Yeh fuck that.

Almost certainly not going to be throwing more money as blizzard, at least not until the final product is something I'm happy with. I'll keep watching but frankly appealing to the lowest common denominator is something I find fairly disgusting when it comes to the sequel of the best game ever made.

That said, hots did have some standout sets such as;

innovation vs taeja/drg
flash vs ryung
jaedong vs has dear

Will continue to watch proleague/gsl nightly as it's basically the only tournament at a good time for me to watch it, and basically drg was the man in 2011 when I started taking it seriously so I'll probably never miss a game he plays.

Also gsl is being streamed on afreeca.tv, and I think twitch starting from the next season.

 

You have some good points, but Lilbow is somewhat reliant on early game, cheesy style play. I'd love to see him do well, but I don't see him being able to take on the Code S Koreans. Marinelord is a B teamer. I haven't watched drogo's matches.

Personally, I was really impressed by Petraeus this season. Despite his unfortunate handle, his caster control and late game decision making are incredible. While his raw APM isn't quite at the level of the fastest Euro zergs (I think the current generation of Euro Zergs are even faster than Korean Zergs) his playstyle looks absolutely sick when it works out.

In any case, the amount of players playing SC2 has dropped dramatically over the years; and you can see it reflected in the twitch viewership. In fact, more people were watching TotalBiscuit stream SC2VN than total people watching all SC2 streams.

Years ago, SC2 matches drew a large audience (iirc, MVP vs Stephano WCS 2013 had nearly half a million viewers) but today attract a more niche crowd, in fact, I don't think any 2015 match broke even 100k, most not making it over 10k, if that. Without the fanbase, sponsors may decide LoL is a better investment, and without the sponsors, the prize money and the tournament scene becomes unsustainable...

I don't want the SC2 scene to die. I prefer RTS over pretty much anything else.

But yeah, it looks like its dying.

 

It's the infrastructure that influences it. Korea is tiny and close together, which makes it easier for events to include everyone, while in America going to a LAN event can involve traveling hundreds of miles.

Korea has also had years and years to build up their practice houses and the infrastructure that supports players that want to improve themselves. In Korea you can become a B-teamer and live in a team house just to provide practice to the A-teamers. In America we have one team house that just opened a year or two ago and belongs to ROOT.


A lot of people in the beginning of SC2 wanted to support grass roots movements to help support local scenes, but no one really paid much attention to it.

Some may call bullshit, but having a local scene generally improves the skill of those who play there. In Korea, it's all a "local scene." Not necessarily geographically, but just in that they have that cultural mentality that supports esports.

Just look at France. Their players have banded together and compete together incredibly frequently. They have team houses, team support, and focus on French events and LANs. Consequently, there's been a huge surge of French players doing really well internationally, like Lilbow, Marinelord, and Ptitdrogo.

They have their own casting channel, as well, that has various deals to rebroadcast events in French out of their own studio. Esports is doing well over there, and thus we get better players.




---

Sorry about the post breaking, I'm getting a bunch of request timeouts.

 

So... the infrastructure influences it?

 

Everything is dying on the site, for me. Oh god.

I'm so sorry, I don't know what's happening. ;_;

 

Your like, repeating yourself on stutter. One look at your avatar and I imagine Illya doing this as she slowly dies, in her last moments...

"I'm happy, Shirou. Thank you, onii-chan. I-I'm happy, Sh-"

 

I used to play Starcraft before I had kids, and I really enjoyed it. I always used to wish the scene was bigger as well. However, I just think the game is too intense and strategic to draw a mega player base like an MMO or MOBA. It was tiring to study and play to improve, and that just isn't attractive to most gamers now days from what I've seen. They would rather have something more relaxing or easy to play with friends.

 

So, stuff going on in Korea with fixed games, arrests and stuff. YoDa, BoongBoong and some organizers have been found guilty.

I remember watching Yoda play in the past. I liked him. Apparently he was bribed half the time and blackmailed the rest. YoDa is now banned for life.

 

They're all now banned for life, Kespa don't fuck around.

