SC2 WCS: Good or Bad?

First off; with a little disclaimer, I had not been consistently watching competitive Starcraft 2 for at least a good few months. I have caught the odd WCS regional matches and ever since that, I thought something was hmm, off about it. Just today I was enjoying watching some games in one of the WCS finals for the first time in a while!

I will say this. For the most part WCS is a very good thing.. at least in it's essence.

Lets look at the positives firstly. In my eyes, having one gigantic 'premier league' tournament is a much better idea than having multiple tournaments all fighting to be the best of the best. As long as that premier league either feeds into those tournaments like some other sports do.. or the gigantic one becomes all encompassing and takes on all of the other ones(which would be sad, because of the history of said tournaments). Whoops, got a bit side-tracked there!

The casters, the whole production crews, the players.. all living up to, or even surpassing the standards that have been set in previous tournaments. When I have seen some of one the whole show appears very polished and amazingly well done.

But if the problem that I have with this tournament has nothing to so with the essential parts of the tournament... What is my problem with it? Why don't I get on with it, why can't I follow it..

My first thought was that it's because of the fact that there are far more names floating around than I remember, but no.. that's not a bad thing.. I have quickly picked up on a few players that I really enjoy watching from this new(not so new, but rather new to me) fold of players.

The next thing was perhaps how awkward it seems sometimes when someone is trying to interview a player and they either ask some completely random questions that nobody needs to know the answers to or completely pointless questions.. but again, I think I can forgive that.. to some degree.

Then I actually realized.. I have absolutely no idea what any of it means. I do get that the Global finals are played at Blizzcon and the person who wins that should be considered the SC2 big daddy boss man.. it's all the regional finals, season finals and points systems in between that I don't really understand - whenever I open up twitch it seems that WCS are streaming a final and it starts to lose any real sort of meaning at least to me.

Maybe(I have no illusions this will happen) they should re-evaluate their system and make it easier to understand for those who don't or can't follow every single broadcast or maybe(Kinda more likely) I should just do some research and try a bit harder to understand the points system and the leagues and finals..

I would love to hear other peoples thoughts on this please either leave a comment on here, tweet me @McKnublet or even throw me out a comment on my Facebook page..

Anyway, Ciao for now! I'm off to bed!

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Dota 2: The International 3

Let's just start out by saying.. holee moley!!

G'wan, take a look.. ah you will now won't ye?

http://www.dota2.com/international/home/overview/

For me.. well, I'm impressed. The only other tournaments that I have watched have been Starcraft 2 ones and somehow they didn't seem to be so.. well, huge.

Valve has done a good job I think! The hall looks pretty darn cool and so does the booths the players sit in! The picture below was taken by someone on the DotA 2 team and looks pretty.

All this aside, I was watching the tournament at home. In the luxury of my own little space.. and by all accounts, so were around 1 million other people.

That's right, 1 million peak concurrent viewers.. I had heard quite a few numbers thrown around yesterday for peak concurrent viewers but this is the highest.. and well, I'm astounded. I was shocked by the Starcraft 2 viewer figures when I first started watching but this is on a whole other level.

It really does help that you can watch the tournament games on twitch.tv and in the game client itself!!!!

Then let's talk about the production; there was a small issue in the first match where one of the casters mic's was acting up.. and that was it.. that was the single problem I encountered during the first day of the main event.

Then, this morning while waiting for the games to start again.. the news broke that MLG have, for the moment dropped Starcraft 2 from their Columbus line-up... the current speculation is that it's being replaced.. most likely with World of Tanks.. since they already have League of Legends as their main show.. I think, anyway and I'm not so sure that Riot(who makes League) would take too kindly to DotA 2 being added in to the same show.

For the moment all we can do is sit and wonder.. after all, there still is WCS(The Blizzard run World Championship Series) running along and still pulling in around the same amount of viewer numbers.. though that is a lot smaller than that of The International. But then, the International is a annual event.

It helps that they aren't really in direct competition with each other.. unless you consider this weekend.. where all the WCS finals are on the same weekend as the International.. which I'm not even gonna go into...

Time to get some food, then watch a whole load of DotA 2!

If you've enjoyed reading this, then follow me on Bloglovin and on Twitter @McKnublet - You can also watch me playing games on Twitch.tv and even see some highlights at my YouTube - Click me and subscribe!

Ciao for now!

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