The biggest weekend of Starcraft in 2013! (Part 1 of 3)

I've legitimately thought a lot today about writing a post where I do something beyond just talking about E-sports and in particular talk about things happening in my own life. I know it'd be a crazy stretch to do that, especially on my own personal blog, but hear me out! The thought crossed my mind. Thats all it really did though, no talk about me today, on to video games!

Some of you know this weekend as American thanksgiving. While that is certainly true, this year its actually the busiest weekend for StarCraft II. We have 3 separate major tournaments running with the World Cyber Games trying to remain relevant, the Intel Extreme Master's stop in Singapore where Acer.Scarlett will attempt to win her first premier title, and finally we have one of my personal favorites, the Annual awarding Liduid Hero with a check festival Dreamhack Winter. I'll be giving my own brief thoughts on who I think each of these tournaments are going to play out. We'll start with WCG and then talk about real tournaments tomorrow and Thursday. #ShotsFired

First up the World Cyber Games in Kunshan, China. This is going to be a weird tournament, because we have 4 groups of 7-8 players that are all going to play each person in their group in a Bo3 with only the top two of each group advancing. That means over two days, nearly 100 Bo3 series are going to be played. Thats at least 200 games! That is an ungodly number of games, I feel so sorry for both the casters and the players here, it's going to be grueling to say the least. Especially if you lose the first few and are essentially eliminated half way through the day. There are going to be pointless games being played and that just shows that the tournament format is bad. Never the less, out of each group I feel there are 2 favourites to come out of each of them. Group A will have PartinG and Sen completely out classing the rest of their group. Group B might be the closest, but I feel that France's Dayshi and China's Jim will be advancing, (That doesn't mean I won't be cheering for my fellow Canadian Desrow!) Group C will be dominated by Sora with MacSed following behind, with maybe the American Xenocider making an upset. Group D will be Korea's Soulkey wrecking everyone and the German protoss HasuObs picking up the pieces of the wreckage to advance in 2nd.

Into the playoff stage it will become like every other tournament in that the Koreans will likely dominate. I think PartinG looks to be the most likely to take the whole tournament, Soulkey could also take it, don't be shocked if its those two in the finals.

If I can throw some real talk down about now, WCG is a relic and not really that rel event of a tournament anymore. The only part that seems to matter is the Korean Qualifiers, since none of the foreigners (Non-Koreans) that would have had a even play this anymore. It's just like a charity to for the 3 Koreans that make it to the global finals. If your thinking of watching your first StarCraft Tournament this weekend, don't have it be WCG, not while there are two other very high quality tournaments going on at the same time.

RIP on WCG. Plz. 

Source of picture World Cyper Games. Plz don't sue me.

Lots of Small Rants and Birthdays

               Well it’s been a bit of time since I really sat down to write something, mostly because I haven’t; felt like I really had anything worth saying on the blog, but a good friend of mine in Chrissy Williams asked about it today and since it is her bloody birthday after all I guess I can muster enough motivation to put at least one post together.

               So what to talk about? This is kind of the problem eh? I usually want to write about just one thing but I suppose writing on several things isn’t that bad right?

               So let’s start here. This is the going to be the computer I build later this summer. It`s almost entirely based on this build. I excited to build it. There were a couple of parts I thought about changing up, but ultimately this would be the best bang for my buck. I like my laptop and all, but let’s get serious; you need a desktop to get the performance I want without paying like $2500 or so. This build is about $1000 and should be able to play any game I want and record/stream it with at least passable quality.  So yeah, building a computer like this is like way way way worth it because I’ll save hundreds of dollars that would have had to be spent on a pre-made computer. The only real downside to this is that when it’s done, everyone that I’m related to will think I’m some sort of expert that can fix any of their computer problems for them. Which might be true, but only because I know how to use this site.

