[nirvAnA]

---

SC2SEA Updates!

---

So much had happened during the last fortnight, it was hard to fit everything in one concise wrap up. Therefore, this week we present our very first SC2SEA JUMBO newsletter!


RAWRRR!

+ [Site Updates] +

Updates from a few of the SC2SEA tech team!



The site went through a lot of improvements over the last 2 weeks, implemented by paperclip and nirvAnA. Here's a list of some the bigger changes.

1. New layout design! - No secret here! Over the last weeks many tweaks have been made here and there, with the overall aim of producing a cleaner and more professional look. The site layout now is more systematic with proper category headers dividing the forums and the css in the theme has been made more consistent. The vertical scrolling has been fixed for some resolutions. Users also have the option to select from 1 of 5 color themes. There are still more tweaks to be made in this area so we get the best out of each theme. Have a suggestion? Post it in the color thread here! The site's silver, pink and black theme were actually implemented after being suggested by the community! (Thanks to the community for the suggestions)

2. Introducing Prefixes! - From now on, posts in many forums can be "categorized" with an appropriate prefix for the forum section its in. For example, threads in the strategy forums can be prefixed/tagged with "PvP", "ZvP", "T" threads in clan forums can be tagged mGG, ToR, TCP etc and of course in the news forums they can be tagged "World News", "SEA News" ACL, WCS, etc. In the long term, it will make the site a lot more organised and it will be easier to find similar threads as clicking on the prefixes will take you directly to a page with all other posts with that tag. For now the prefixes are not displayed in the chatbox notifications when someone posts a reply but that will be fixed soon. Also, there are thousands of threads I need to go through before most of the forums are properly prefixed but all this should be done within a week. Let me know any prefixes I should be adding! (Thanks paperclip for the prefix suggestion)


Remember to select a prefix for new threads now!

3. New Forums! - There are now "DotA 2 / LoL Moba", Guild Wars 2 / MMO and Other Game forums. (Thanks to the community for the suggestion)

4. A display "All" feature in threads - Clicking it will display every post in the thread on one page, great for catching up on threads where you were late to the party. (Thanks riiChard for the suggestion)

5. Two prominent sticky thread sections - one for general threads and one for major tournaments. The most used stuff are now easily accessible. (Thanks Delraich for the suggestion)

6. New search functionality - Search functionality has been improved, you will now be able to see results as you type in the words in the search box. (Thanks Bash for the suggestion)

7. Misc - Site encouragement banners have been improved, and paperclip has helped fix most of the blog related issues.

For those who feel the site has not being up to expectations design wise, I am solely responsible for that and apologize for its short comings. When I first started this site it was only meant to be a hobby and I had very limited experience and was never professionally trained in web development. I've been spending my free time teaching myself so I could improve the site and I was also very fortunate to have kind volunteer coders like paperclip and veteris help along the way. Over the last 2 years the site has been constantly improving and we hope to continue that trend. If you have any suggestions, as always post in the site improvement thread and we will look into it. Nearly every improvement made was the result of a suggestion from the community!

---

Introducing Friends of SC2SEA!

---

+ [Meet our Friends!] +

A simple section has been added on the right that makes it easier to access popular starcraft 2 sites - TL, liquidpedia, SCRanks and organisations we have worked with - Team Immunity, ACL & CyAC. I would also like to take this time to feature the other two sites we have added as friends of SC2SEA - noVEde and AftershockPC.com




noVEdee is a Melbourne based eSports portal with an Australian focus, made up of a skilled team of gaming journalists. They publish news daily, and produce up to five shows every week covering a wide of gaming related news, from PC to Xbox to Handheld games. Just recently, they did a splendid write up of the Starcraft 2 ACL Melbourne finals entitled "The Rise of Tt.PiG" which I would recommend checking out if you haven't already!




AftershockPC is a new custom gaming laptop company / LAN shop in Singapore set up by one of SC2SEA.com's founders, aLtSheepy. Ironically, sheepy doesn't even post much on SC2SEA but when he does, its always in a IT / gaming related thread, recommending people the correct CPU components to get according to their needs. Hardware has always been his passion (he has built over 200 computers for random WoW guild mates) and it was always his dream to open a shop where customers could thoroughly test the computers they wanted to buy and then get the correct advice on what they needed.

