4-9, with SKT’s revolutionist being the worst player in the league with 0-3 in StarCraft 2 matches.
In the absence of the four greats, other, less known players took the chance to shine. CJ’s Effort and hero[join] shined the brightest in this first round and as for the teams, Woongjin Stars came out of the shadow of SK Telecom T1 and KT Rolster to take a tremendous lead.
The league is still young, however, and there’s a lot of blood left to bleed. TBLS might not be completely lost.
In People's Mouths
On June 19th, the eSports world said goodbye to one of its biggest legends and not just in the worlds of StarCraft. Yoon Yeol “NaDa” Lee – a.k.a. the Genius Terran and one of the most accomplished Brood War players of all time boasting three consecutive MSL titles and three OSL titles – announced retirement after spending his last four months as a professional StarCraft 2 player with the foreign-based Complexity.
Nada’s career in StarCraft 2 wasn’t as glorious as his Brood War run but the legend had his successes nonetheless, finishing fourth in both Code S and MLG Raleigh 2011. Although his loyal-to-death fans eagerly expected his return among the prime StarCrafters, Nada had to say goodbye because of “financial difficulty, current poor state of health, pending military issues, as well as some family issues".
Whether he decides to return to eSports in a few years or not, Nada’s absence will be indisputably missed.
Although there have been a handful of pro-gaming documentaries before, “Liquid Rising” aimed to be the first to follow the creation, development, struggles and camaraderie of one StarCraft 2 team. Hyped, delayed and hyped again, Michael Kruckar’s film was released on June 22nd… and it polarized the community like nothing before.
The die-hard fans of TL were in exultation. Seeing more of their favorite players talking about their favorite team was just what they paid for (figuratively) and having Day[9] and djWHEAT in there was just a cool bonus.
The rest of the community, however, jumped in to criticize the movie. It’s not a real documentary, some said, it’s just twenty or so interviews chained together. It didn’t have a purpose, other complained, it explored nothing, it wasn’t deep, stories were left untold. It does not act as a documentary about eSports should, a third party raised a voice, as people outside the world of eSports will not grasp a single thing.
Who’s right is not for me to decide here in these lines. But we’ll get back to the topic just a few lines down the road, I promise.
Spades is not a player that makes headlines often so when the community boards woke up one morning to find their epidermis infested with posts about him, they knew it had to be something special.
The thread was originally created on Team Liquid and attached were a few replays of Spades versus Lucifron and Theognis which were to serve as prove for Spades’s wrongdoing. The forum-goers engaged in a debate whether those evidence were conclusive enough to stigmatize Spades as cheater and soon even high-level pro-gamers offered their standpoints towards the question.
Spades remains innocent until proven guilty, but amidst the squall of accusations, the terran decided to retire from his team Western Wolves, lest they would be negatively represented.
Having this as one of our most read news is no brainer, really. It’s Day[9] and Rob Simpson plus Heart of the Swarm battle report and an imbalance whine on top of the cake.
Writing too many words about a video for an unreleased game seems a pretty nonsensical task so how about we fast forward to that part where the clearly overpowered vipers drag colossi to their deaths?
Just a few days ago, Gameschosun visited The Emperor SlayerS_Boxer to find out when he will be coming back to active playing. Boxer, who went on a break a couple of months ago to treat his shoulder injury, mentioned that he’s likely to return with Heart of the Swarm or maybe even sooner.
The highlight of the article, however, was not the vaguely specified return date but the statement that Boxer might switch from terran to protoss or zerg because recent patches had hit the race with flurry of blows from the nerf-bat.
That stirred the spirits of Boxer’s fans and, naturally, they weren’t that happy. Just like the Brood War bonjwas in transition, things are expected of Boxer race-wise and one of those is to never ever turn back on his Brood War origins. It would be like Bisu abandoning protoss or Flash playing anything but terran, it just doesn’t work that way. The name of the legend and his race are, in fans’ eyes, a union that is unalterable and the thought of Boxer playing something but terran is causing more nervous twitching than the Emperor suspects.
The World Cyber Games are a common guest of this column but there’s nothing we can do about it – this three letter abbreviation still means something in the community even if it’s a tournament that appears once a year to leave a bitter, 240p trail in our mouths.
At the end of June, WCG asked the eSports nerds to vote for their favorite games and we asked you how you felt about having StarCraft 2 as one of the disciplines. We remember that in the short months after 2011’s finals, the feedback about the SC2 tournament and the whole production in general was not the most positive, but our poll now shows that the fanbase is still OK with having SC2 in the World Cyber Games because it’s still a big podium and because the more SC2 content there is, the better.
