It turns out this weekend was the quarterly MLG major event. The format seemed to change a fair bit. The last time I tuned in the MLG championships were pretty much a big open event. Top seeds would maybe get some byes or start off in a separate pool play while open entrants played double elimination, but the big thing was that anyone who wanted to show up and pay could play. This time around seemed different. They only had 32 people in the StarCraft II event, and it was straight single elimination. League of Legends ran 3 mini-events (12 standard LCS matches, a LCS qualifier from the minor leagues, and a 4 team exhibition event with a top EU team and a top Korean team against two of the NA LCS teams). I didn't watch any of the Call of Duty stuff, so I don't know how that worked. Fighting games and Halo were both dropped entirely. The crowds still seemed pretty big despite not being able to compete themselves, and the games all seemed to be pretty high quality. By getting rid of the whole 256 man bracket for SCII they were able to stream every game which was certainly nice, and they did it on only 2 SCII streams instead of 6 like last time.
The website also changed a bit. It used to be that MLG had their own combination stream thing where you could watch all the streams at once in a tiles layout. This time all of the streams were done through Twitch and the MLG site essentially just had tabs to select the 4 different streams. No way to watch all 4 at once easily. I guess I could have opened 4 web browser windows. It seems like the loss of functionality would be bad, but I actually liked it. MLG events have always had streaming issues in my experience, but this one went very smooth. Maybe that was the switch to Twitch. Maybe it was preventing all the viewers from watching all the streams at once and overloading things. Whatever it was, I liked it.
I didn't really know what was going on in the SCII games. They're using the new expansion that just came out and I didn't have a clue what most of the new units did. Also apparently you can build reapers without needing a tech lab now? Most of the matches seemed to be TvZ which makes me sad as an old Protoss player.
The LCS games were actually pretty great. Lots of the matches pitted a 'top 4' team against a 'bottom 4' team but the bottom 4 team won several of those games. I think maybe all the experience of playing professionally for a month and a half is finally starting to come home for some of these guys.
At any rate, I had a great time just sitting back and watching games all weekend. I also got some tax stuff done during pauses between games, so this may have been the most productive weekend I've had in a long time. Woo!
Showing posts with label Starcraft 2. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Starcraft 2. Show all posts
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Buying New Games
Last week saw the launch of the newest SimCity game which had great reviews from the gaming media. The launch ended up being a complete and utter disaster. SimCity is designed with DRM requiring you to log in to the EA servers before you can play the game. You need to stay connected or you won't be able to save your game. The servers were completely overwhelmed. People couldn't connect, they couldn't find out how long it would be until they could connect, and even once they did connect they had problems playing. I heard about how you could lose connection to the server without knowing it. You'd play happily for hours but as soon as you tried to save the game you were screwed. EA has been scrambling to try to fix the problems. They've been adding more servers, they've been throwing free stuff at the masses. But the bottom line is they got most people's money on launch day and they're not giving it back so I have to believe the suits interested in the bottom line are content.
I've had discussions with a few people about it, and in each case I've been reiterating my stance that buying a new game right away is a trap. Video game companies, especially PC game companies, have seemingly given up on selling finished products. Even games that are reasonably fun at launch (once you get beyond any server issues) aren't done. Diablo III and Civilization V, for example, have both seen huge content/balance patches which made them significantly better games. The way I look at it I have plenty of games I want to play and not nearly enough time to play them all. So why should I spend time waiting for a server to let me in? Why should I play a game before they iterate it into a polished state?
Now, anyone who read yesterday's post will know that I went out and bought StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm even before it launched. I've preinstalled it and I can't wait to get home and play it. This is seemingly at odds with what I just said. Part of this is going to be that I have no willpower/am a hypocrite I'm sure, but there is a bigger thing in play. My experience has been that Blizzard expansions launch in a polished state. World of Warcraft, as I understand, was a bit of a disaster at launch. Not nearly enough server capacity or copies of the game in stores. I started playing that game a few months later so I missed the problems. I have been there, at launch, for all of the subsequent expansions. The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria. All of them have been fantastic. Not perfect, mind you, and MoP in particular had a brutally bad quest right at the start. But even that problematic quest only cost me what, 45 minutes of frustration? I spent longer than that trying to log into Ultima Online!
Why have all those expansions had solid launches? Well, part of it is going to be a willingness on Blizzard's part to wait until the expansion is actually done. But part of it is also going to be their ability to really test most of the new features. How? They launch them in pieces on the live servers in advance. How did we know the new talent trees were going to work in Cataclysm? They had everyone on the live servers using them for a month before they launched Cataclysm! There are also some people are also really committed to killing bosses first. So when they put them up for a 2 hour window on the test servers you know they're going to get tested by some really dedicated players who see that 2 hour window as potentially the key to a world or server first kill.
Which brings us to StarCraft II. It actually had, if memory serves, a super smooth launch itself. Why? A combination of the above coupled with an offline mode. Blizzard had every intention of making StarCraft II a huge thing in eSports, and part of that intention required them to launch a polished game. Not just polished in the sense that you could play the game without crashing. No, they needed it to be polished in the sense that every race, every unit, was balanced. The game wouldn't have taken off as an eSport if the Zerg won every game with a zergling rush and they knew it. So they were more than willing to iterate in testing until they got it to a good state. They ran big tournaments on the test servers. There was a lot of prize money up for grabs for people who got good in the beta. This meant they got a lot of dedicated testers who were willing to find balance issues and abuse them for cash. On top of it all, the one thing you couldn't test in the beta, the single player campaign, didn't require a permanent online connection. You couldn't get achievements if you played offline, but you could totally play your single player game without an internet connection if you wanted. So even if their servers had gone down during the launch a lot of the players would be able to play just fine.
So, yes, I am pretty much done with buying new games at launch. I may well pick up the new SimCity in a couple months if things smooth out, but maybe I just won't feel like adding it to my huge list of things I want to play. But I had faith in Heart of the Swarm being a good game at launch, and one I do really want on my list of things to play. So I got it right away. I didn't take the day off work to play it, but a quick internet search makes me think I could have done that without worries. I searched for a variety of crash related terms for Heart of the Swarm and didn't find a single complaint from anyone. Contrast that with the deluge when searching for SimCity crashes!
I've had discussions with a few people about it, and in each case I've been reiterating my stance that buying a new game right away is a trap. Video game companies, especially PC game companies, have seemingly given up on selling finished products. Even games that are reasonably fun at launch (once you get beyond any server issues) aren't done. Diablo III and Civilization V, for example, have both seen huge content/balance patches which made them significantly better games. The way I look at it I have plenty of games I want to play and not nearly enough time to play them all. So why should I spend time waiting for a server to let me in? Why should I play a game before they iterate it into a polished state?
