TargA blogs about WCS EU and how the SC2 scene can still improve

Hey everyone! This is my first blog and I will mainly write about my WCS adventures, what I hope WCS will be like next year as well as what I've been up to lately.

So first of all, I got in to WCS way too late, I was expecting to qualify quite easily for the first season but I had some massive trouble against protoss and was quite unlucky. I got Feast the first two qualifiers and in the last qualifier I met Shuttle, who was a player I often beat on ladder, but he changed up his style a bit and I didn’t have the best day so he destroyed me 2-0. After that I lost motivation and started playing more Dota 2 than SC2. It took me a few times but eventually I managed to qualify and the rest is history!

Baum did a pretty cool blog about my WCS results, from challenger league to the round of 8. You can read it here.

Everyone thinks that the Koreans just come over and ez pzs all the top Europeans, this is however not true at all. I kinda wish the Koreans would speak up on how much they practiced, For example MMA was very well prepared against Nerchio, him and Cella had analysed his builds, his style and countered it perfectly on every map. I also heard that he was practicing with soulkey and a few other top Korean zergs for the ro8. MC also told me that he had not been practicing too much, but had studied my VODs from WCS and fragbite.

My preparation for ro8 was a bit weird, there was a big Norwegian tournament at Sørlanet in the same week as WCS, with a nice big prizepool (17000 NOK first place), so I felt that I had to go even though the timing was a bit bad. Anyways, I got 2nd, Snute won and the games were really entertaining, I won the first bo5, and in the last bo5, final game, I did the biggest throw ever in a professional game. People should check out the VODs! I won 10000 NOK for 2nd place, so not a bad trip. At Sørlanet I prepared a ton for MC, watched some of his recent VODs vs zerg ( I only found games vs TLO, he plays a bit different than me!) and I practiced some with stardust and a ton of games vs good tosses on the ladder. I did quite poorly both on the ladder and in the customs vs stardust so I lost confidence, but I thought I could still put up a good fight vs MC.

I am not going to analyse the games too much, MC just played better than me and he definitely deserved the win! The weekend overall was very boring, we had to stay at a hotel that was 30 minutes from Cologne, nothing to do besides WCS. We were invited to the barcraft, but the taxi trip back would be expensive as hell and all the players wanted to go back to the hotel. ESL had booked me a nice 22:00 flight the next day (including a lovely train trip to Frankfurt) so I decided to book an early morning flight, which was probably cheaper than the flight they booked.

Anyways, to sum up my performance this season, I am quite happy with how it went; I could’ve done better though, so I hope I can perform in the next season.

I also want to share some of my thoughts about how I hope WCS will change next season, the region lock has been a heated debate, I heard some stuff that they will allow Koreans to participate that live in a team house in their region. This is what most WCS players want. This is an overall positive thing, we can practice with them on the ladder or costums, and they won’t be able to surprise us with their playstyle and so on.

It’s super hard to find information on most of the Koreans, if they don’t play for foreign teams, there are almost no vods or replays available to study, since they aren’t playing team leagues and foreign tournaments. The Koreans also have more good players to practice with than we do!

Since there will only be 3 seasons next year, I hope they will spread it out more and do a better job scheduling with independent tournament hosts, we lost some tournaments, like ESWC and way too many of the current tournaments are clashing with each other: Homestory cup clashed with a RedBull event, and Homestory cup will clash with the Irish tournament this time. Dreamhack, IEM and WCG are also at the same time.

The current broadcasts, tournament finals are getting boring, in my opinion atleast. It’s mostly the same hosts, casters and venues. I would love to see WCS visiting other countries in Europe, imagine having WCS in Russia, with happy and titan in ro16 or ro8, or going to France when Dayshi and ToD are playing, Sweden, Spain, everywhere!

And I really hope they continue bringing in more players to cast. This makes it way more enjoyable and not as repetitive. I know that it will be more expensive, but changing the venue and casters as well as including all the fans is really important for the future of WCS and SC2.

So to sum this blog up, lately I have been taking a small break from SC2, I’ve been relaxing, playing some dota 2, catching up on some TV series and thinking about the future. There are some qualifiers coming up, I am also invited to a tournament in Norway in early November, as well as another tournament that I can’t announce. I am slowly starting to practice again and I will be ready for next year’s WCS. Big shoutout to Team Dignitas and all of the sponsors!

Thank you all for reading!