So what does this mean for SC2SEA community? Well first of all sheepy will be opening an official technical assistance thread on SC2SEA shortly, where anyone can post and ask questions about desktop / laptop issues or advice. Next, sheepy plans to hold a serious of tournaments over many different games (SC2/LoL, etc) in his LAN shop for the Singapore gaming community. We are greatly lacking an eSports homebase in Singapore so I hope this will help that change. SC2SEA will be proud to partner with them hosting online Starcraft 2 events, with the finals be played live at the LAN. There are more future events planned such as a weekend of free coaching where any Singaporean can come down to receive free Starcraft 2 coaching live in the flesh! More details will be announced later when the LAN portion of the shop opens later this month! For now, you can check out their web site here, the show rooms to test PCs and have just opened. Good luck sheepy and congrats on your new business!

---

Member of the Month Achievements

---

+ [This Months Winners] +

July's New Member of the Month!:
Justice!

There will be not one but two New members of the month in this write up!

The first is Justice , a Melbourne resident who had joined SC2SEA way back in March 2011 and has been to barcrafts and had recently visited ACL as a spectator over the weekend. He had encountered some negative experience on battle.net and therefore never really got involved with the SEA community. He shares his experience as an 'outsider' and brings up very strong points we can look into, in a very well written post. His last sentence is the coolest I have seen in a while. We hope you do become a part of our community Justice, yes there are some bad apples in the community but remember there are also always gonna be awesome guys like you around!

+ [Justice sharing his experience] +

Hi!

I've been a member of this website for a while but I've never really found a decent opportunity to join in with the community, I guess the whole thing seemed fairly intimidating.

I attended the ACL Melbourne event on the weekend (Sunday) as a spectator and have since decided that I really want to be a part of the SEA E-Sports community.

I just wanted to post my experiences here as an 'outsider', so hopefully it might help you guys as leading figures in the SEA community get through to more people like me and eventually make the community grow.

My history is this really. I'm been in to competitive games for a long long time but never RTS. I used to play a lot of Counter-Strike and Battlefield and most shooters. I always loved the style of StarCraft and wanted to play, but was terrible at all things RTS. I never understood the concept of macro and didn't understand how battling the interface of a game was fun Blah blah blah I saw some footage of SC2 beta and pretty much decided I wanted to actually get not terrible at this game regardless of how much of a slow push it was gonna be.

It was a really slow transition. SC2 comes out and i get placed bronze like a ******* champion and stay in there for a season or two but then slowly work my way up through to platinum. At this stage it was all simple macro and basic mechanics, I understood the basics but knew that if I wanted to push in to Diamond and higher I'd need some more efficient builds and regular practice SO I VENTURED TO THE INTERNET! Discovering TeamLiquid was great, but I didn't like the idea of joining a large international community and preferred something more local.

I found some streams and discovered some Australians played and I was like shit yeah there's an Aussie community! I watched Mafia stream cause he seemed pretty cool and I found iaguz who was great to watch because I played Terran. I'd talk in chat a bit and ask questions, mostly interacting with the other viewers. This is for me where it started to get interesting.

More often than not, a question asked would result in sarcastic replies and insults. I once somehow got invited to spectate a clan war whom I wont mention the names of because it's not really that important and I realise that this was just a random scrim between two teams who are just having fun, but the reaction to an outsider sitting in a spectator slot was unbelievably negative. "who the **** is ____" "get out" "lol scrub". The conversations were incredibly immature and beyond any norms of standard social fun making. I realise that I was in the middle of two social groups and i don't expect everyone to be stoic and super professional, but it did make me never want to be apart of that again, nor have anything to do with particular players of particular teams. I've continued to watch streams, copy builds and occasionally interact with stream viewers, but it's still ridiculous the amount of snide and immature remarks from people in the chats of these streams not only from average viewers but recognisable names of players from teams we all know.

I'd pretty much decided to shelve the idea of participating in the SEA community by then. It was never a pleasant experience and the whole concept was intimidating for someone who wasn't i guess up to par with the current incrowd or any decent at the game to earn some form of respect from tournament results.