Now, anyone who read yesterday's post will know that I went out and bought StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm even before it launched. I've preinstalled it and I can't wait to get home and play it. This is seemingly at odds with what I just said. Part of this is going to be that I have no willpower/am a hypocrite I'm sure, but there is a bigger thing in play. My experience has been that Blizzard expansions launch in a polished state. World of Warcraft, as I understand, was a bit of a disaster at launch. Not nearly enough server capacity or copies of the game in stores. I started playing that game a few months later so I missed the problems. I have been there, at launch, for all of the subsequent expansions. The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm, Mists of Pandaria. All of them have been fantastic. Not perfect, mind you, and MoP in particular had a brutally bad quest right at the start. But even that problematic quest only cost me what, 45 minutes of frustration? I spent longer than that trying to log into Ultima Online!
Why have all those expansions had solid launches? Well, part of it is going to be a willingness on Blizzard's part to wait until the expansion is actually done. But part of it is also going to be their ability to really test most of the new features. How? They launch them in pieces on the live servers in advance. How did we know the new talent trees were going to work in Cataclysm? They had everyone on the live servers using them for a month before they launched Cataclysm! There are also some people are also really committed to killing bosses first. So when they put them up for a 2 hour window on the test servers you know they're going to get tested by some really dedicated players who see that 2 hour window as potentially the key to a world or server first kill.
Which brings us to StarCraft II. It actually had, if memory serves, a super smooth launch itself. Why? A combination of the above coupled with an offline mode. Blizzard had every intention of making StarCraft II a huge thing in eSports, and part of that intention required them to launch a polished game. Not just polished in the sense that you could play the game without crashing. No, they needed it to be polished in the sense that every race, every unit, was balanced. The game wouldn't have taken off as an eSport if the Zerg won every game with a zergling rush and they knew it. So they were more than willing to iterate in testing until they got it to a good state. They ran big tournaments on the test servers. There was a lot of prize money up for grabs for people who got good in the beta. This meant they got a lot of dedicated testers who were willing to find balance issues and abuse them for cash. On top of it all, the one thing you couldn't test in the beta, the single player campaign, didn't require a permanent online connection. You couldn't get achievements if you played offline, but you could totally play your single player game without an internet connection if you wanted. So even if their servers had gone down during the launch a lot of the players would be able to play just fine.
So, yes, I am pretty much done with buying new games at launch. I may well pick up the new SimCity in a couple months if things smooth out, but maybe I just won't feel like adding it to my huge list of things I want to play. But I had faith in Heart of the Swarm being a good game at launch, and one I do really want on my list of things to play. So I got it right away. I didn't take the day off work to play it, but a quick internet search makes me think I could have done that without worries. I searched for a variety of crash related terms for Heart of the Swarm and didn't find a single complaint from anyone. Contrast that with the deluge when searching for SimCity crashes!
Monday, March 11, 2013
StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm
Tomorrow marks the launch of the first expansion for StarCraft II. I haven't actually played StarCraft II in over a year and haven't really paid any attention to news about the expansion. Robb's been trying to hype me up for it, and over the weekend he sent a line about how SCII is adding support for clans to the game in this expansion. Now, that piqued my interest. Maybe not so much because I want a guild system in SCII itself, but because I really want one in Diablo III and this may well be a step in the right direction.
I just had to go look up more details about it, and also looked into what else they're adding in for the expansion. It sounds like the following things...
I already bought the game, and it claims to have downloaded all the content just by starting up the old StarCraft II client. The official launch is super early tomorrow morning (midnight PST) so I won't actually be able to play the new campaign until after work tomorrow. Oh well!
I just had to go look up more details about it, and also looked into what else they're adding in for the expansion. It sounds like the following things...
- A new single player campaign focused on Kerrigan and the Zerg. Similar to the first campaign but with a different leveling system than spending money/research on upgrades. Something about mutations and experience or something. I didn't dig into it at all because I want to be a little surprised. The first campaign was awesome and I have high hopes for this one.
- Clans and groups. These seem to be essentially the same thing except you can only be in one clan, you get a tag in your name for the clan, and a clan can only have 50 people. Groups you can be in 20 of them and they can have infinite people. In both cases you get a chat room for just the clan/group. This is all I want for Diablo III! Come on, Blizzard. Make it so!
- A pointless leveling system. Play ladder games and earn experience toward the race you're playing. It doesn't sound like leveling this up does anything except give you a bigger number and achievements. Wait, I like bigger numbers and achievements...
- Apparently they're adding in unit skins and dances that you earn by leveling up.
- The ability to watch replays with other people in the same game with one person controlling the replay. Interesting for getting better I guess.
- The ability to tag into a replay! Even one you weren't initially part of! This has huge potential for teaching people to play better. It also lets you play the 'what would have happened if...' game. Let's pretend I scouted your incoming drop and see if that would be good enough to win.
- This also lets them resume tournament matches by having the players load the replay of the crashed game and tagging in when the problems started. This has to be better than a remake in a lot of situations.
- You can build a custom UI for observer mode. I won't be using this but I am interested to see what someone like Day[9] or the MLG observers do with this.
- New stats are being tracked for ladder games breaking things down for you by matchup and map. I like stats!
- New units and maps for the ladder.
- Upgrades to the map editor to make for even cooler 'use map settings' games. It sounded like they were also making infrastructure upgrades to potentially allow for selling maps made in the map editor? I didn't look too far into it since I haven't used the map editor.
- 'Players Near You' is a feature that has the server suggest other people who are playing SC2 on your local network. The examples they gave were people at the same University or in the same internet cafe. I wonder if it will go further and include people in Toronto with Rogers as their ISP or whatnot. This seems like it has some real potential for helping to meet other nerds.
- You can play on any server now with one account. So if you really wanted to play on the Korea servers you don't need to buy a new copy of the game.
- New training missions that break down step by step how to play the game against an easy AI opponent. This seems like a great way to help newer players to the genre figure out what they should be doing.
I already bought the game, and it claims to have downloaded all the content just by starting up the old StarCraft II client. The official launch is super early tomorrow morning (midnight PST) so I won't actually be able to play the new campaign until after work tomorrow. Oh well!
Friday, July 20, 2012
MLG StarCraft II Summer Arena
It snuck up on me, but apparently the StarCraft II summer arena is this weekend. This is great for me, since I can craft some stuff in Final Fantasy XI and watch top tier StarCraft games at the same time. Woo!
They seem to like shaking up the format each arena and the twist this time is they're running two different double-elimination brackets with the two winners meeting in the grand finals. This is different in that there could be someone who only loses one match but still doesn't win the whole thing. I'm not sure I really understand why they're making this switch but it's interesting.