Out of the GosuGamers' Oven
I promised you, didn’t I? We are back to the topic of “Liquid Rising”, what does it do right, what does it do wrong and if it is actually worth watching.
Our editor Procyonlotor took the heavy burden to strike with the judicial hammer and pass the final sentence. To do that, he pinpointed every problem the documentary had such as not telling the full tales of players like TLO or Jinro and the overall pattern of how “everybody talks about how great everybody else is”.
- “Krukar and Nazgul owed their fans a better view of the team’s struggles. TLO’s optimism and hard work is all nice and good but how far can it take you if you don’t offset them with the challenges he has had to overcome? HayprO may have had a couple of amazing series but that was an exceptional event in the career of an otherwise unexceptional player surrounded by the splendor of his peers. How does HayprO deal with that? We never know. What of Jinro’s slump, which has been going on for years, a topic interesting not just for someone coming into the world of esports fresh but for the fans who have always been behind him? Again there is nothing. Instead there is the story of his punching a wall, a mere point of amusement."
During the MLG weekend in Anaheim we met with Dustin Browder, StarCraft 2’s lead designer, to talk everything that is Heart of the Swarm – new units, balancing, campaign ideas, the multiplayer metagame, etc. It took us a good two hours to transcribe Dustin’s pleasantly erratic answers but in the end of the day it was a reward enough to provide you with one of the best interviews we did in early June.
Dustin about the carrier:
- “I think we’ve shown that the game can work with many of the old units gone and can still be a fun gameplay experience. We went through a lot of that in Wings, removing the medic and the reaver and we got a good game despite that those units are not here. I don’t know, we’re still not sure and we’re waiting for the feedback that will say “OK, here’s a real good reason to keep it”. And then again, it could be nostalgia. We could just leave it in. It bothers me from a design perspective that we would keep something useless in the game justbecause and we didn’t do that throughout WoL. We could’ve had a reaver and a colossus but we needed to make room for the units, we needed to have new cool stuff. Nostalgia is not enough of a reason and have in mind that the reaver had legitimate gameplay, right? Carriers don’t have that. They are just pretty.”
After we finished with Dustin Browder, we moved on to David Kim and we shot a lot of balance questions his way, which are ever the best ingredients for cooking a nice, heated discussion. How fast can David and his team balance out HotS? Aren’t they afraid that some strategies might become obsolete? How are they approaching PvT late-game and what role is the controversial Tempest supposed to play?
- “For example, one of the things we looked closely recently was the PvT issue that was brought up both by the community and the pros. They say that in the mid-game, terran has a huge advantage and protoss almost has no chance, and in the late game it’s the opposite. So we looked into it in great detail and it was true that terran had the mid-game advantage but only about 10% so it’s 60% chance to win mid-game and in the late-game it’s flipped the other way. “
On Sunday we took a break from talking to game designers and in the middle of the heat of the championship we “ambushed” the very vocal TotalBiscuit with questions about Heart of the Swarm, the foreigners at MLG, the KeSPA exhibition tournament and why Socke is so damn good.
About the first question, TotalBiscuit had this to say:
- “The warhound is one of the most boring units I've ever seen. It really is dull. It's an anti-mech unit and it's got auto-aim rockets that once again makes you not have that many micro opportunities. It's nice that it's hopefully going to break the ridiculous tank wars so I like what it represents, I don't like it's implementation. “
Technically, this last piece was not out of our own oven exactly as many media representatives were present at the Q&A session with Ilja Rotelli, including people from Team Liquid, Blizzplanet, SCLegacy, Take.tv, Millenium and more.
For one hour, we and Mr. Rotelli discussed what the World Championship Series is and what it tries to accomplish, why Blizzard are aiming to build a participatory sport and how they're planning planning to create heroes on every level of competition.
We closed the article with an editor’s take spot where we wrote:
- “Talking from the standpoint of a die-hard of competitive gamer ever since I got my first Magic the Gathering deck (it was white and it sucked), creating a layered competitive community is, essentially, a must for a game like StarCraft. Currently, the StarCraft 2 scene has humongous gaps between casual gamers, low- and mid-tier pros and highest level of contenders not only in terms of skill but in terms of connectivity. If Rotelli and his WCS achieve the ambitious goals they have set before themselves, we are looking into pouring concrete into those pits and laying a tangible road to competitive heights. “
![[Op-Ed] Women in competitive gaming – why are there so few?](https://static.gosugamers.net/8f/c9/2c/df69cf93db41c27a46978529e01614f38e0bfb80888132ac95fd3f89fb.jpg?w=1600)
