[Reere]

WCS - a view from the SEAside
by @sc2paladin

The WCS NA qualifiers were recently conducted, with prominent SEA Player Exile5.PiG unable to make the cut in the hard fought Premier Division. Unfortunately in his two hard fought loses, PiG is now out of the WCS for this season. Exile5.PiG went down 2-0 to Apocalypse of Korea, whilst Petraeus in a stunning display managed to beat quasar, who had early defeated highly touted player JaeDong 2-0. Petreaus then went down 0-2 to aLive. The Premier League division saw many great Korean players participate, including Evil Genius’ Jaedong, and Team Axiom’s Crank. Frenetic Array’s Petraeus was the deepest of the SEA players reaching the RO6 before too falling victim in the winners bracket.

Nv.Rossi went down 0-2 to HwangSin. Bad luck to the players that fell short, but they represented themselves and the region exceptionally well in the revamped WCS. Major congratulations to Nv.mOOnGLaDe for getting a direct invite straight into the group stages. We wish him the best luck.

This is just the beginning of WCS. The ability for Koreans to spread around the world to previously unavailable regions is questionable for the game, some may argue that this will result in WCS being an all Korean event, but if they are the best players in the world, is this really a problem?

Under the old system, Oceania, Korea, America, Europe and others would host regional WCS events. The highest placing players would receive spots in the global WCS event championships with the intent of crowning a World Champion. This would create the illusion of containing the best in the world. However if you take into account the far superior, 8th place Korean may have easily matched it with the best of the Oceania division, thus what we see becomes an uneven distribution of the true world playing talent. The new and revamped pool allows the world to gather the best onto one stage and showcase Starcraft 2 like never before. Though this may mean top 20 players come from the same region.

As viewers we want to see the best from all parts of the world, we want to see Idra play Flash when they normally wouldn’t in tournaments. We want to see Nv.mOOnGLaDe represent the country and prove that he is best out there, that he can fight along with the big guns of the eSport. We want to cheer for our country, our pride, and our own players.

I believe that this new WCS event, whilst bumpy and disorganized, will grow each year. We may be frustrated as Korean after Koreans wins our events and takes trophies off of our region’s best, but we will be rewarded when the championships come around and we see closer games over time in the battle of Korean versus foreigner. Lets give the new WCS event some time and it will pay off in spades! GLHF!


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