They also let the top 16 players choose their first round opponents. My initial feeling is that this is going to make for some bad opening round matches. A Zerg player who is really good against Protoss is going to search out a Protoss player who isn't so good against Zerg and then stomp them. But I guess this will only really be true for the first few people who are picking their opponents and the #1 seed is likely to stomp the #32 seed in a normal system anyway. Now, the seeding system isn't perfect (often the top players are from Korea and may not have played in a previous MLG event to build up a high seed), so this does have the advantage of letting the top seeds dodge an underseeded player.
When I look at the roster I'm a little sad. No HuK. No Idra. No MarineKing. On the plus side two of their race specific commentators from the first Spring arena qualified this time around. I made a snide comment about thinking if they were that good they'd be playing in the arena... Well, they are! I can't help but think that the opportunity to go to an arena and break down all the games was a big help for them and I'm really happy that they're there. Qxc, Sheth, and Grubby were all commentators at the first spring arena and are all playing in this event. I like having someone to root for so I'm going to cheer for these guys. Especially Grubby since he plays Protoss!
Perhaps the best part of this arena is they've got Day[9] to do cast some of the games. Woo! Also pretty cool is they've made the standard definition feed free so if anyone is curious they can check it out themselves.
They seem to like shaking up the format each arena and the twist this time is they're running two different double-elimination brackets with the two winners meeting in the grand finals. This is different in that there could be someone who only loses one match but still doesn't win the whole thing. I'm not sure I really understand why they're making this switch but it's interesting.
They also let the top 16 players choose their first round opponents. My initial feeling is that this is going to make for some bad opening round matches. A Zerg player who is really good against Protoss is going to search out a Protoss player who isn't so good against Zerg and then stomp them. But I guess this will only really be true for the first few people who are picking their opponents and the #1 seed is likely to stomp the #32 seed in a normal system anyway. Now, the seeding system isn't perfect (often the top players are from Korea and may not have played in a previous MLG event to build up a high seed), so this does have the advantage of letting the top seeds dodge an underseeded player.
When I look at the roster I'm a little sad. No HuK. No Idra. No MarineKing. On the plus side two of their race specific commentators from the first Spring arena qualified this time around. I made a snide comment about thinking if they were that good they'd be playing in the arena... Well, they are! I can't help but think that the opportunity to go to an arena and break down all the games was a big help for them and I'm really happy that they're there. Qxc, Sheth, and Grubby were all commentators at the first spring arena and are all playing in this event. I like having someone to root for so I'm going to cheer for these guys. Especially Grubby since he plays Protoss!
Perhaps the best part of this arena is they've got Day[9] to do cast some of the games. Woo! Also pretty cool is they've made the standard definition feed free so if anyone is curious they can check it out themselves.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
StarCraft II Spring Arena 2
The second MLG spring arena for StarCraft II took place this weekend. My sleep schedule hasn't exactly been normal so I didn't get a chance to watch many game lives but I did watch quite a few on demand. I was happy to see both Huk and Idra ended up qualifying though they didn't end up doing terribly well. I was really sad to see that MarineKing didn't show up. I did a little searching but couldn't find out why he missed it.
Apparently Blizzard recently released a balance patch with 3 changes. Protoss observers build 10 seconds faster, Zerg overlords move 25% faster, and Zerg queens had their melee attack range extended. I don't think the observer change did a whole lot this weekend but the two Zerg buffs had a huge impact.
Overlord speed is something that doesn't feel important on the surface but it has a huge impact in terms of scouting. Zerg get initial information faster and are in significantly less danger of having their overlord sniped by a marine or a stalker. It's easier to get full information out of a suicide scout. The extra speed could possibly even come home with drops? I'm not sure if the buff impacts the speed after researching the improved speed buff but I did see some overlord drop games this weekend and I don't recall that ever really being a strategy people used except for a cute game or two with banelings.
The queen range buff is insane. It was pretty much solely responsible for shutting down early hellion harassment out of Terran players. They mostly all still tried it out and got completely shut down when they did. This is the sort of thing that probably needs adaptation and will shake out in the wash in the long run but for this tournament it felt like it really skewed the results in terms of the Zerg vs Terran matches.
The top 3 of the event were all Zerg which meant the final three matches were all Zerg mirror matches. I didn't find them to be terribly interesting. I'm sure it's really skill intensive to micro small armies of zerglings and banelings around but for me it was pretty boring to watch. I ended up napping during the finals! At any rate, Violet ended up winning! He was wearing a surgical mask which I thought was a little odd but it would seem he was sick and didn't want to infect other people. How thoughtful!
Apparently Blizzard recently released a balance patch with 3 changes. Protoss observers build 10 seconds faster, Zerg overlords move 25% faster, and Zerg queens had their melee attack range extended. I don't think the observer change did a whole lot this weekend but the two Zerg buffs had a huge impact.
Overlord speed is something that doesn't feel important on the surface but it has a huge impact in terms of scouting. Zerg get initial information faster and are in significantly less danger of having their overlord sniped by a marine or a stalker. It's easier to get full information out of a suicide scout. The extra speed could possibly even come home with drops? I'm not sure if the buff impacts the speed after researching the improved speed buff but I did see some overlord drop games this weekend and I don't recall that ever really being a strategy people used except for a cute game or two with banelings.
The queen range buff is insane. It was pretty much solely responsible for shutting down early hellion harassment out of Terran players. They mostly all still tried it out and got completely shut down when they did. This is the sort of thing that probably needs adaptation and will shake out in the wash in the long run but for this tournament it felt like it really skewed the results in terms of the Zerg vs Terran matches.
The top 3 of the event were all Zerg which meant the final three matches were all Zerg mirror matches. I didn't find them to be terribly interesting. I'm sure it's really skill intensive to micro small armies of zerglings and banelings around but for me it was pretty boring to watch. I ended up napping during the finals! At any rate, Violet ended up winning! He was wearing a surgical mask which I thought was a little odd but it would seem he was sick and didn't want to infect other people. How thoughtful!
Tuesday, May 08, 2012
StarCraft II Spring Arena 2 Qualifiers
Apparently MLG is broadcasting the games from the invite only qualifiers for the second StarCraft II spring arena starting today. I found out because they emailed me a code to watch it in HD (part of the arena package thing I bought to watch the first one I guess). They're going to be shown over the next 6 days so I guess I have something to do in the week before Diablo III launches! I hope Huk and Idra can come back from their recent poor showings and qualify for the next arena!
Sunday, April 22, 2012
All Kings Must Die!