I moved to Melbourne almost a year ago now from Tasmania and attended the Silicon Sports barcrafts at The Exchange and met a few people there, the people I did interact with were pretty nice and it's rekindled my interest in the SEA community. I knew there were tourneys going on around Melbourne every now and again and wanted to either spectate or participate but never really found an opportunity. I stumbled upon a facebook repost about ACL and discovered that was on last weekend and thought of attending. I didn't realise the production value was so high until I tuned in on Saturday and was pleasantly surprised. Talking to people in the chat everyone was really nice and encouraging of coming down to the event so I shuffled some things around at work and gave myself Sunday off so I could come down. I headed down and met up with a mate and started watching some games, mostly on the main screen and then watching some of the players play (iaguz is a monster!). I never really found opportunity to talk to any of the people competing or much of the staff, everyone looked super busy and I didn't want to interrupt any of that. Everyone seemed really happy and nice enough to approach, but I just didn't want to interrupt anyone. I had a really great time and really look forward to the next time ACL is in Melbourne (I want to compete in the open bracket and get knocked out 2-0 first game like a boss) and I can't wait to attend the BarCraft GSL and GSTL finals weekend coming up soon.

I feel like this community is incredibly difficult to become a useful part of and can become insanely huge if it is worked and marketed the right way. I'm not really sure how that is but I know want to be a part of it and I try to promote this stuff as well

This post has trailed off a bit and I've talked a lot of garbage. I'm not even sure if this wall of text is going to be of any use but HEY, I posted on this forum and might continue in future. I'm reading back through what I wrote and the whole thing is a bit messy, I guess I just wanted to get those negative experiences i had a while back off my chest and onto these forums.

Anyways.

This is my cool story, you can call me bro.

July's New Member of the Month!:
Kablamo!

The second award winner is Kablamo another Melbourne player who also joined SC2SEA in March, 2011 but has never really being involved in our community. He shares his experience being a lurker here and the stuff that has held him back from contributing to the scene. He had also made a really cool video you will see later, staring inFeZa.

+ [Kablamo shares his story] +

These are just my personal opinions that I have witnessed first hand.

I definitely feel like there is that "old boys club" to the SC2SEA scene, but I feel like it is a bit more than that. The impression I have gotten is that the vast majority of community members here think of themselves as FAR more important than they really are, to put things bluntly. I've noticed that unless something is going to directly benefit a person they see helping someone else as a waste of their time, despite how much everyone proclaims to want to help the "scene grow", it's more along the lines of helping the "scene grow when it benefits me".

I've wanted to lend my talents to helping this scene out for along time, unfortunately at every step people from the community have always done something rude or straight up dick-ish that has made me want to do anything BUT help the community.

The video I released last week was originally going to be showcasing the SEA scene, in particular the Australian scene, Because of many reasons the video changed and became what it was released as... luckily I think it turned out for the better, but that's just me.
EDIT: The video mentioned can be found at: http://www.sc2sea.com/showthread.php?t=5244

Obviously I don't mean everyone in the community is like this, but unfortunately in my experience the vast majority of people have been. Which really does suck. If it has happened to me in my attempts to create content for people I'm willing to bet it's happened to other more important people as well. If we want this community to grow into something truly amazing, something self sustaining, and something we can all be proud of then the first step we must take is to have a major change in our collective attitudes.

P.S I'm still open for producing video content for this community, if anyone has any potential projects you'd like to discuss shoot me a PM!

(Hope this was coherent! I kinda just wrote it up all over the place!)

---

I feel their stories really echo what was said earlier by PiG and others in the thread. A lot of the site's values were created with the view of growing the scene and creating a friendly warm environment that would help in that growth and encourage members to be part of the community. As such the site has always had an aversion to bming, trolling, elitist attitudes, bullying and attacks on people as it just turns people away. These were two very real people who shared their experience of just that.

And it really saddens me when after moderators carry out disciplinary actions to prevent that sort of behavior, some try to spin it like we're irrationally trying to achieve an idealistic utopia with everyone holding hands and singing Kumbya. That is obviously not we are after, all we want is for members to treat one another respectfully without the immaturity that has pushed these two members away. The PiG thread was a perfect example where people were for the most part disagreeing but doing it civilly. That lead to one of the most constructive threads we have seen on SC2SEA in a long time and I hope it continues this way in the future.

Congrats to Justice and Kblamo for winning the July new members of the Month awards. There will be no quality poster of the month award for this edition.

---

Scene Coverage & Videos

---

+ [Scene Video Coverage] +

SEA Podcast
Systems show features Benji as a guest this week!

Support the Podcast on: Reddit! Team Liquid! Twitter!

SEA Team transfers
UHF's videos which he had blogged about earlier nicely sum up the player transfers that took place recently. And there were plenty!

Bonus: If you haven't seen New Member of the Month Kablamo's video yet, you need to now! With help from inFeZa who did the voiceovers, he worked on it with the goal of helping explain Starcraft 2 to people who have never heard or seen it before.

