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//: StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty |OT4| Everyone Else Would Beat Catspajamas
- Thread starter Corran Horn
- Start date
We should just do a general tourney again. We haven't gotten to hear a bunch of us bumble our way through casting matches in a long while.
Corran Horn
May the Schwartz be with you
We could do that I guess. Need to gauge interest.
Hmm, I'm in... but when I tried no one listen...
Well Panda did... but no one to him :>
Into your 6 spine crawlers of course.
I can see it being strong in the sense that it will dictate how armys and players consider what the unit can do. We'll see.
At the very least it's abilities are 100x better to watch than the infestors.
im in too
There'll probably be enough for a 16 man tourney, dono about another 32 man. Definetly should be a HotS beta tournament though.
it means your colossi cant ever engage into 6 spine crawlers, so yes.
the viper neuters 2base tech and gateway aggro has already more or less died.
I was half being sarcastic and half not.
Mainly because vipers are bad at fighting ground things unlike mutas so you'd have more static D in prep for a timing attack as you saved up.
Also I want to see Vipers drag +2 banelings from cliffs into mineral lines. That would be great. Wonder how many months it will take to see it happen. Probably like 8 months.
they're cheaper than mutas though. you'd only need two, at most three.
can you think of any maps where this would be plausible?
it can drag the super thor.
I guess you can have 300 more gas for ground units, maybe if it's possible to sustain the Viper count sort of like Vessels SK Terran style. At least Toss gets to make more HT in PvZ.
Just 1 map is enough.
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=313616
financial break down of the FXO invitational series
financial break down of the FXO invitational series
Cool to see stuff like that be in the open.
I didn't watch the invitational, anything new or interesting happen?
It was a decent series from what I saw, but no real stand out moments.
Corran Horn
May the Schwartz be with you
Seeing stuff like this makes me wonder how much money NASL is losing
Can someone tell me why hotkeys are clickable at all? I just lost a game because I somehow managed to click my queens into my zergling group without realizing and my production went to basically zero because they ran into the Terran army and died. That is such a retarded functionality.
Fuck you Blizzard.
Also RAGE. OIJEOTIJWEGOMW)EME)(GMW#)G( W#)(GN W#)G(
I made it 8 games into ladder season before raging.
Fuck you Blizzard.
Also RAGE. OIJEOTIJWEGOMW)EME)(GMW#)G( W#)(GN W#)G(
I made it 8 games into ladder season before raging.
You can shut it off in options...
I know! But it shouldn't even be an option! At least make it unclickable by default
Nada next guest on Off the Record :3
Teamliquid Page
MLG Winter Arena - Player List:
MLG Providence '11 Top 8
Leenock, Naniwa, DongRaeGu, Mvp, Huk
, MC, Haypro, Idra
European OQ Top 8
Violet, Ret, Thorzain, Pomi, Socke, Sjow, Grubby, Merz
Korea/Taiwan OQ Top 8
Nestea, Parting, Losira, MarineKing, Oz, STC, Ganzi, San
North American OQ Top 8
Drewbie, Ddoro, Sheth, SaSe, Axslav, Artist, Minigun, DDE
Toronto, Victory Cafe, 4pm-10pm, Feb.26th, BARCRAFT:
Going:
Zzoram
Pandaman
scogoth
mcrae
TheNiX
Spl1nter
Maybe:
caderyn / Silversun
MLG Winter Arena - Player List:
MLG Providence '11 Top 8
Leenock, Naniwa, DongRaeGu, Mvp, Huk
European OQ Top 8
Violet, Ret, Thorzain, Pomi, Socke, Sjow, Grubby, Merz
Korea/Taiwan OQ Top 8
Nestea, Parting, Losira, MarineKing, Oz, STC, Ganzi, San
North American OQ Top 8
Drewbie, Ddoro, Sheth, SaSe, Axslav, Artist, Minigun, DDE
Toronto, Victory Cafe, 4pm-10pm, Feb.26th, BARCRAFT:
Going:
Zzoram
Pandaman
scogoth
mcrae
TheNiX
Spl1nter
Maybe:
caderyn / Silversun
Other tournaments may have sponsors that do not want the details of their arrangement made public.
FXO.boss made a great point about how he doesn't think that reliance on sponsorship is viable because the minute they pull back, the entire scene would collapse. Starcraft 2 as a spectator sport needs be become self-sustaining if it's going to survive.
What? Cannot the same be said with ANY competitive industry though? There are exceptions, but the ad/sponsor revenues are the most important factor in any competitive sport, even when there are tickets sold.
Also, instead of assuming a pull back, they should just make sure that they are not abusing sponsors, but that the relationship is mutually beneficial.
Ad revenue is different from sponsorships.
Ad revenue is based on views. Sponsors give money up front.
I know that, just bundled it together as in ways to get money without a ticket fee.*
*which is something that definitely should be introduced in a slightly more enforced way.
All FXO.boss is saying is that they need some mix of advertisement and PPV or subscription to sustain the business, and that they need significant viewer growth for even that to work.
Sponsors giving $300,000 up front without knowing what the viewership will turn out to be (ie. NASL) is just not going to happen in the future.
It's much easier to do normal ads because corporations are used to buying ads based on views already. Asking for lump sums is a great deal more difficult, and lump sum sponsorships are the kind that tend to disappear first when a company's balance sheet is looking red.
If there was a Starcraft 2 HD 1080p channel I could get on cable TV, I would gladly pay $20/month for that. However, a cable channel is not viable in America unless 1 million people pay for it.