First of all, I was a little disappointed with the 2v2 tournament last night. MKP and Huk were the most popular team but apparently MKP was really unhappy with that team. It turns out in a field of 7 Koreans and 1 Canadian you don't actually want to team up with the person with whom you can't really communicate. During the games themselves it became pretty clear that they didn't have any 2v2 experience at all. I used to play a lot of 2v2s back in the day (T&P with Jer, T&P with Tom, R&R with Robb) and the very first thing we learned was that you have to completely wall in your ramp if the other team has a Zerg. DRG went with a 10-pool, MC proxied two barracks and spammed marauders and swarmed them. If they were walled off (or if Huk had built any zealots) they could have handled it pretty easily I think. As it was they had to sac most of their workers to survive a little bit and then lost shortly thereafter. The commentators weren't taking it very seriously but it was actually pretty funny. The tournament itself was pretty cool; I just wanted MKP and Huk to win.
For the main event MKP went 6-1 in the round robin and handily won his semifinal match. He ended up in the final against DRG for the 3rd straight MLG event. It went to a 7th game and DRG pulled off a quick baneling bust and managed to win. The king is dead! 8(
For the main event MKP went 6-1 in the round robin and handily won his semifinal match. He ended up in the final against DRG for the 3rd straight MLG event. It went to a 7th game and DRG pulled off a quick baneling bust and managed to win. The king is dead! 8(
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Diablo III Open Beta Weekend
This weekend Blizzard is running a fully open beta for Diablo III. Multiple of my Facebook friends were really excited for the announcement and one of my LoL teammates had bad lag last night as his roommates were busy downloading the client. The game itself launches in 24 days and I'd have to think the beta will be pretty polished by this point. This is likely either just a server stress test, a PR move, or an attempt to get a lot of people to download the client now to lessen the strain on the servers come launch.
I for one am really uninterested in playing in the beta. Characters are capped at level 13. I believe you're still capped at the first act. Nothing you do this weekend will carry over to your live account. The way I look at it, I have lots of games I want to play. I have no need to play an unfinished game with no save state. Games also tend to have a number of hours before they get boring and I don't want to waste any of my D3 hours now. Maybe if I had nothing else to do, if I felt I'd gain really useful information, or if I wasn't able to afford the game when it launched I might feel differently but as it currently stands not so much.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes beta tests are really good. I was involved in the Magic Online alpha/beta and it was great. No features were turned off and I actually couldn't afford to play Magic in real life as much as I did in the test. No cards carried over but I did learn a lot about the cards. (Probably my best standard season ever was after that test. Go Tog!) Perhaps most importantly I was actually able to impact changes to the game. I also spent a lot of time in the StarCraft II beta. No really chance of making changes there but at least the game was fully functional. They were doing the test as a balance test so they needed to get people playing against each other with all the units as they tweaked numbers. Each game is self contained as well so you wouldn't lose any progress (except towards achievements I guess).
At any rate, if you're interested in playing a little D3 this weekend you can go play in the beta. I won't see you there!
I for one am really uninterested in playing in the beta. Characters are capped at level 13. I believe you're still capped at the first act. Nothing you do this weekend will carry over to your live account. The way I look at it, I have lots of games I want to play. I have no need to play an unfinished game with no save state. Games also tend to have a number of hours before they get boring and I don't want to waste any of my D3 hours now. Maybe if I had nothing else to do, if I felt I'd gain really useful information, or if I wasn't able to afford the game when it launched I might feel differently but as it currently stands not so much.
Don't get me wrong, sometimes beta tests are really good. I was involved in the Magic Online alpha/beta and it was great. No features were turned off and I actually couldn't afford to play Magic in real life as much as I did in the test. No cards carried over but I did learn a lot about the cards. (Probably my best standard season ever was after that test. Go Tog!) Perhaps most importantly I was actually able to impact changes to the game. I also spent a lot of time in the StarCraft II beta. No really chance of making changes there but at least the game was fully functional. They were doing the test as a balance test so they needed to get people playing against each other with all the units as they tweaked numbers. Each game is self contained as well so you wouldn't lose any progress (except towards achievements I guess).
At any rate, if you're interested in playing a little D3 this weekend you can go play in the beta. I won't see you there!
Friday, April 20, 2012
Building 2v2 Teams
I've been thinking a fair bit about how to properly turn internet votes for potential pairs into an actual split of 8 people into 2 teams. (Getting to sleep when I have something like this to think about is really hard...) Properly may not even be the right term because there are different ways to work it out that are different and yet still optimal depending on what your criteria are going into the decision. I thought it would be useful to look at the numbers as of early Friday morning along with different ways I could see to split the StarCraft 2 spring arena teams up.
For starters we have the restriction that there will be no same-race teams. This was handed down by MLG in the announcement post so I'm going to assume it's non-negotiable. I also happen to like the restriction if only to stop a double 6-pool from happening. At any rate, with the racial split of the players (3 terran, 3 protoss, 2 zerg) this actually significantly reduces the options. The only way to work it out with the given restriction is to have one ZT team, one ZP team, and 2 TP teams. (You can't have two ZT teams since that would leave three P for the remaining two teams. The same logic applies to two ZP teams. The only remaining option is the given one.)
After that you need to decide what the most important factor is. Each team is getting a number of YES votes and a number of NO votes. The way I see it you can use one of those as your main criteria, or the other one, or you can build a function between the two of them. The simplest would be a straight subtraction. I might go with something where the YES votes were weighted as worth twice as much as a NO vote, for example. You can also try to maximize the total sum of your main criteria across the four teams or you could try to maximize the main criteria on a team by team basis to fill in our 4 legal team options.
Answer the following questions to see where you'd fall on that spectrum:
- Should the team with the most YES votes get included no matter what?
- Should the team with the most NO votes get excluded no matter what?
- Should the team with the biggest YES-NO spread get included no matter what?
- Should you try to make the most people very happy or should you try to make everyone as happy as possible even if no one gets what they really want?
Picking the biggest number, eliminating all now illegal teams (ones containing a chosen player or ones in a race combination which is no longer legal), and iterating is pretty easy. Maximizing the total sum is less so. I feel like I should know how to do this sort of thing from my C&O days. Simplex method or something. I couldn't think of how to do it right away and let my mind wander a bit. I started thinking about how I'd write a program for it and what sort of pruning function I could use to pare down the search tree. Then I thought about how big the tree would even be... Turns out there's only 36 possible combinations. Oh. Well then, I'll just build a spreadsheet!
Before looking at how things shake out (to avoid allowing a potential MKP&Huk team cloud my judgment) I believe the way to go would be to use a straight YES-NO function to assign a value to each team and then use the spreadsheet to maximize the total sum of that value across the 4 chosen teams. I like this because if a particular team is popular relative to other options for a player it should get chosen and doesn't rest everything in the hands of the single most popular team. Theoretically just picking the biggest number and eliminating illegal options could result in the least popular team sneaking in. But would it even matter? How do things shake out?
