The Five Things I'm Most Excited About in 2014.

Alright so it's the end of the year about and that means its time to makes lists. There really isn't a whole lot to be said on that subject, its just a thing that happens every year and we all seems to enjoy it so without further stalling, let's talk about the five things I'm most excited about in the year 2014. These aren't listed in any particular order by the way.

Number 1. Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I absolutely loved this first Captain America movie, I loved The Avengers, and the trailer looks friggen cool. So yeah, put me down for one ticket to this hype train! The Winter Soldier looks to me like it's going to be a great film, the trailer led me to think that the movie will have a bit more of an "espionage" feel to it and frankly that makes me excited. With the Bourne movies having lost their shine with the absence of Matt Damon and you know Jason Bourne, were left with only Bond for solid spy movies. While I don't think Captain America will spawn into a spy movie franchise, I do think it will serve as great filler until another good one comes out. You know what I mean?

I thought since I talked about the trailer a bunch I should have it available. 

Number 2. The return of viOLet to the major StarCraft II tournament circuit. I'm generally pretty excited about anything StarCraft related, but this one I'm hyped about. viOLet went nearly the entire year without making any appearances due to being consistently denied a visa to the United States, now though he has been granted a P-1A visa, the same kind issued to professional athletes, he's good to go for the next five years. 2012 was a great year for viOLet, he performed well in tournaments, and established himself as a good personality in the scene which got him a lot of support from North American and European fans. It would have been spectacular to have seen him continue on this path in 2013, but I'll settle for 2014. He's got everything he needs to become an extremely popular and skilled player in the StarCraft scene and I eagerly look forward to seeing where he goes. Hopefully a smart team decides to pick him up as well.

Number 3. The return of many of my high school friends from their missions. There isn't a whole lot of detail to go into here. There's Brad, Tyler, Dillon, Corbin, Zach, Jason and Lysa. Seven people I enjoy the company of that I will be able to enjoy their company again. That is something to look forward to if nothing else.

Number 4. The return of the League of Legends Championship series. (LCS)  I love the LCS. It's very well produced, the casting crew are knowledgeable and entertaining, and above all else, its high level league of legends games delivered to me at a time that doesn't absolutely destroy my sleep schedule. (I'm looking at you OGN.) Over the course of this first split in 2014 I'll be writing my own personal previews for some of the games in the LCS. The focus will be around Dignitas and CLG games because those are the two teams I have a personal bias towards. I don't think that Dig and CLG are going to be best teams though. Not at all. It seems obvious to me that Cloud 9 and Team Solo Mid are looking very very strong. Cloud 9's games against Fnatic at the Battle of the Atlantic event over this last month were particularly telling of their strength. That only speaks for the beginning of the split, nearly every other team has the "untapped power" to become a contender for best team in NA. It's going to be a great season and you should tune in at twitch.tv/riotgames (Riot plz give me moneyz.)

Number 5. Idk, list just look better when they are multiples of 5 so I thought there should be five items. Sorry to dissapoint if you wanted another one, but I got nothing right now. At least nothing that I could do a write up about.

Your face when there are only 4 things on the list. 

Why I Stopped Playing Competitive Games.

Let's talk burnout. I don't really know if this is a term used like it is with gamers, but burnout is pretty straight forward, you play one game a lot over an extended period of time and then you don't enjoy it like you did when you started playing and that causes you to stop. Occasionally you burnout on a game so badly that you never play it again. Most of the time it's just temporary lasting from a month or two to as long as several years before you return to a game. I'm really burnt out when it comes to League of Legends, I honestly can't even boot the program up and stay in a good mood. Nothing about playing the game is fun for me right now. I still absolutely love watching League be played at a professional level though, but I can't play it. To extend that even further I really haven't enjoyed playing StarCraft II as much lately either, even though I feel like I'm at a peak of sorts with my level of enjoyment as a viewer. I think right now it'll be good for me to simply take a step back from playing and focus on being a more informed viewer. That means goals, which I've been really bloody awful at finishing on this blog, but you gotta keep trying ya know?

So the new goal will be to reach the point as a viewer that I can write informed and decent quality preview and review pieces on the 2014 Season of StarCraft World Championship Series (WCS) and League of Legends Championship Series. (LCS) In order to accomplish this I'm going to have to become a little more focused on what I watch in terms of streams. I think for League I should be focusing on watching a decent amount of at least one professional in each of the five positions and for StarCraft a pro for each of the races.

