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My Thoughts on the WCS Situation
 

I figured that I should write about my side of the situation that happened yesterday during the WCS qualifiers lower bracket finals against Frustration.

Before we started the series, Baldie told us that it would be played as an extended BO5 series with me up 2-0 from our series in the upper bracket. The ruling wasn't contested and I didn't give it another thought and just focused on my upcoming series.

The series played out with Frustration taking the first map and me taking the second, resulting in me winning the extended series. After the series was over, I did my vetoes with NXZ and went afk for a minute to get a drink and think about how I would play out my series against him. When I came back I saw Frustration and a few DynSL players arguing against the extended series ruling in the WCS chat.

It was pointed out that my rematch vs Azure wasn't played in extended series, the result wouldn't have changed if it was but I also didn't realize this at first and it was stated as a mistake and that it should have been. After that, someone pointed out that extended series isn't listed under the WCS qualifier rules.

I was given the option of taking the win and advancing to play NXZ for the last WCS Challenger spot, playing out the series from 1-1, or restarting the whole series. I checked the rules for myself and saw that it was a mistake and that it shouldn't have been extended series in the first place, Baldie explained to me after the series that it was his mistake and he auto piloted into ACL rules which use extended series.

I asked if there were any other series in the tournaments played out using extended series, knowing that the result between Azure and I would have been the same even if we played it out as an extended series and was told that there weren't. So I chose to play it out from 1-1 because then the series would have played out like it was never extended series like it was meant to be, and so that the previous games weren't meaningless. Maybe this was the wrong decision as I saw lots of people saying that the whole series should have been restarted after we played but at the time I thought it was the fairest decision. It looked like people thought I was cheated and ACL made the wrong call because of this but it was my decision to play it out from 1-1.

People argued that Frustration should have contested the ruling before we played the series out, and he should have. But as a player, I know what it's like to be fully focused on the game, especially in a high pressure situation like this with both of us so close to making Challenger. Even I didn't realize that extended series wasn't mentioned to me when I played my rematch against Azure, as all I was thinking of was the series at the time.

As for the pausing and spam, he should have been set to busy and I'll give him the benefit of the doubt and think it was an honest mistake. When he had to pause again due to spam when he played against NXZ, he must have forgotten to set it back to busy because he logged off SC2 for abit, which viewers didn't see and some accused him of cheating because of it.

To all players who play in tournaments in the future, especially streamed tournaments, make sure to set yourself to busy/turn on the option that sets you to busy when you enter a game in the social tab in SC2. This is to protect you from being accused of having people cheat for you by sending you messages about the game and from getting spammed. Also if you have a problem with a ruling, you should contest it before playing.

I'm not mad about how it played out, Frustration won the series fairly. It was a long 2 days and although no one wants to admit it, we're all human and we all make mistakes.