CRITERIA: Most YES Votes
Pick Biggest - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1640 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1640 votes
CRITERIA: Fewest NO Votes
Pick Biggest - MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet, MKP&Huk - 777 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 777 votes
CRITERIA: Most YES-NO Votes
Pick Biggest - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 863 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 863 votes
CRITERIA: Most YES-(NO/2) Votes
Pick Biggest - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1251.5 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1251.5 votes
Ok, so it turns out as the numbers stood it doesn't actually matter what criteria you chose among any that I've considered. They all come out with precisely the same teams. On the plus side those teams all include my desired team!
For starters we have the restriction that there will be no same-race teams. This was handed down by MLG in the announcement post so I'm going to assume it's non-negotiable. I also happen to like the restriction if only to stop a double 6-pool from happening. At any rate, with the racial split of the players (3 terran, 3 protoss, 2 zerg) this actually significantly reduces the options. The only way to work it out with the given restriction is to have one ZT team, one ZP team, and 2 TP teams. (You can't have two ZT teams since that would leave three P for the remaining two teams. The same logic applies to two ZP teams. The only remaining option is the given one.)
After that you need to decide what the most important factor is. Each team is getting a number of YES votes and a number of NO votes. The way I see it you can use one of those as your main criteria, or the other one, or you can build a function between the two of them. The simplest would be a straight subtraction. I might go with something where the YES votes were weighted as worth twice as much as a NO vote, for example. You can also try to maximize the total sum of your main criteria across the four teams or you could try to maximize the main criteria on a team by team basis to fill in our 4 legal team options.
Answer the following questions to see where you'd fall on that spectrum:
- Should the team with the most YES votes get included no matter what?
- Should the team with the most NO votes get excluded no matter what?
- Should the team with the biggest YES-NO spread get included no matter what?
- Should you try to make the most people very happy or should you try to make everyone as happy as possible even if no one gets what they really want?
Picking the biggest number, eliminating all now illegal teams (ones containing a chosen player or ones in a race combination which is no longer legal), and iterating is pretty easy. Maximizing the total sum is less so. I feel like I should know how to do this sort of thing from my C&O days. Simplex method or something. I couldn't think of how to do it right away and let my mind wander a bit. I started thinking about how I'd write a program for it and what sort of pruning function I could use to pare down the search tree. Then I thought about how big the tree would even be... Turns out there's only 36 possible combinations. Oh. Well then, I'll just build a spreadsheet!
Before looking at how things shake out (to avoid allowing a potential MKP&Huk team cloud my judgment) I believe the way to go would be to use a straight YES-NO function to assign a value to each team and then use the spreadsheet to maximize the total sum of that value across the 4 chosen teams. I like this because if a particular team is popular relative to other options for a player it should get chosen and doesn't rest everything in the hands of the single most popular team. Theoretically just picking the biggest number and eliminating illegal options could result in the least popular team sneaking in. But would it even matter? How do things shake out?
CRITERIA: Most YES Votes
Pick Biggest - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1640 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1640 votes
CRITERIA: Fewest NO Votes
Pick Biggest - MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet, MKP&Huk - 777 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 777 votes
CRITERIA: Most YES-NO Votes
Pick Biggest - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 863 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 863 votes
CRITERIA: Most YES-(NO/2) Votes
Pick Biggest - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1251.5 votes
Maximize Sum - MKP&Huk, MC&DRG, Ganzi&Parting, Heart&Violet - 1251.5 votes
Ok, so it turns out as the numbers stood it doesn't actually matter what criteria you chose among any that I've considered. They all come out with precisely the same teams. On the plus side those teams all include my desired team!
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
StarCraft II: 2v2s!
The first MLG spring arena event for StarCraft II is this weekend and they just announced a bonus event that weekend which might actually be more exciting than the main event if only for the novelty of it. The spring arena will only have 8 players and the main event should be filled with awesome games as the players get to put in a lot of preparation given that they know they'll be playing all 7 of the other players. What else can you do with precisely 8 players? You can break them into teams of 2 and play a little single elimination 2v2 tournament!
I think this is going to be really cool because it's unlikely these guys have done much prep work for it at all. They're currently holding a poll at the MLG site to determine the teams so even if they wanted to practice right now they couldn't! I would imagine some of these guys might play 2v2s for fun now and then but I can't imagine it's worth their time in general to put a lot of effort into it compared to their standard 1v1 games. As such I would think we could see some wacky strategies coming out of the games. Or maybe a lot of 6 pools... At least they've set it up so two players of the same race can't be on the same team so there can't be a double 6 pool. With 3 protoss, 3 terran, and 2 zerg players there's still a lot of team combinations possible. Personally I voted up for MarineKingPrime teaming with Huk and voted down every other combination containing either player in the hopes my top 2 might team up. It is the leading pair out of the gates but they have to change their states rules for choosing teams as right now the teams would be MKP&Huk, MKP&DRG, DRG&MC, and DRG&Huk. Pretty sure DRG can't play on 3 of the 4 teams at the same time so they've actually got a more complex optimization problem on hand. I wonder if they've got someone to work it out or if I should volunteer...
I think this is going to be really cool because it's unlikely these guys have done much prep work for it at all. They're currently holding a poll at the MLG site to determine the teams so even if they wanted to practice right now they couldn't! I would imagine some of these guys might play 2v2s for fun now and then but I can't imagine it's worth their time in general to put a lot of effort into it compared to their standard 1v1 games. As such I would think we could see some wacky strategies coming out of the games. Or maybe a lot of 6 pools... At least they've set it up so two players of the same race can't be on the same team so there can't be a double 6 pool. With 3 protoss, 3 terran, and 2 zerg players there's still a lot of team combinations possible. Personally I voted up for MarineKingPrime teaming with Huk and voted down every other combination containing either player in the hopes my top 2 might team up. It is the leading pair out of the gates but they have to change their states rules for choosing teams as right now the teams would be MKP&Huk, MKP&DRG, DRG&MC, and DRG&Huk. Pretty sure DRG can't play on 3 of the 4 teams at the same time so they've actually got a more complex optimization problem on hand. I wonder if they've got someone to work it out or if I should volunteer...
Thursday, April 12, 2012
Spring StarCraft II Arena I
MLG announced the format for the first Spring Arena today and it sounds pretty great. It's an 8 player event with the top 8 from the last MLG getting the invites. (One of them dropped out so #9 is going as well.) They're going to play a round robin to start so there's going to be a ton of great matches. Especially since each competitor knows exactly who they're up against and has quite a lot of time to come up with specific game plans for beating each other.