So basically in summary, I'm not going to really be playing games right now, but rather focus on getting better at writing pieces for Esports which I'll post up here. I'll write another post "soon" TM where I'll go into detail about the streamers I'll be focusing on. Until then, good luck and have fun peeps!

The busiest week of StarCraft II! Part 3!

So I didn't realize that Dreamhack started very early this morning. So all of the group stage games have been played out, so I guess we'll just talk about the results and how the bracket stages will be played out from there.

Group A: NaNiwa managed to take 2nd place in the group over Hyun, which I did not expect, otherwise pretty much exactly how I thought it would go down. RIP on Lucifron Hype.

Group B: The two notable things that happened here was Polt's very lackluster performance and JYP performing very very well. JYP hasn't had a noticeable result in a long time and has been very quiet. I didn't think he could stand up to the powerhouses of this group, but he came to play. Polt didn't. For whatever reason Polt only seems capable of playing his best in WCS America and MLG. Events in Europe or Korea seem to give him a lot of trouble. That is a weird mental block to have for a native Korean.

Group C: This group went pretty much as I expected it to. Taeja is an absolute beast. I thought sOs would give him more trouble, like that he would beat him, but I can't be surprised at this result either. INoVation's stellar TvT is probably the biggest surprise of the group.
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Group D: This group literally played out exactly like I thought it would. Jaedong is an unstoppable monster outside of finals and Hero acquires magical powers at DreamHack Winter so their stellar performances are 100% expected. Would've been nice to see Welmu there, he could've maybe shaken things up a bit, or at least actually made Goswser actually work to advance.

Moving right along to the bracket stage games, I'll only highlight the ones I'm interested in. Starting with the Team Liquid team kill of Taeja and Hero. Why do these tournaments insist on pitting these two against each other constantly? just a shame. I expect Taeja to win here and then have Hero make a huge run in the Loser's bracket. Next Jaedong and INoVation. It should be a total clash of the titans sort of thing, but I really think Jaedong has this won, INoVation's TvZ just isn't as dominant as it once was.

Taking a trip down to the Loser's bracket we have Polt and Hyun. One of these two is going straight out of the tournament. Wow. That is just how stacked this tourney is. Clash of the WCS America  titans, if Polt can somehow convince himself that he's actually playing in the NASL Santa Monica studio and not Stockholm I think he'll win convincingly. Lastly we have TLO and JYP. I want both of these guys to make deep runs in this tournament, but one must end their journey now. Based on how the group stage games went... Well both of them sucked lost a all their PvZ games, but JYP was against Life so I'll give him the edge. Sorry TLO, maybe NaNiwa will lose fast as well so you won't feel bad.

If you aren't watching DreamHack this weekend, something is wrong with you, or your an IdrA fanboy. So something is wrong with you. hehehehehe. Seriously though, watch DreamHack, cause it's the best tournament of the year. GOGO Jaekongdong.

Let's face it, these are your eventual finalists, no one else here matters. 

The busiest weekend in StarCraft! Part two!

As I mentioned yesterday, this weekend features three separate major StarCraft II tournaments. Yesterday I talked a bit about the old relic of a tourney in WCG, and today we'll go a bit more in depth with IEM Singapore which will in fact be in Singapore! The highlight reel will be the best chance for someone NOT from Korea to win a major tournament out of the three, and then there will be ToD and IdrA casting. I guess there's also the story line of whether or not Grubby can repeat the deep run he had here last year. 

So let's talk Scarlett. Her performance at the Red Bull Battle Grounds in New York last week probably cemented her as the one of if not the strongest foreigner in the scene. Her Zerg versus Terran is without a doubt world class level, and her ZvP and ZvZ aren't that far behind. What makes her so strong right now though? The focus of the Mutalisk in each of these match up, at least that's what I think. Mutalisks play a key role in each Zerg match-up and Scarlett is one of the best users of this unit. With the slightly less potent line up of terrifying Korean stars, 15 of them in total and only 5 I think can actually beat her, (Bomber, EffOrt, DRG, Hydra, and San) This is the best oppurtunity for Scarlett to claim her first tournament victory of the year, and the best chance for a foreigner to actually take a tournament this year. 

