StarCraft 2

Pyros

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So Blizzard picked The International 3(dota2 biggest tournament) weekend to hold the WCS regional finals. Feels pretty stupid for people who wanted to watch both and probably gonna hurt viewers for both(not much but still a decent bit).
 

Gankak

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So Blizzard picked The International 3(dota2 biggest tournament) weekend to hold the WCS regional finals. Feels pretty stupid for people who wanted to watch both and probably gonna hurt viewers for both(not much but still a decent bit).
I think the thing about this is Twitch. They are probably going to be having issues with their service all weekend due to this.
 

Zaphid

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I think the thing about this is Twitch. They are probably going to be having issues with their service all weekend due to this.
I'm glad I can watch SC2 in client in case twitch dies then. Everybody and their mother will be watching TI3 - ingame drops, live interactions, fantasy teams. SC2 doesn't even come close and I can save myself a lot of time by just checking liquipedia afterwards.
 

Zaphid

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Your community doesn't change overnight, even TL, the nexus of SC universe, is offering Dota 2 coverage on level equal to Starcraft and has been doing that for a year now. With the ability to sell their own Dota 2 merchandise, they would be insane not to. Blizzard has a history of being the bully on the market, with things like release dates of WoW expansions being timed suspiciously close to competition, but this time they look like the retarded kid running headfirst into a wall. TI3 is probably the most hyped esport event of the year, fans have like 5 teams who I think could take it with the rest not being that far behind and for the general audience the amount of inventive marketing put to use.

I realize that deep down they probably know that it's a shitty decision that nobody's happy with, but they were hell bent on running 3 seasons of WCS before Blizzcon...
 

Pyros

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Well the incontrol post on reddit was spot on. Copy pasting:
All 3 finals on 1 weekend is bad enough (audience will have fatigue at the end) but you are also polarizing your viewership. People will absolutely choose one or the other whereas if they had 2 different weekends to watch they'd go with both TIL3/WCS finals. Even if in some odd world blizzard said "We can win vs that 2+ million dollar super bowl event for a mega popular game with our seasonal regional finals" they will ONLY hurt themselves EVEN IF they "hurt" TIL3 more (I know they won't). It's bad competitively, it's bad selfishly, it's bad for the scene(s)...

I know blizz folk follow me/read my tweets/posts and what not but I cannot possibly pretend I am not absolutely disgusted by this. We are supposed to be beyond the itzik phase and into the happy new world where we are getting better as a community/scene.

Come the fuck on.

EDIT: Worth mentioning not to long after this post I was contacted/had a conversation with a blizz employee that is pretty high up (just don't want to name drop) and we discussed this. Blizz is aware, things are complicated but they are working on solutions. I posted emotionally and while I did that because I fucking love this game and get really upset/sad when i think things are done poorly I need to remember I have a big platform to speak from. Basically, this isn't good. Blizz knows/cares and is working to communicate their thoughts and make things better moving forward. I will still be here and I have faith things can/will get better.
It's just a very stupid decision overall, regardless of the goals. And it certainly won't affect dota2 numbers too much, in fact what is likely to affect dota2 numbers a lot more is the fact it's hosted in the US, which leads to fairly shitty hours for both europe and asia, and since most of the viewers are from there, I don't expect super high numbers, plus the ingame client and shit. But mostly it's gonna suck for the WCS numbers I think, I don't feel they're gonna pull more people from dota than dota will pull from SC2.
 
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Acting like a huge bag of dicks out of spite or something is one thing, but what do they really get from this when the viewer numbers for TI3 smash the shit out of them? Any publicity is good publicity? Kappa

It's going to happen...they're willingly going up against one of the biggest competitive gaming events of the year and they're going to get wrecked. Clearly the best way to market SC2 is to watch it go down in flames head to head with another game.
 

Sidian

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Maybe they are hoping many more non-sc2 fans will tune into WCS finals when TI3 games are on break. If 1 million people are staying home that weekend to watch TI3, maybe Blizzard is hoping a percentage of those spectators will tune into WCS finals just because they see it's on as well. Who knows though, it's a stupid idea from Blizzard.
 

Tenks

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I'm only mildly interested in professional DOTA and, obviously, extremely interested in professional SC2 but if it isn't a TvX I'm turning off SC2 and watching TI3. If it is a Na'Vi game I may even watch that over some Terran matchups. I find this move insanely stupid by Blizzard.
 

Pyros

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I'm only mildly interested in professional DOTA and, obviously, extremely interested in professional SC2 but if it isn't a TvX I'm turning off SC2 and watching TI3. If it is a Na'Vi game I may even watch that over some Terran matchups. I find this move insanely stupid by Blizzard.
Na'Vi's looking good this year too. Lots of teams are, I think it's going to be a lot better than the previous 2 TIs, there's a bunch of very strong teams and even the less strong teams manage to beat them regularily, there's very few "weak" teams in comparison.

On the WCS regionals, are they played locally or all at the same time? Like is the korean one being played at korean hours and such, cause that means there'd only be overlap with the euro(minor) and the US(big one) if they're played locally, while the korean is pretty much off hours.
 

Zaphid

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I don't really watch SC anymore, but I still keep up with the results and this ranks just below Soulkey winning WCS Korea in terms of surprise.