The rivalries between the states and territories of Australia are some of the most competitive rivalries in sport. Each year the highlight of the sports calendar down under features State vs State competitions across various codes of football, and the StarCraft II State of Origin competition seeks to bring this same competitive rivalry to the online arena. The event was memorable for various reasons, as the BW scene in Australia at the time was all but dead. The community rallied together to make SoO a closely-fought tournament with a massive participation rate, even bringing big names out of retirement such as Legionnaire, and featuring future SC2 stars like Pinder, deth and mOOnGLaDe.
Continuing on from the popular first SoO series in StarCraft: Brood War the competition will see defending champions Queenslandtake on season 1 finalists New South Wales, Victoria, Western Australia, South Australia and newcomers Australian Capital Territory.
Queensland have been historically strong in RTS games in Australia, producing the only internationally recognised BW player in Legionnaire, as well as arguably the best WC3 player mOOnGLaDe. This was accentuated with a convincing win in the finals of season 1, but in SC2 the scene has undergone drastic change. No longer is there a lack of depth in the Australian scene, and participation is at an all-time high with events in the SEA server prospering. Queensland and New South Wales are again title contenders, but Victoria and ACT have stronger teams that previously, and WA and SA are strong enough to field their own teams.
The matches are best of 5 (First to win 3), ProLeague format with an ace match. The lineups are submitted confidentially by team captains and the full lineups are published before the match day. A lineup will consist of four players to play a Bo3, and an ace player who can be any player, even one who has already played. Each of the teams play each other once in the round robin phase, before qualifying for an elimination playoff. All six teams will be involved in the playoffs for the finals with the bottom four seeds playing off in preliminary finals for the right to face the top two in the semi finals.
FaDeEuphoriA, Dan, azunyan, AsGScience, Ezdefault, broseph, AsGNasch, Tsss, PocariSweat, ThrashFluffy
The format was chosen in order to promote a fair competition, and in homage of the Brood War team leagues that inspired this competition. By limiting the series to Bo1 and just four players rather than an all-kill format teams with less depth are given a chance at the title. An additional rule in place to prevent the vastly favoured teams from killing the competition is that QLD and NSW teams cannot use the same lineup twice in the round robin stage of the tournament (it resets for the playoffs). This way they have additional factors to manage and it mitigates the problem of superior depth.
NOTE: If a team cannot find five players they will be allowed to recycle players if they want, for example Hellee may choose to try and all-kill every state.
The event will span a total of seven weeks just like the Masters SoO with games being played on the Saturdays (except for major event clashes, where Friday or Monday will be the preferred day). Times will vary depending on the timing of the Masters SoO:
Schedule
Round
PD Date
BSG Date
1
Saturday 7pm 30th June
Sunday 7pm 1st July
2
Saturday 7pm 14th July
Sunday 7pm 15th July
3
Saturday 7pm 21st July
Sunday 7pm 22nd July
4
Saturday 7pm 29th July
Sunday 7pm 30th July
5
Saturday 7pm 6th August
Sunday 7pm 7th August
Prelim
Saturday 13th August
Sunday 14th August
Semi
Saturday 20th August
Sunday 21st August
Final
Saturday27th August
Sunday28th August
Prizes?
Donators:
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I keep it real bruv.
Last edited by MezjE; Sun, 1st-Jul-2012 at 9:37 AM.
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