I am proud to announce that RageQuit.TV will be an official online stream for DreamHack! By online, I mean we will be casting from our homes which means you get our 1080p stream for free and get to see some great players such as: MC, White-Ra, Idra, Nada, Inca, FruitDealer, Naniwa, Kas, MarineKing, HuK, Ret, Naama, TLO, Jinro, Dimaga, Thorzain and many more! Don’t believe us? Check out the official news.
The winner will get 100,000 SEK which translates into ~$16,150—Not bad for a tournament that only is lasting three days, that is ~$5,400 per day for first! In case you are wondering, Day[9] and Apollo will be providing on-site coverage of the event but we will be there as an alternative all the way up to the finals! All DreamHack information will be posted on their website @ DreamHack.se. Once we get our stream schedule we will be sure to post it here! Stay tuned!
The next RageQuitTV Open will be ran on the North American servers and stay at 128 Max Players. The prize pool has been decreased from 125€ to 125$ but that isn’t all bad news! We planning to run a monthly event using these tournaments as the qualifiers so you will get to see a big final tournament with EU v NA. So the viewers will get one more tournament and players get the possibility to win more money! However, those are just our plans and will most likely start happening next month—We just figured we would tell you all what we are working on and not take the announcement of announcement route.
You see Korean players in almost any large foreign tournament. However, you don’t see too many foreigners in Korean events, even though GomTV is very open to letting us in unlike KeSPA back in the Broodwar days. You keep hearing about how good Koreans are and to get good you need to play against good people, so why are some pros refusing to go to Korea?
Being in Korea allows you to play on their ladder lag free against the best of the best. However ladder is not the best way to practice; you can’t practice against builds and you can’t prepare against a certain player or match up for a tournament.
Traveling is never cheap, especially if you are going from the US to Korea, which can cost over a thousand dollars for just one way. The Code A grand prize sounds big at ~$1,400, however you will have to be in Korea for at least 26 days to play in a finals so that comes down to $54 per day. Not quite going to cover your traveling and lodging expenses. The only way you could make enough money to pocket some would be by getting into Code S; which gets you an instant $1500/season (~$58/d) for being in but it does go up after that. Either of those options barely pay for your plane ticket to get to Korea, you still need to cover that return flight. So there is virtually no chance of making money by playing in Code A for a single season; better hope you stay in it or don’t get homesick! You could lose 3 grand very easily. However, GomTV just announced first place of MLG and Code-A will get automatic qualification into Code S; which will most likely entice Naniwa to go if he wins another MLG as he has stated he would like to go to Korea. But this change also means it will be easier to get demoted from Code S to Code A, if you get put into a “death group”.
If a players main goal is to just make a living on the side, the “foreign” scene gives players a much bigger chance. Broodwar is still far more popular in Korea than Starcraft2 is, and that fact isn’t changing anytime soon. Korea just doesn’t really have any small SC2 tournaments that foreigners can get into, the interest simply isn’t there; while the forieng scene has the Eu.Go4SC(~$1800/m), Eu.Zotac(~$550/m), NA.Zotac(~$400/m), NA.Go4SC2(~$400/m), RQTVOpen (~$569/m), and many many more. But looking at those 5 tournaments if a player won 1st place on every tournament that is ~$3720 which comes out to about $185 per day. I know it’s unrealistic to expect to get first on EVERY tournament but there are several events that take place every day those are just 5 of them. Korea may have been the holy grail for aspiring Brood War players, but the hot market for SC2 may be elsewhere.
Finally, let’s examine why Korean players are so easily able to enter the foreign scene. Well MLG gives out $5000 (~$1,666/day) to first place and only lasts 3 days compared to the 26 days of a GSL Season. Not to mention you get rank points to compete in the national championships which is $50,000 (~16,666/day). After looking at the numbers, it is very obvious why Koreans are going to foreign events and why we aren’t going to Korean.
The question isn’t “will pro SC2 players go to Korea?” it’s whether or not they’ll want to. Obviously, competing on stage is something that is on many people’s bucket list but once the novelty wears off; is the money enough to keep them over seas?
There is nothing more that I enjoy than being able to cast some Reddit tournaments. Everyone is extremely kind and their stuff is extremely well ran, there aren’t any words to describe how dedicated their admin staff is. Actually, that is a lie; they have Day9 Dedication.
In the past, I will admit they weren’t always the highest level games due to the fact it is a “for fun” thing exclusive to Redditors with no prize pool. However this week, every game was just amazing and I decided to upload every single game to YouTube, for all of you to enjoy.
Reddit, is a social news site that allows anyone to create a “sub reddit”, which basically is a container that holds discussions for certain subjects. That being said there is a subreddit for starcraft, which is very popular. If you haven’t been there I highly recommend you just make that your home page, you won’t be disappointed. I think every TL Staff member checks TL, along with many high level players, heck I recall seeing Reddit as Artosis’s #1 viewed site, even above TL.
So I’m lazy and didn’t upload every single Craft Cup game, so here are some random series that I thought were pretty decent. Out of all of them I recommend watching GLSnute play, as it is very swarm like and aggressive. He just tries to out play his opponent by being everywhere at once and testing their multitasking ability.
