Holy living **** watch the final game of ASL team battle

The last few games of Stats vs Ryung wound up being pretty good. Looking forward to the finals (though they're too late to watch live )

SSL started last night with a new format that seems pretty cool:
Premier league:
- 10 players, Bo3 round robin format, all players play each other over 9 weeks (5 matches every Monday), each Bo3 is worth ~$900 split between the two players (winner gets a bigger share if it's 2-0 as opposed to 2-1)
- top 6 qualify for premier next season, top 4 make playoffs this season
- bottom 2 are relegated to challenger league next season
- 7th and 8th place go to the SSL version of up & down groups to see if they stay in premier or get relegated

Challenger league:
- two groups of 5, round-robin bo3 format
- top 3 from each group make stage 2, which is one group of 6 round-robin bo5 format
- first place in stage 2 makes premier next season, next 3 make up & down groups
- everyone else has to re-qualify next season

Seems like a cool system, SC2 is alive gaem! The 10 players in premier are...
Z: Byul, Dark, Solar
T: Innovation, Maru, Alive
P: sOs, Patience, Zest, Stats

And challenger (every Saturday, Korean time):
Group 1: Losira, TY, Ryung, Bunny, Classic
Group 2: Jjakji, Gumiho, Byun, Hero, Dear

The qualifiers looked pretty stacked, I noticed Rogue, Soo, Creator, Leenock, and the artist formerly known as Liquid Hero all participated but didn't make it (as well as numerous foreigners, all of whom failboated hard - Major, Noregret, Jim, Kelazhur, and Scarlett all lost in the first round)

12 minutes until Blizz maybe/probably announces BW remastered with a Flash/Jaedong/Bisu/Stork showmatch

www.twitch.tv/gsl

**** yeah

+1

Interested to see what this does to the competitive scene.

Which competitive scene?

Wasn't the SC2 championship still the biggest event of Blizzcon last year?

Or are you talking about Korea?

It's been a long time since I played Brood War. Probably since I got rid of my old PC in 2010. I might even have my old discs somewhere, but I doubt I still have the keys. And I don't have an optical drive on any of my PCs. Oh well, guess I'll just have to wait until it gets released.

I'm looking forward to SC Remastered. I loved that single player campaign and would enjoy playing through it again. There's a pretty good port out there that runs it in the SC2 engine but obviously it's not quite the same.

Seems they aren't touching the core game which is good. But will their be improved observing or broadcasting features? Matchmaking as well would be huge.

TL has an interview with the SC:R devs here, regarding observing they said...

I'm hoping this means something more like "maybe we won't have income graphs" rather than "maybe we won't have supply counts or resource counts for both players", because if they mean the latter, **** that, I'm never getting into watching competitive BW.

Spoiler regarding GSL finals results:

It looks like they are going to give away SC1 for free this week?

Wonder if it will integrate into battle.net, also wonder if it will still have the ability to play custom made games.

Original BW will be free, remastered will be a currently unknown amount, and the two will be compatible if I've been reading it right

There was resource/supply count in some of the old OSL/MSL events (can't remember which) and while it added nothing to the cast for me I can see how it might be useful for the casual player. That said, there's a limit, if they start using production tabs and mining rates so that we don't suddenly have queens/carriers appear, or get told the obvious that one player is almost mined out, then it'll kill the experience

Resource supply count and army Vs drone/probe/scv counts might be cool. That's pretty basic stuff.

See, this sort of thing just seems dumb to me. Seeing what tech players are building towards adds to a much more rich viewing experience compared to "OH MAH GAWD CARRIERS JUST POPPED OUT OF NOWHERE" aka the video game equivalent of a cheap thriller movie. Why on earth would it hurt the experience to know what players are building??? Should the observer also never click on buildings before they're complete, lest they spoil the surprise of what it might be?

Protoss build orders, heavily (but not entirely) influenced by my SSL viewing:
- Mass gates into mass adepts
- Twilight into resonating glaves into mass gates into mass adepts
- Twilight into resonating glaves into DT shrine into warp prism into archon drops into mass adepts
- Stargate into oracles into twilight into resonating glaves into mass adepts (optional: delay mass adepts to do robo + archon drops first)

I think I just described 80% of PvZ games

The instant I see a fleet beacon building in the production tab (or, for that matter, +1 air), I know I can take a piss break as nothing is going to happen for the next five minutes until P has a critical mass of carriers. If the obs waits until he shows two stargates producing something then there is less downtime

Seems better than not knowing you can take a piss break and watching nothing happen in the next 5 minutes regardless. In SC2 seeing that kind of transition coming would bring up the question of, will the other player scout it, and what will their response be? which is interesting to watch and a reason I'm happy to know those things are coming, but maybe that's just a flaw of BW being a billion years old and everything build branch being totally standard now.

Tbh watching BW wouldn't feel right with English commentary.

Not enough Adepts.

My personal favorite at 4100 mmr is the Adept harass into more Adept harass into mass Adept/Phoenix to ensure that literally no unit I produce will be sufficient to take an engagement if their harass was even somewhat successful at inflicting real economic damage.

But if I defend the harass well enough, the Protoss at this level are still bad enough to lose to mostly ling/bane with Muta contain on a superior economy.




I was a true junkie in high school, so it's possible I've sunk more actual playtime into SC and BW than anyone else ITT, but this is not going to "revive" the Brood War scene for anyone.

While I get there are people who play BW and prefer it over SC2, those people are and will continue playing it with updated sprites or not.

This was a great way for Blizzard to cash in on an old beloved franchise, but the sizzle is going to be gone in a week.

A dejected, "Oh yeah, I forgot that _____________" will be the most uttered sentence for most people who buy SCR, and they'll maybe replay the campaign, lose some games on BGH, and call it a fun weekend.

I still have ~$2400 in Blizzard Bucks to spend, so I'll certainly add it to the collection, but Brood War gameplay hasn't aged well for the casuals.

I probably won't play any BW myself, **** 12 unit selection forever and ever, but a better observing/viewing experience where casters can do better than informed guesses as to what's happening in the game might lead me to follow the competitive scene more.

I'll play it a bit i think.