Interestingly enough they're bringing in more analysts than players! They're going to have 6 commentators, an observer (who controls the camera on the main stream) and 3 race specific experts. I'm not sure how the race specific experts are going to work out (part of me things if they were that expert they'd be playing in the event but part of me accepts that someone can know a lot of the strategy without having the in-game control to pull it off at the very top of the world) but it's an interesting idea and I'm curious to see it in action.
They're going to be running 7 streams at once! At most 2 games at a time (with only 8 players it would be tricky to pull off more than that for any stretch of time) but they're going to stream both player's viewpoints from every game. Watching MarineKingPrime's screen to see what he's looking at when he does his crazy micro could be pretty great.
Interestingly enough they're bringing in more analysts than players! They're going to have 6 commentators, an observer (who controls the camera on the main stream) and 3 race specific experts. I'm not sure how the race specific experts are going to work out (part of me things if they were that expert they'd be playing in the event but part of me accepts that someone can know a lot of the strategy without having the in-game control to pull it off at the very top of the world) but it's an interesting idea and I'm curious to see it in action.
They're going to be running 7 streams at once! At most 2 games at a time (with only 8 players it would be tricky to pull off more than that for any stretch of time) but they're going to stream both player's viewpoints from every game. Watching MarineKingPrime's screen to see what he's looking at when he does his crazy micro could be pretty great.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
MLG Columbus Conclusion
The last game has been played and we have a winner! MarineKingPrime followed up his win at the winter arena with a win at the winter championships in Columbus. He didn't lose a match this weekend with an 8-0 overall record. (Having a bye into the pool play and then not losing in the double elimination bracket means not playing very many matches!)
The events had a pretty wide split in terms of winning nations:
StarCraft II - South Korea
Halo:Reach - USA
King of Fighters XIII - Mexico
Soul Calibur V - France
Mortal Kombat - USA
I was happy to see Johnny Cage get played in a MK match. He still has the crotch punch!
The events had a pretty wide split in terms of winning nations:
StarCraft II - South Korea
Halo:Reach - USA
King of Fighters XIII - Mexico
Soul Calibur V - France
Mortal Kombat - USA
I was happy to see Johnny Cage get played in a MK match. He still has the crotch punch!
Friday, March 09, 2012
StarCraft II MLG Winter Championship Format
There is a big MLG event coming up in 2 weeks time. They recently announced the format for the SC2 tournament and I found it to be intriguing. They have 256 competitors so my first instinct would be that they'd just play a big seeded double elimination bracket. But it turns out that would be _far_ too simplistic. Instead they're running 4 brackets and a round robin pool section with people entering at various times.
To start with the 32 people who played in the winter arena get byes. The top 16 from the winter arena get to bypass the first 6 rounds and start in the pool section. The bottom 16 get to bypass the first 4 rounds and will only need to win 2 matches to make it to the pool section. The remaining 224 players play a double elimination bracket with the 16 people with byes slotting in during round 5. Eventually you stop the open winners bracket when there are 8 people left and send them into pool play. Similarly with the open losers bracket you get down to 8 people and then stop.
Pool play now has 24 people which are broken down into 4 groups of 6. Each group plays a round robin and then they get ranked 1 through 6. There are 4 groups so you have 4 #1s, 4 #2s, etc... Advance the #1s to the championship winner's bracket semifinals. These people have to win only 3 more matches to win the event. Then build out a championship losers bracket with the 8 prior losers playing in 4 matches in round 1. The winner of those matches play the #6s. The winner of those matches play the #5s. The winner of those matches play the #4s. And so on and so on with the #1 losers dropping down as appropriate to fit the bracket. Winner of that bracket plays the winner of the championship bracket in a best of 5 or best of 9 for all the marbles.
What I find interesting about this is that someone can lose in pool play, still end up #1, and win the winner's bracket with a loss on their record. That's not something that could happen in a straight double elimination. It also means there will be a lot of matches amongst the 'name' players. Top 16 from the winter arena along with 8 more who play well at the start of the weekend each play 5 matches with no chance of elimination. The winter arena was great but there were only 2 Idra matches, for example. He's not guaranteed to make pool play but he only needs 2 wins to make it there. Then they're all guaranteed at least one more match in the loser's bracket so the top names all get 6 matches streamed. This has to be a good deal for MLG and for fans.
It's interesting that anyone could have signed up for the open bracket if they were willing to buy a pass. Show up, go on a run, win some cash. The thought is alluring, much like the Magic Pro Tour used to be. Clearly not something I could do, but intriguing nonetheless. Of course they have pretty bad odds of making it very far. After winning 4 matches against other open players they'd then have to beat two of the winter arena competitors to make it into pool play. And there's no bomb draws or mana screw to save you in StarCraft II!
They also posted rewards for finishing well at the event. Top 8 get byes into the spring arena #1 and the 9th through 80th players get to play in the qualifiers for it. Which gets me thinking about how hard it is for someone to fall out of the events. Everyone at the winter arena gets a good number of byes. By the time they could get into the loser's bracket 182 people will have been eliminated. They're guaranteed to be in the top 74! So going to the winter arena and then showing up at the championship is enough to get you on the fast track to qualifying for the spring arena... I think this is a good thing since it allows people to get to know the same players and develop people to cheer for.
On the flip side, one good event is good enough to get rolling. This is particularly useful considering a lot of the best players live on the other side of the world and don't make it over to MLG events all that often. Come over once, do well, and you're on the fast track to getting free flights back. Seems pretty sweet!
To start with the 32 people who played in the winter arena get byes. The top 16 from the winter arena get to bypass the first 6 rounds and start in the pool section. The bottom 16 get to bypass the first 4 rounds and will only need to win 2 matches to make it to the pool section. The remaining 224 players play a double elimination bracket with the 16 people with byes slotting in during round 5. Eventually you stop the open winners bracket when there are 8 people left and send them into pool play. Similarly with the open losers bracket you get down to 8 people and then stop.
Pool play now has 24 people which are broken down into 4 groups of 6. Each group plays a round robin and then they get ranked 1 through 6. There are 4 groups so you have 4 #1s, 4 #2s, etc... Advance the #1s to the championship winner's bracket semifinals. These people have to win only 3 more matches to win the event. Then build out a championship losers bracket with the 8 prior losers playing in 4 matches in round 1. The winner of those matches play the #6s. The winner of those matches play the #5s. The winner of those matches play the #4s. And so on and so on with the #1 losers dropping down as appropriate to fit the bracket. Winner of that bracket plays the winner of the championship bracket in a best of 5 or best of 9 for all the marbles.