Sponsors giving $300,000 up front without knowing what the viewership will turn out to be (ie. NASL) is just not going to happen in the future.
It's much easier to do normal ads because corporations are used to buying ads based on views already. Asking for lump sums is a great deal more difficult, and lump sum sponsorships are the kind that tend to disappear first when a company's balance sheet is looking red.
If there was a Starcraft 2 HD 1080p channel I could get on cable TV, I would gladly pay $20/month for that. However, a cable channel is not viable in America unless 1 million people pay for it.
PhoenixDark
Banned
There's so much competition with free content (player streams especially) that it's just going to become harder for these types of tournaments to last. It would make sense to get certain players (Idra, Destiny, InControl, etc) not to stream on certain nights and instead participate in whatever online tournament is being run. But even then it would still be near impossible to stop some popular player from not participating.
PPV is always going to struggle against a Destiny or Idra stream. Perhaps lower prices and significantly more content would appeal to people. But I can't really think of what this "extra content" could be. Are people going to pay just to see some extra interviews or talk to players, something they can already do on their streams?
The thing is, all this "competition" is losing money, except for individual player streams.
Eventually a lot of these medium-to-large tournaments are going to dry up once they run out of money and their investors back out. Only the tournaments that are self-sustainable will survive in the end.
Player streams will always be free, but tournaments will eventually need to go PPV unless we magically find another few million viewers willing to watch the free stream so ads can pay off, or unless they all dramatically cut back their prize pools and become online tournaments to save on travel costs.
MLG supposedly lost over a million dollars last year. That's why they fired half their staff and have reduced the number of live events they're doing this year, are experimenting with PPV, and put a lot of the qualifiers online.
They were given $5million by a venture capitalist investor. If they can't turn into a profitable business within another year or two, they'll be dead.
Eventually a lot of these medium-to-large tournaments are going to dry up once they run out of money and their investors back out. Only the tournaments that are self-sustainable will survive in the end.
Player streams will always be free, but tournaments will eventually need to go PPV unless we magically find another few million viewers willing to watch the free stream so ads can pay off, or unless they all dramatically cut back their prize pools and become online tournaments to save on travel costs.
MLG supposedly lost over a million dollars last year. That's why they fired half their staff and have reduced the number of live events they're doing this year, are experimenting with PPV, and put a lot of the qualifiers online.
They were given $5million by a venture capitalist investor. If they can't turn into a profitable business within another year or two, they'll be dead.
Any real source to this or is this just another reddit rumors?
Sundance confirmed in interviews that he received ~$5million in venture capital investment, and that last year he lost a lot of money. I don't know if he confirmed the amount of money he lost, but judging by how he laid off half his staff, we can assume it was significant.
I believe he claimed in an interview that MLG spent $1million+ on broadband for their HD streams last year (some of that was due to switching to satellite trucks for some of their events due to local internet problems), and that wasn't their only expense.
PhoenixDark
Banned
In short, we're going to start seeing more small online tournaments like TSL and Total Biscuit's stuff. IPL is the only big tournament that will last out of the US scene, as it's tied to IGN.
Blizzard has kind of done a shitty job fostering the SC2 community. The dota games are taking players not just from MMOs but RTS, and Blizz seems uninterested in making the game more than just a 1v1 client people play every now and then. The lack of support for the UI, BNet in general, map community, 2v2/team play, etc is stunning and will eventually lead to the scene drying up.
Blizz is actually trying this year in regards to the tournament scene, they have their big Esports thingy!
AdventureRacing
Member
It's funny that they let the MOBA genre slip right through their fingers and now it is exploding right in their face. Blizzard fucked up there.
i wonder how much they're banking on blizzard dota tying the genre in with sc2. we thought LoL was bad, who knows what will happen when the userbase is split right on the multiplayer screen.
AdventureRacing
Member
The blizzard dota just seems like such a half hearted effort though that could change. I think if they had acted sooner and put in more effort they could have done that and had a strong presence (maybe a dominating presence) within the genre.
Now i think they will struggle to get noticed at all (especially with DOTA 2 coming).
Not that i care either way, can't say i'm a huge fan of the genre and it kinda sucks to me if that is the future of esports.
I am not sure that Blizzard and Blizzard developers have any ambitions in that subgenre, really. If they like the genre so much, they would have already made a fully fledged product - not that I would wish for them to do so. In my preferences, SCII is waaay superior to that anyway. And I prefer 1v1 action to XvX any time.
DotA2 and LoL are going to be the only big DotA-types. One or two niche ones might spring up here and there but those two will dominate the playerbase/eyeballs. Blizzard should just focus on RTS and Diablo (and obviously whatever MMO they have going at the time, WoW/Titan). Warcraft RTS and more SC2 support, please!
They had signs far earlier than that. The fact that more people were playing DotA than WC3 itself should have tipped them off.
Same with Starcraft esports.
While I agree, it's also worth remembering that F2P wasn't well known in the West at that point.
PhoenixDark
Banned
The SC dota looks horrible. I'd imagine it'll get a facelift but DOTA2 should be out by the time Blizz is ready to release it. I could see Blizz throwing prize money at it early to jump start things but I really don't expect it to work. Just another bandwagon they missed, basically. Valve is really making them look bad, not only in terms of the game but in terms of how they treat their fans/community.
IMO it would make more sense to release a brand new DOTA featuring heroes from WarCraft and Diablo.
IMO it would make more sense to release a brand new DOTA featuring heroes from WarCraft and Diablo.