This is pretty huge. Back in 2010, SaviOr was caught match-fixing in the same manner and the entire Brood War scene pretty much collapsed from the scandal. SaviOr is a taboo name, now. Basically Voldemort.

Illegal betting and match-fixing is a big problem in Korea, and there's been speculation about Starcraft II matches in the past. It's such a touchy subject that it's rarely spoken about, though.

Sad times.

A small write-up from a pro-gamer that's been dealing with the brokers and gotten harassed in the past: http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1snmd6d

 

Lilbow got beat down so hard Hydra must be embarrassed to have lost to this guy.

I cringed watching this. How do you fail to 3 all-ins in a row, two of which were not even perfectly executed?

 

What are you on about? It sounds interesting. I always enjoy watching all-ins, cheeses and rushes.

 

I believe he means Lilbow vs Life Blizzcon Ro16. I couldn't find a vod of it yet and I don't know what channel it was streamed on to look at past broadcasts.

Edit: Nevermind, I think this may be it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFkkM0Cd8vk

 

Yep. I watched it live.

First, at the end of WCS Europe, Lilbow was super hyped up as "The world's best non-Korean"

Then, Life is like "Who? My heart goes out to all foriegner fans, they will surely be crushed"

Then, Lilbow gets 3-0'd in like 40 mins by cheese greatly inferior to Hitman cheese; Lilbow made excuses like "I was practicing for LoTV"

Jesus christ man, you're the first non-Korean to win a WCS or any premier league titles since 2013, and one of the few non-koreans to ever win a premier title, and you can't hold off mediocrely executed cheese.

 

It was pathetic.

Lilbow's excuses were even worse. It was blatantly stupid of him to come out and say he hadn't practiced Heart of the Swarm for 2 months even though he was the only non-Korean to make it to Blizzcon.

On the other hand: Hail Hydra!

Gonna have a fun fucking time going to Blizzcon to cheer him on.

 

Sad neither Maru-chan or Cpt. America (Polt) made it to the Ro8, although Polt played some sick, sick games.

Byul got smacked down so hard, where was his previously dominant play? Maru looked even worse, compared to the way he terrorized basically every Protoss and completely bent over Life in the proleague, he just fell apart vs his own teammate.

Please give Rogue and Innovation a few cheers for me.

 

sOs vs Life Grand Final is on right now, and it's fucking brutal.

Edit: 2 base Tempest opening into mass Stalkers to win game 5 for sOs. Holy fuck these games are amazing.

Edit2: Holy shit we're going to game 7. Both of these guys have one Championship under their belts and they're going head to head. This series is awesome. Watch it when you have some time.

Edit3: Game 7 had a fucking Zerg and Baneling rush that sOs fucking repelled even after taking huge damage!

Spoiler

Congratulations to sOs on a hard won victory.

Such an amazing series. Holy fuck. Sc2 history was written today.

 

sOs deserved his win.

I admit I didn't think he'd make it; there was a fuckload of PvP, TvP & ZvP specialists in the pool during the Ro16, but he kicked ass and took names (destroyed Rain, slew Rogue) like it was easy.

I wouldn't say SC history was written on this day, but sOs has really proven his mastery of HoTS.

 

I thought the finals were fairly average personally. I guess sos displayed his mastery of various all-ins and timings, and life did the same, but ultimately it would have been nice to have at least one game not revolve entirely around a micro blunder/build order win.

Ultimately the largest shift in playstyle occured after the widow mine nerf, so I'm glad that hots went out on a match to summarize the recent meta game - a +2 blink all in after safely transitioning out of a cannon rush with minimal damage taken vs a 14 speed baneling all in.

 

Fourth row of the finals. Met a dude from China who was cheering for Life so hard. He was silly and left the arena after the first map to do something, and couldn't get back in because they barred the doors (arena was overflowing).

He snuck around and got past security somehow to make it in time for game 5.


God damn, those games were fantastic to watch. The energry there was just so fucking amazing.

I gave sOs a high five as he walked out to grab the trophy. :3

 

Legacy of the Void Launch Trailer – Legacy

So, this came out three days ago, but wasn't linked here yet for some reason.

One day left until LotV is released!