not sure if you're saying this is why sc died but i don't agree if so

it's way more about the whole kespa situation

I love TotalBiscuit but the reason why he doesn't write articles because he isn't a very talented writer.

I think Blizzard got super close to getting it right. The one thing missing is creating some sort of opportunity to getting non-foreigners to participate in Korean leagues. Like Blizzard sets up a 8-person house in Korea and a cheap online tournament determines who goes. Once there there could be 2 direct foreigner seeds into Code S and the rest are seeded into Code A. The ones that fall out of Code A their spots are up for grabs again with a new online tournament. I'm sure people will hate this proposal but to me the system they announced + this would've been awesome.

Korea is getting rekt by France in the NW finals right now.

Rofl Korea gets 5-0'd by a foreign Terran

I almost wonder if Korea intentionally lost for some reason because they were not happy with the tournament organization or something. Yea yea it's 7 AM in Korea but they knew about this schedule for weeks and even a sleep deprived Innovation doesn't do those ridiculously stupid drops.

Marinelord played great but Korea made major mistakes every match we don't usually see.

Anyway, don't want to ruin the moment I guess. The foreign hype is real!

What in particular do you like about it? I was randomly thinking today about things like "X player's SICK RUN through MLG City Y" that we remember and how it won't mean anything anymore when that SICK RUN is through dudes like Mana and Lilbow instead of Bomber and Leenock.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/star...ll-time-part-2

TL now doing a GOAT foreigner list. Top 5 is pretty cut and dry now IMO with:

1. Stephano
2. Naniwa
3. Snute
4. Scarlett
5. Huk

No one else left has any business anywhere near the top 5. Personally I would have put Idra in top 5 instead of Huk, though.

Correct me if I'm wrong but there will only be 3 WCS Circuit events where Koreans are effectively banned from playing right? The rest Koreans will be able to enter just fine, maybe in limited numbers in some but I expect them to be well-represented in most others.

I agree with Blizzard that there was too much content in the SC2 scene and that it was probably holding back growth. I also agree that the 2 most exciting types of content are:

*The months-long Korean tournaments where the best of the best gameplay is shown
*The events where large crowds gather to watch a fast-paced tournament over the course of a couple of days

WCS Europe/America/WCS non-Korea were just kind of boring overall imo. Seeing more weekend tournaments is something I am very happy about. I also think that the new system will allow for three important things to happen that are good for the scene long term:

*SC2 really needs more good streamers. I hope that now that people need to worry less about the schedule of produced SC2 content being so crazy-full that more streamers will step up.

*I hope that with the new system more foreigners go train in Korea and maybe even try to participate in GSL.

*I think the new system will help in creating more interesting storylines with how the Blizzcon rules have changed and once again with the new focus on weekend-long tournaments. You can say what you want but non-Korean storylines were non-existant in 2015 except for Lilbow and that ended up being an absolutely terrible storyline. I agree that that this is because non-Koreans simply sucked but a large part of the scene still love a good non-Korean storyline. It is probably also what we need if we want this esport to still be around in 5 years.

Idra>Jinro>Huk should be 5-7 imo.

My understanding was that...
- the 11 "WCS Circuit" events are all no-Koreans-allowed
- there is the option for tournament organizers to put on "WCS Global" events, which would give WCS points and allow both foreigners and Koreans, but Blizzard requires at least a $50k prize pool for these events and there's a huge disincentive to put these on when you consider that you could instead put together a $25k no-Koreans tournament and apply for Blizzard to give you $25k more

As of right now, I don't believe any WCS Global events are scheduled yet in 2016.

I think with the new system this is even less likely to happen than before. There's no incentive to do so. Foreign tournaments represent much easier money for foreigners, now that most of the tournaments they can play in are Korean-free.

We'll see how that goes - will 2016 be any better, storyline-wise, if the 8 foreigners who make Blizzcon get stomped by the 8 best Koreans in the first round? Maybe, maybe not.

idra below scarlett is hilarious

Code A starts tonight, ~14 hours from now (1:30am Pacific)! TL has a preview.

ByuL vs aLive
Sorry vs Cure
Dream vs HyuN

lol, apparently SSL started last night and I didn't even know. They aren't broadcasting on Twitch!!

ah, they've actually made the prize pool non-aidsy, this is nice

also what the living **** at that draw, hope people like mirrors

Reading up on the SSL format this year, it seems like it's just a really bad tournament now?

Recall that last year, even though it's technically a 16 player tournament, we still had the "challenger league" with 24 players going head to head in 12 bo5s to see who would get the 12 new spots in the main league. Then the ro16 was a group stage, so we got five bo3s per group.

This season, there was no challenger league (they just had offline qualifiers to select the 16 players in the main event) and the ro16 is - wait for it - a straight up elimination bracket with best of 3 matches. So the entire round of 16 has gone from 40 bo3s to 16, and we lost challenger league.

Yuck.

so if they streamed the qualifiers, you'd be ok with that?

yeah, we'd all like to have long enough series to remove some variance, but it's a really tight schedule - gsl qualification is going on forever, proleague ought to be starting soon as well. it's double elim from the semis onwards (which actually gives an effective 3rd/4th place playoff that has meaning, but they pay the same amount) so you've got important decent length games when it counts

That still wouldn't be ideal because the qualifiers are a cluster**** live tournament where basically everyone's playing at the same time - ideally they would have "qualified" enough people to have a full on challenger round like they used to.

It can't be that tight, they only have two seasons all year long ffs.

I didn't realize about the double elimination thing, that is a pretty cool improvement and it will be nice to see the best players play more.

i think you underestimate the level of preparation that goes into the game. at least with BW, players would practice one specific map for proleague and not do a great deal else unless they had a forthcoming OSL/MSL matchup, in which case they'd have more than one map, but would at least not have so many potential matchups to look at. having it as a best of 5 instead of a best of three increases the workload by 66% (i assume the map pool isn't so shallow that they just have four to choose from and repeat if it goes 2-2) with a resulting lower quality of game. i would guess korean sc2 houses work in a fairly similar way. they have some time because proleague hasn't started yet, but i would imagine that if it was bo5 straight away and with it being a less important event than gsl that you'd have a lot of strategic play

I lose every TvZ when zerg goes ultra, even I'f i've been keeping up / ahead on macro and upgrades. I can defend with ghosts but taking further bases or getting map control is too hard and they have enough bank just to switch corruptor brood lord anyway

I hate that zerg just has to A move them once and after they can do do wahtever they want with their APM but as soon as Ultras are in play Terran has to constantly put **** loads of APM into the micro

how you guys masters + dealing with TvZ on more macro orientated maps?

Kind of like how Terran can set + forget liberators or widow mines and then Zerg has to put in 5x the APM to deal with them?

I guess 'kind of like that' but only to a teenth of the extent... Liberators and wido mines need alot more apm than ultras, they can just be avoided after all. Ultras chase you down and chomp you up and every marine you have becomes worthless if they ahve armour upgrade.

i'm no expert, but i believe if such situation arises, one should micro his macro

Run your army back into liberation zones then and the ultras will have to avoid them

how many liberator, i said im ok defending but zerg can attack where they want it seems if i push out to expand they go into the main and its not hard to avoid liberators plus they just go corruptor. maybe its better just to 3base 22 all in every time

Finally the marauder nerf that brings FishNoob's unstoppable builds to their knees!