What I find interesting about this is that someone can lose in pool play, still end up #1, and win the winner's bracket with a loss on their record. That's not something that could happen in a straight double elimination. It also means there will be a lot of matches amongst the 'name' players. Top 16 from the winter arena along with 8 more who play well at the start of the weekend each play 5 matches with no chance of elimination. The winter arena was great but there were only 2 Idra matches, for example. He's not guaranteed to make pool play but he only needs 2 wins to make it there. Then they're all guaranteed at least one more match in the loser's bracket so the top names all get 6 matches streamed. This has to be a good deal for MLG and for fans.
It's interesting that anyone could have signed up for the open bracket if they were willing to buy a pass. Show up, go on a run, win some cash. The thought is alluring, much like the Magic Pro Tour used to be. Clearly not something I could do, but intriguing nonetheless. Of course they have pretty bad odds of making it very far. After winning 4 matches against other open players they'd then have to beat two of the winter arena competitors to make it into pool play. And there's no bomb draws or mana screw to save you in StarCraft II!
They also posted rewards for finishing well at the event. Top 8 get byes into the spring arena #1 and the 9th through 80th players get to play in the qualifiers for it. Which gets me thinking about how hard it is for someone to fall out of the events. Everyone at the winter arena gets a good number of byes. By the time they could get into the loser's bracket 182 people will have been eliminated. They're guaranteed to be in the top 74! So going to the winter arena and then showing up at the championship is enough to get you on the fast track to qualifying for the spring arena... I think this is a good thing since it allows people to get to know the same players and develop people to cheer for.
On the flip side, one good event is good enough to get rolling. This is particularly useful considering a lot of the best players live on the other side of the world and don't make it over to MLG events all that often. Come over once, do well, and you're on the fast track to getting free flights back. Seems pretty sweet!
Sunday, February 26, 2012
StarCraft II Winter Arena Conclusion
The final day at the MLG Winter Arena was pretty amazing. They were down to the final six players at the start of the day and there were some pretty fantastic games in the last few matches. The winner's bracket finals came down to Huk against MarineKing so I was pretty happy. Huk had played very well the last two days but seemed to have lost something today as he quickly got steamrollered by MarineKing. This knocked Huk down to the loser's bracket finals where he played against DongRaeGu who the commentators were saying is probably the best player in the world right now. (He made the GSL finals right before flying to New York for this event.) He also quickly steamrollered Huk which set up the final of MKP vs DRG. MarineKing won the first game and was in a good position to win the tournament if he could win either of the next two games. He didn't which meant they'd end up playing a best of 7 with DongRaeGu already up 2-1. MarineKing then pulled off three wins in a row including a great bunker rush in game 5 followed by an incredibly timed late game push in game 6. Definitely a fantastic match and I'm particularly happy about the outcome. Now that I've spoiled the ending for you you should consider watching the VODs when they become available to the public in a week or so.
The MLG guys were saying the Winter Arena was a huge success and they're planning on having two more during the Spring season. On the down side the finals were practically unwatchable at one point. The main stream actually crashed during the third game of the finals so we (Tmiv came over to watch the last couple matches) ended up missing the critical part of the game which was a little annoying. They ended up fixing it such that we were able to watch on 480P most of the time after that and a little bit on 720P but I still wish they could have managed to set it up such that we could have watched on 1080P the whole time. On the plus side they seemed to have fixed their log in issues as I only had to log in once all day and it worked on all the streams. (Well, I had to log in a second time after I refreshed my browser during the crash but that's not too unexpected.)
I actually blew out my download limit with all the streaming of games I've done this month (16G alone between Friday and Saturday) so if I'm going to tune in again in the future I should probably look into getting a better internet setup...
The MLG guys were saying the Winter Arena was a huge success and they're planning on having two more during the Spring season. On the down side the finals were practically unwatchable at one point. The main stream actually crashed during the third game of the finals so we (Tmiv came over to watch the last couple matches) ended up missing the critical part of the game which was a little annoying. They ended up fixing it such that we were able to watch on 480P most of the time after that and a little bit on 720P but I still wish they could have managed to set it up such that we could have watched on 1080P the whole time. On the plus side they seemed to have fixed their log in issues as I only had to log in once all day and it worked on all the streams. (Well, I had to log in a second time after I refreshed my browser during the crash but that's not too unexpected.)
I actually blew out my download limit with all the streaming of games I've done this month (16G alone between Friday and Saturday) so if I'm going to tune in again in the future I should probably look into getting a better internet setup...
Saturday, February 25, 2012
Minor MLG Frustrations
I'm spending the weekend watching the MLG StarCraft II Winter Arena and there have been some pretty spectacular games so far. Base trades, worker all-ins, dark templars, motherships... Huk and MarineKing remain undefeated which is pretty sweet. Idra lost his first two matches and is eliminated. Oh well. I've always hated Zerg anyway!
The games have been great and the commentators have been on the ball (Tumba is really starting to grow on me). I can't complain about any of that at all. I do have some complaints about the technical setup. Some are minor things but others are so frustration to make me think I won't want to buy a pass for the next one if they're not fixed.
The games have been great and the commentators have been on the ball (Tumba is really starting to grow on me). I can't complain about any of that at all. I do have some complaints about the technical setup. Some are minor things but others are so frustration to make me think I won't want to buy a pass for the next one if they're not fixed.
- There are 5 streams going at once and they have a neat little webpage set up which lets you switch between streams and lay out any number of them at one time. This lets you figure out which stream has a game going on and swap to it. It's a pretty great concept. I can sit in my chair away from the computer with my wireless mouse and 'channel surf'. Unfortunately they haven't done a good job with authentication. I should have to log in one time and be good to go. Instead I have to log in to each stream individually. And it seems to time out my log in, so I've had to keep logging in over and over again. I probably had to log in 30 times last night. And because I want to watch on my big tv and sit in a non-computer chair I wasn't near my keyboard and had to keep getting up to type in my info.
- Enter changes between streams even when filling in a log-in form. So I'd be trying to log in and hit enter which works in every log in window ever. Except this one, which switches which stream I'm watching.
- They've done a bad job of normalizing the volume levels of the streams. I need to crank up the volume on the first two streams. But each time I switch streams it resets back to default so I'm constantly having to adjust the volume.
- They offer 1080P resolution but don't seem to have the bandwidth to actually provide it. I get big lag spikes when using it. So I switched to 720P which worked great last night but also is lagging today. So now I'm down to 480P. Which still lets me see what's going on but isn't quite as crisp and awesome. I don't know if it's irrational or not but I feel like if I'm paying I should be able to watch in the higher definitions.
Friday, February 24, 2012
StarCraft II Winter Arena Starting!
