Some Review of WCS 2013, and my Thoughts on WCS 2014 Plans

In case you did not know, Blizzard released their plans for their World Championship Series (WCS) for two thousand and fourteen. Fans, players and hecklers alike were in anticipation of this news, particularly if any nationality or residency requirements would be introduced to help prevent the mess that was the WCS America region where they top eight throughout three separate seasons had only one person native to North America, (a Canadian) tying it with Australia and Norway for the year. 

Blizzards first step to fixing this problem is allocate the number of spots available for challenger league qualifiers (The tournament that funnels into premier, the highest league.) shall be limited to certain numbers based on nationality. fifty percent of qualifier spots are guaranteed to those who call North America their home, (whether by birth or legal residency) while only two will be available to their main competition, South Koreans, and even those sports are actually wildcards open to anyone. If you are wondering, while 1 Canadian made the top eight over three seasons, eighteen Koreans made their way to the top eight, possessing 75% of the top spots, and always claiming the title and runner up spots. This will probably prevent many Koreans from making their way up to premier league spots, while giving many more North Americans opportunity to attempt to make the jump. 

However, these changes do not affect the seven Korean players already seeded into Premier via their previous seasons performance, nor does it affect the Twelve Koreans who will be looking to make the jump to premier in the challenger league best of five matches that will take place early next year. It is highly likely unless several Koreans are matched against their countrymen that we will still be seeing as many as 16 Koreans in premier league, and with the new format, it will be difficult to remove them. WCS America looks to remain GSL* lite for the time being. 

You will notice I have not mentioned how this change will affect Europe`s own WCS competition. This is because Europe does not have the problem of being totally overrun by Korea. While it is true that the top 4 spots are still very Korean, there has been at least one European in the top 4 each season. There was even a French player who made the finals in season one! (RIP in peace Stephano) 

What has kept Europe safe from the invasion though? Are Europeans just better players and therefore more capable of repelling the coming invaders? while I do think Europe is ahead of North America overall, that's not really what kept them safe. The almighty wall that is Europe to Korea lag has kept them much safer than their own level of play. Harsh lag has made it very difficult for Korean players to surge forth in the 2013 year, and its simply not cost effective for the Korean teams to send their players over to Europe just to attempt to qualify for a tournament now is it? Most of the Koreans that made deep runs in WCS Europe were part of European teams where it made sense to bring them to Europe to play. Only IM.MVP (who won a season) and MVP.duckdeok (also won a season) were members of Korean based teams and also made deep runs into WCS Europe. 

To close my thoughts somewhat randomly. I think Europe looks to be in a good spot for WCS. North America might need some more time before they are able to showcase North American talent. At least there's some hope so the NA players will continue to try. Also did not mention the changes to the Korean region. Going to be good to have GSL back, looking forward to staying up way to late many nights to watch it again. Peace out!

Hopefully this guy and win a tourney soon. Couple of 1st places would solidify him as the best in the world. 

Shoutouts and Feeling Good!

               It has been quite the week let me tell you. Filled with all sorts of experiences and feelings. Some good and some bad, but in an effort to stick to what I was talking about in my last post I am going to be focusing solely on the positive things from my last week. I’ll talk about two three things in particular.

               The smaller one was that I once again returned to the work force back under the employ of the Town of Magrath. Even though I haven’t been paid yet for my work it feels really great to one know that there is income that will be coming in and secondly that I actually have something to do during the day now! Man, you would be surprised what full time work can do for a guy that’s bored, suddenly I hardly feel like I have spare time at all and its awesome!

               The big one that I really want to talk about was the opportunity I had to see one of my absolute best friends and a critical figure of my life get married to the man she loves. Big congratulations to Samara and Scott Dewey! It was so easy to see from the way they look at each other that they have a bond that is simply unbreakable. I’m thrilled that she found someone so good for her. I've probably talked about this before, but I've always felt like I had this “Duty” to ensure that the two Lybbert girls that I knew well ended up happy and with good people for them. I think this because I feel like I owe it to them. In reality any positive attribute I've developed over the past few years could in one way or another be attributed to something they did to help me grow.  I know for a fact that neither one of them realizes what they've done for me over the years. So yeah, it was important for me to see her so happy with Scott and I would be a liar if I told you that I didn't shed a tear during that day. Augh, how embarrassing.

               This isn't quite as long as I wanted so I’ll throw another positive thing that came out of a negative thing. Suffice to say there was drama this week and I got to discover that a friend of mine is a truly outstanding individual. I haven’t had the chance to properly thank Makinna Kristensen for how helpful she was this past week. I most definitely owe her one. 

               Well this was nice, I like all these positive feelings and such. Maybe I should like try to keep this positive vibe going. confirmed, Being positive is good. Jonny Tollestrup 2013. You can quote me on that. 

Unrelated picture of Fiji cause I can.