[Descent]

Background image credit to Eddie and SC2SEA.com

Since December 2012, the SEA Starcraft 2 players have been fiercely competing for SEA Power Ranking Points. In a long and arduous journey to reach the top, each player has played dozens of tournaments to have enough points to qualify for the SEA Championship Series. While the prize pool might not be as big as the international events around the world, the prestige that already surrounds the inaugural event is huge.

With players competing in the Masters Cups and the wT Weeklies to vie for points, most Australian and SEA players have faced heavy competition with some players high in the rankings retiring. With the amount of tournaments offering points beginning to wind down, the players are beginning to be more pronounced. The top eight currently features Zerg superstars, Exile 5′s Pig, Avant’s King Kong and Frenetic Array’s Petraeus as well as the currently teamless Arthur, VaLue and nV’s Rossi making up the big name non-Zerg players.

With just under a month remaining in the competition for points and only a handful of tournaments offering points for the chance to enter the 32 player tournament, we sat down with Eddie briefly.

For those unaware, can you say who you are and what the SEA Championship Series is?
Sure. Hi, I’m Eddie. I’m a Starcraft 2 tournament organiser/admin from Melbourne Australia. Most people might know me for running the monthly SEA Masters Cups and GPD Opens. I’ve also run a few Melbourne LANS. And this year I’ve been working on the SEA Power Rankings system and SEA Championships Series.

The SEA Championship Series is a yearly SC2 season + finals series. Players earn points for placing in all partnered tournaments, and these points go towards seeding in following events. The top 32 players at season’s end, will be invited to play in the $1000+ 2 day Grand Final to determine our yearly Champion.

More info on the finals can be found here.

Player leader board/database can be found here.

What was the inspiration behind the SEA Championship Series?
Well it’s sort of a two part answer.

First is I wanted to establish a rankings system, which would reward players for their performances in online tournaments, by giving them points towards seeding in other tournaments. It’s designed so we don’t see ‘uneven’ or ‘unbalanced’ brackets with a higher amount of the top tier players on one side, or having some of the top guys knocking each other out in the earliest rounds. Encouraging tournaments to work together also opens up a lot of lines of communication, which can only help. So I created the SEA Power Rankings/Seeding, which i think has worked extremely well.

Second part, is coming from more of a ‘traditional sports background’, I’ve always been a fan of a yearly season and finals series format, and i thought it would add a lot to the SEA SC2 scene and give the players something extra to play for other than $ prizes. SC2 is a competitive game, so bragging rights for first, top 3, top 5, top 32, etc would appeal to a lot of the guys. It’s also probably as close as we can get to an unbiased opinion of who is the ‘best’, as LANS aren’t a true indication in SEA, given how far spread out everything is.

What do you think of the current status of the Australian and by extension, the SEA Starcraft 2 Scene?
The Australian/SEA scene is definitely improving. There are more opportunities for our players via supported teams, tournaments, and the yearly ACL circuit. We’ve also seen a few more of the boys go overseas this year and get their names out there. Plus we also have some popular non playing exports such as Infeza observing at IEMS, and Maynarde, Duckville + Zepph getting good casting gigs. So it’s great to see people finding their niche in sc2/esports.

The SEA scene is a very tight and talented community, but we are hurt by how far we away from the rest of the world, and online international tournaments are always run at inconvenient times for us. The players just have to keep making the most of the opportunities available to them, and with time more of the world should take notice of what they can do.

What would be your ideal top 4 of the SEA Championship Series?
A balanced race distribution would be great. 1 SEA Zerg, Terran + Protoss, and maybe one ‘foreigner’ to round out 4th. However given it’s a SEA event, odds are we might end up with 4 Zergs But at the end of the day, it will come down to the 4 best players, so great games should be had regardless of who’s there!

Why have you chosen the NA server over using the SEA server?
While the SEA Championship Series is primarily for SEA players, there are international editions of some tournaments (such as every 3rd Masters Cup, and wT majors), which are open to anyone. So we see some non SEA guys playing regularly, and earning points towards a spot amongst the top 32. NA is traditionally the ‘neutral’ server for tournaments, so it’s standard practice and easy for all to access. The ping to NA isn’t an issue for most SEA players either. Having some non SEA guys qualify also adds more interest to the season + finals, and gives our guys more exposure as a result.

The SEA Championship Series is fast approaching and with some of South East Asian best and players from around the world, Eddie is putting together a smashing tournament. The SEA Championship Series is currently scheduled for the end of November or the beginning of December.

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Interview originally posted at: http://esportsaustralia.com

Quick Comments

crAzerk:

this is in no way 'micro' :p