I spend a lot of time playing games but today and for the weekend I'm going to spend a lot of time watching games. I bought a pass for the Winter Arena and hooked my computer up to the big screen tv. I find watching to be more exciting when I'm rooting for someone so I need to pick who I want to win. Huk is from Canada and plays my favourite race (Protoss) so he's my first choice for sure. After that I want to cheer for MarineKing because of how awesome he played at a previous MLG event when Reddit flew him in and he put on a show with wacky builds. And then I'm going to cheer for Idra to cover the Zerg option.
Let's rock!
Let's rock!
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
StarCraft II Campaign
I mentioned yesterday that I haven't actually played StarCraft II in an awfully long time. I decided to change that fact today and figured the best way to do so would be to play the campaign again. I'm playing on brutal and just did the third mission where the zerg swarm your little base and you have to hold out for 20 minutes. I did a pretty terrible job of defending myself and the final push easily swarmed me. I remembered Sthenno talking about running away buildings in the hopes of lasting out the timer and figured I'd give that a shot after my army was destroyed. Up went the command center and I flew it into the corner as mutalisks came in to try to finish it off. It was a race against the clock and it the race was won, barely, by the clock. My command center had 25 health left when the timer ticked down so I ended up winning the mission handily.
The last time I played the campaign I did a bio heavy focus (which I'm pretty sure is just the best) so I'm going to try something different this time. I don't remember when you get actual air units but I think I'm going to focus on those if I can get them soon enough.
The last time I played the campaign I did a bio heavy focus (which I'm pretty sure is just the best) so I'm going to try something different this time. I don't remember when you get actual air units but I think I'm going to focus on those if I can get them soon enough.
Monday, February 20, 2012
Winter StarCraft 2 Arena
For the last 3 weeks MLG has been streaming a series of qualification games leading up to a big live event this weekend. They're paying to fly the 32 qualifiers in to New York which seemed pretty cool. Especially when you consider a good chunk of these players will be coming from Korea! I've been watching the games and have been enjoying myself. 6-pool all-ins! Cannon rushes! Mothership+Archon insanity! I haven't actually played SC2 in many months but I still enjoy watching the games. I have a MLG membership so I was expecting to get to watch the finals this weekend when I heard a bit of a bombshell on one of the streams...
The arena is going Pay Per View. The standard MLG membership is good for high quality streams of their big championship events but the arena is something new and falls outside the standard membership. My first reaction was of annoyance. But then I thought about it a bit more and probably part of the reason they're charging individually for this event is that they're paying to fly all these guys in from all over the world. They're apparently going to stream every single game live with 5 streams going at once. They're bringing in a lot of the top commentators. And maybe they're even testing the waters to see how much the community cares about 'eSports'.
I think I'm going to give it a look this weekend and see. I have hopes that they'll end up with a lower number of people watching (while still actually making more money by charging $20 a pop) which will result in improved stream quality. But I haven't had any complaints about previous MLG major event streams so I don't know how much that will actually matter...
The arena is going Pay Per View. The standard MLG membership is good for high quality streams of their big championship events but the arena is something new and falls outside the standard membership. My first reaction was of annoyance. But then I thought about it a bit more and probably part of the reason they're charging individually for this event is that they're paying to fly all these guys in from all over the world. They're apparently going to stream every single game live with 5 streams going at once. They're bringing in a lot of the top commentators. And maybe they're even testing the waters to see how much the community cares about 'eSports'.
I think I'm going to give it a look this weekend and see. I have hopes that they'll end up with a lower number of people watching (while still actually making more money by charging $20 a pop) which will result in improved stream quality. But I haven't had any complaints about previous MLG major event streams so I don't know how much that will actually matter...
Tuesday, February 07, 2012
Starcraft 2 Winter Arena Qualifiers
I haven't actually been playing games much in the last week after work. Major League Gaming started running their qualifiers for a big tournament later this month and have been streaming the games on their website (MLG.tv) from 7pm each day. They're streaming the games off of replays from the looks of it so I imagine the games have already been played but they're spreading out all the content over 3 weeks building up to the main event. I can't say no to ~50 hours of quality SC2 games!
The winter arena seems like an interesting idea. It's going to be a 32 person invite only event where MLG is paying airfare and hotel for the 32 players who qualify which seems pretty sweet. The $10k first prize isn't too shabby either. They're giving invites to the top 8 players from MLG Providence and then they're holding 3 regional tournaments with the top 8 from each of those qualifying as well. Today marks the last day of the European tournament but there's still a Korean tournament starting on Thursday and the North American one next Thursday. Some of the favourites are missing (Huk and Idra for example have invites from Providence) but it's been pretty great so far. Worth tuning into I think! The schedule is here if you just want to tune in to the final rounds.
The winter arena seems like an interesting idea. It's going to be a 32 person invite only event where MLG is paying airfare and hotel for the 32 players who qualify which seems pretty sweet. The $10k first prize isn't too shabby either. They're giving invites to the top 8 players from MLG Providence and then they're holding 3 regional tournaments with the top 8 from each of those qualifying as well. Today marks the last day of the European tournament but there's still a Korean tournament starting on Thursday and the North American one next Thursday. Some of the favourites are missing (Huk and Idra for example have invites from Providence) but it's been pretty great so far. Worth tuning into I think! The schedule is here if you just want to tune in to the final rounds.
Monday, December 19, 2011
Entertainment Top 30 Under 30
Forbes just came out with their top 30 people in entertainment under 30 years of age. The name that brought this list to my attention is Sean "Day [9]" Plott. He's a webcaster who is really into Starcraft 2. He's my favourite commentator at the MLG events. He has a daily webshow about Starcraft 2. Sometimes it's silly and funny. Sometimes it really breaks down a specific part of the game in detail. One thing it always is is awesome.
I haven't actually played SC2 in many months. But I'll still turn on the Day[9] Daily every now and again because I find it highly entertaining. And when an MLG is running and I have a choice between streams to watch I'll pick the one with Day[9] doing the commentary regardless of who the players are because he's just that good.
What surprises me about his getting put on the Forbes list is it's putting eSports into a somewhat mainstream light. Movie stars, singers... Those sorts of people seem like the sort of people they'd put on the list. That a guy who talks about Starcraft 2 on the internet got onto their list is pretty sweet!
I haven't actually played SC2 in many months. But I'll still turn on the Day[9] Daily every now and again because I find it highly entertaining. And when an MLG is running and I have a choice between streams to watch I'll pick the one with Day[9] doing the commentary regardless of who the players are because he's just that good.
What surprises me about his getting put on the Forbes list is it's putting eSports into a somewhat mainstream light. Movie stars, singers... Those sorts of people seem like the sort of people they'd put on the list. That a guy who talks about Starcraft 2 on the internet got onto their list is pretty sweet!
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