For some time now, the Starcraft community has been left without a stable and highly competitive ladder. With the demise of PGTour, and the current dormant state of WGTour many began to ponder the question, could this finally mean the death of Starcraft? Many thought so, while other hardcore fans continued playing; waiting patiently for maybe that one day a highly competitive ladder would be released. TeamLiquid is not the first to make the announcement of their new ladder. Fairly recently, the popular website of GosuGamers opened up a beta phase of their ladder named Carrier. Unfortunately, it really did not seem to catch the community's attention, nor did it seem to satisfy their expectations. However, all is certainly not over for Carrier and they are planning to begin their first season shortly.

The hardworking staff behind Team Liquid thought it would be only necessary to announce their 3rd tour on the new ladder. Would it be a good idea to host a major tournament on a brand new ladder? What about potential bugs? These questions may cross your mind when you first think of a new ladder being opened. Fortunately, it seems that the crew has thought of this. The beta season is set to begin on April 28th and will last around three weeks, so that many of the bugs can be worked out. Once this testing phase is over, the first season will begin on June 2nd, but the date is tentative.

Currently, there is no plan for a final tournament in the beta stages. However, considerations will be given to five players that meet one of the three standards below:

• the top three finishers of the ladder
  
• the gamer with the most games played
  
• the gamer who discovers and reports the most valuable bugs in the system

Here is what Manifesto7, one of the head admins of TLT3 had to say about the new ladder:

“There are no more excuses, there is nowhere to hide. Saying you were A+ on PGT isn't going to matter anymore, because you are only going to be asked about your TLT rank. Pride is coming back to battle.net. Prepare yourself.”

This ladder will have big shoes to fill if it plans on competing with PGTour's former glory. This is quite possible though, but only with the help of the community will this happen.


SOURCE: TeamLiquid