---

Hottest SC2SEA Threads

---

+ [Threads of the week!] +

Winner!!: Response to FXOBoss. And How we can further grow. - By TtPiG

The mother of threads this week. IMO iaguz sums it up best.

".. we all have our small roles. I am a player. I have to play and be entertaining and hopefully if I do that well enough it works. Ditto for all the players, all the casters and all the manager folk and all the other people. It's one thing to think about solutions to problems, but **** it. You have your roles. It's simple. Just do that and do it well."

Organisers - Put egos and personal differences aside, imo our community is way too small for the amount of drama we generate. Communicate with each other respectfully - snarky remarks to each other on the forum should not be the only form of communication that exists.
Players - Represent SEA well! Both on and off the game. I am so proud we will be represented by GLaDe and PiG at IEM in Germany, imo the both have them have always been the perfect role models for our scene.
The Casuals- Get your friends playing the game! Talk about the game! Introduce people to SC2SEA! See a Reddit thread about SEA? Upvote it! Here is one about PiG and GLaDe right here! See a SEA tournament on TL? BUMP IT! Here is the System show thread, which will be listed on TL! Is there a Facebook group in your city? JOIN IT! We can all play a part in helping to develop the scene, even the smallest actions help.

Other threads
My MLG Anaheim experience - By IceBurg85
The Mafia forum game is back! round 8 has started
RuineD Mech Replay Pack
[PICS] Dot's SC2 photos
[PICS] RFLAN - Photo's
Win an autographed GAMECOM Nv Hoodie!
Steam Summer Sale has Begun!
Everything I know about Terran, By ToRPeek
[ACL] Melbourne Interviews & Rebroadcasts

---

Tournament Recap

---

+ [Completed Tournaments] +

---

Major Tournaments

---

GESC Winner: MfTargA
Organized by SC2SEA & Team Immunity. Casted by Team Immunity http://www.own3d.tv/TeamImmunity
Nv.mOOnGLaDe comes back from the Loser's bracket and takes MfTargA to a nail biting last 6th game! The Norwegian student ended scooping up $2,500 - the biggest cash payout in a long time.

ACL Melbourne Winner: TtPiG
Organized by Dox & ACL Casted by Maynarde & Various Pros http://www.twitch.tv/ACLPro
A recap of the finals by noVEde.com can be seen here. Both the GESC and ACL tournaments came down to the very last game of the series and no words can do them justice. You have to watch the games yourself!

Also of notable mention is iM Light who represented the Protoss races proudly being the only non-zerg to finish in the Top 4 of the last 2 ACLs. Entire ACL Replay Pack. More ACL Coverage.

Tokyo Game Show Updates
The Vietnam and Singapore qualifier dates have been announced. RedArchon is crowned TGS Champion of Thailand, beating Hadez 3-0. mOOnGLaDe plays Mafia to decide the Australia champion this Sunday at 5pm AEST.

This also goes to show how closely contested the top spots are in Australia, having four different winners in four different Major competitions, including GoSutgun's win in the ASUS Gamespot.

ESL Asia qualifiers: Winners mOOnGLaDe & TtPiG
SEA have proven themselves to be the stronger region! We earn two spots to Cologne, IEM Gamescom 2012 after mOOnGLaDe and PiG win the regional Asia Qualifier finals shared with China.

WCS Australia Announces 4 international casters: Who will they be? A hype thread has started, see if you can solve it before the news gets announced tomorrow!

---

Other Tournaments

---

RF Lan Perth Winner: iM yang

Eve Cup #2 Winner: iM Mafia
Organized by Team Eve Casted by Stitch and RandomRice http://www.own3d.tv/teameve

Ninth Legion Tournament Winner: Era
Organized by www.com.au

---

SC2SEA Regular Tournaments

---

Every Monday - wT Weeklies: Last Winner - TigerSPR wT#22
Organized by Flamga, streamed by Baldie www.twitch.tv/baldie24 sponsoerd by Cute & Flamga

Every Saturday - BSG Open: Last Winner - Tidal BSG#57
Organized by AsylumofSouls & Asrathiel, streamed by ToRVenom & breadfan http://www.twitch.tv/venom2142

Every Sunday - GPDs: Last Winner - FaDeDante GPD#56
Organized by Eddie, streamed by duckvillelol http://www.twitch.tv/duckvillelol

State of Origins Week - On Haitus Round 3 will resume in about 2 weeks!
Organized by deL

State of Origins Week BSG 3!
Organized by CombatEZ

Did I miss something you would like included? Send me a PM.