In all seriousness though, as far as the games go, the only thing that has me excited at all is that Bomber and Scarlett are in the same group, so they will more than likely play each other. The last two times these two have met each other we've gotten absolutely fantastic series with each one of them going to the final game.
Scarlett bested Bomber in a Bo3 at the Red Bull Battle Grounds last weekend, and a few months ago Bomber took a narrow 3-2 victory at the quarterfinals of the WCS Season 2 global finals where he would go on to take the tournament. Beyond that, there really isn't a whole lot that I'm intrested in seeing from the players. IdrA and ToD hopefully will cast at least one series together and if they do it'll be hilarious. Protoss player who thinks Zerg is broken, and a Zerg who thinks Protoss is also broken, what could go wrong?

I suppose it wouldn't be fair to talk about this tournament without at least mentioning Grubby, who last year nearly claimed his first StarCraft II major in Singapore. However, the Grubby that was here in 2012 was the Grubby that was constantly improving, coming closer and closer to being the best, and seeming destined to eventually become the best foreigner in scene. Then 2013 happened and Grubby seemed to falter. He didn't all of the sudden become bad, but the constant improvement in both skills and results seemed to fade. What was left was a strong, but certainly not overwhelming European Protoss. Don't get me wrong, I want Grubby to do well here, he's one of the nicest, hard-working and more professional people in the scene. It just doesn't seem realistic to say that he will make a deep run. I still think he will eventually become very good, I'm unsure if he'll reach the same heights that he did during his run in WarCraft III though. Whatever he does it will be entertaining though. 

He'll also still have that sick jacket. 

If you are thinking of watching a StarCraft II tournament this weekend I would definately recomend you check out IEM Singapore at twitch.tv/esltv_sc2.   ESL always puts on a good show, and I'm sure there will be some great games played. Tune in! I promise it'll be worth it. 

Source of picture BenQ gaming. 

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.

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. 

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!

               

Let the Heckling Begin!

            So I haven’t written here in like forever, but I’m not even going to go into that, because I’m here now to start getting a schedule together. That’s all this post is going to be about, me putting together a few goals before I head back off to post-secondary education.  

            Firstly I want to become consistent with this blog, to help with that I’m going to give this blog a clear definition. I will talk about things that are interesting to me. That means that there are going to be E-sports posts, there will be ones where I rant about stupid things people do, I will talk about my personal thoughts on a variety of subjects. I will occasionally rant about what a dork I am. I will talk about cute girls; I will talk about a good restaurant I might go to. I will post pictures that are related to all these topics.  There will be many Calvin and Hobbes references. I am definitely going to talk about music in games and movies, as well as games and movies. I will probably say things that people will subsequently call me out on. It’ll be a good time. I will criticize almost everything.

           - I’m going to read 3 full books by the end of the summer. Any suggestions?

          -  I’m going to reach Diamond rank on Starcraft 2, and complete a play through of Pikmin and The Legend of Zelda: Wink Waker and Ocarina of Time.

           - I’m going to learn to cook 4 new dishes.      

         -   I am going to find a steady exercise schedule and be consistent with it.

          -  I will go on at least 2 dates.  

          -  I will discover one new band that no one else knows about (Hipster cred inc!)

            We’ll cut if off there for the sake of being realistic. I think Starcraft, exercise, and dates will be the hard ones on this list. Ok blogging consistently will be the toughest, but that’s a given.  Still, dates will be difficult just because of what a recluse I am and breaking out of that shell. Exercise because well because I’m pretty freaking lazy. Starcraft because it’s a really difficult game to get good at, and I’m prone to getting really really frustrated at myself when I play it. I think if I accomplish the other two difficult tasks though I should just become a happier person which will make it easier to tolerate the rage inducing nightmare that is the battle.net ladder.  

            Why blog this though? Because the biggest lesson I’ve learned in my life knows when you are beyond your own capabilities. Not that I can’t do these things. Just that I know that I won’t on my own. So I humbly ask whoever reads this, to please pester and bother me about accomplishing these things. Pick the ones you want me to do and hassle me. I think that’s manageable. Another excuse to get on my case? Gladly. That’s what I imagine most of you are thinking about this. That’s all for now, happy pestering!

            Don't think I forgot about that 30 topic thing though, nice and quick. Something little that makes me all warm and fuzzy inside. The ending to Rudy. Goodness me I love that movie and I hate how it can just play with my emotions like that, but it can. If you haven't seen it, let me know. I have a copy and will gladly loan it to you. Heck I could even watch it with you if you want to see me nearly break into tears. 

So good.....