               Quick note on my thoughts about Yeezus and Magna Carta Holy Grail. Yeezus not that good. Magna Carta quite an enjoyable listen. It seems to me that Kayne feels like he still needs to prove himself, which he totally doesn’t. Jay-Z though just makes stuff he likes and it sounds like that. Thus fun to listen to. Magna Carta is not a very deep album in all honesty, buts I like listening to it. Don’t take these criticisms to seriously though, cause you know. I’m not really qualified in any way. (Pseudo-intellectualism at its finest!)

               As a final note let’s just briefly mention that the United States government recently recognized players of the League of Legends Championship Series as professional athletes with the same visa privileges as players of the NFL, NBA, NHL and other organizations. This is huge. It means that E-sports is really here to stay. Huge numbers at the Evolution championships this weekend are also another great sign for the community. All in all, I’m super excited for this fall so I can watch The International Three (Dota 2) Season 3 Worlds (League of Legends) and WCS finals at Blizzcon (SC2) Gonna be a huge time for E-sports this fall. One can only hope to see my boys Dignitas make it to Worlds for League. If your intrested in reading more about the whole League players getting recognized as pro athletes you can read the article here. 

So Good!

               

How Real am I?

               Jeez, I am just awful at keeping up with this eh?

               Anyways, let’s get a quick update going here. Since my last post I have become unemployed. I have been unemployed for this entire month. I decided to leave my previous employment for lack of better words, “Scheduling conflicts.” Getting consistent work was a struggle and I just decided that it wasn’t worth the hassle anymore.  It may have been smarter to just stay on until I had another job lined up, but it is what it is.  It’s also been quite the drain on my bank account. I learned how to do my own taxes though, so I guess that’s neat. I also learned how to make Sloppy joes, which sounds really easy and in reality it is pretty easy. Here’s my obligatory picture!

              

You can't really see the actual part I made, but trust me, it was good. 

               The really big thing that this month has given me is an insane amount of time to think. Like its just silly how much thinking I’ve been able to do this last month. There’s still a whole freaking week left in it to! My goodness. One of the really big things I’ve been thinking about though is me. No not in the ego driven oh my look how cool and awesome and good looking I am and everyone who doesn’t see that just doesn’t get me way. Ugh. Goodness that would be just awful. I’ll be frank, I’m not a very positive person to begin with (Shocking!) but the fact of the matter is that the person I’m hardest on has and probably will always be myself. I use the term Self-loathing when I describe it to other people and I often mask it jokes. While I do definitely think that if you don’t know how to laugh at yourself, for better or worse, you are going to have a bad time. For real.  However, just acknowledging your flaws through jokes is not enough. If a person isn’t even trying to fix those flaws with themselves and just continues to just joke about it, I kind of find it disgusting. This sucks, because I’ve been feeling like I have been like that for a while now. I’m making so little effort to really move forward with my life right now. I refuse to adopt an exercise schedule simply because of my laziness. I’ve been falling back on calling out people when they are being stupid, which is something I actually liked about myself. I wasn’t afraid to tell someone that what they were doing isn’t smart at all. I really haven’t been doing that. I’m working on that though, so I guess it’s not a total loss there. I’ve continually allowed my diet to remain absolutely abysmal. I’m not looking for new and interesting music, just listening to the same stuff over and over. The only thing I really have going for me right now is that I am in fact going to be attending school in the fall. As my sister so eloquently put it, “Yay for real life plans!” Lastly I feel like I’ve totally lost touch with what I can do with my sarcasm. I used to be able to pretty accurately pin down what jokes I could or could not make without legitimately upsetting someone. I just feel like I cross the line every bleeding time right now

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               I guess I just needed to really take the time to call myself out on what a miserable human being I’ve been for the past few months. The goals I made for the summer were supposed to change that. I guess I’m really down right now because it’s really the first time that I’ve looked back and thought, “Man that guy from 6 months ago wasn’t such an idiot.” To clarify, I’ve always felt like I’ve made good progress as a person every few months and I just don’t feel like I have these last few. Only thing to do though is just step my game up, moping about it on the interenet doesn’t change anything.