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Jaclyn "JacziE" Lo examines what becoming an international league has done for the European proving ground called Extreme Masters. 
At the end, it was June Park, better known as SK. Lyn, who pillaged the Extreme Masters trophy from defending champion Yoan "ToD" Merlo and with it, a hefty $20,000 cash prize. Lucifer took fourth place behind new teammate, Manuel "Grubby" Schenkhuizen. This marked the first year that the ESL opened its doors to international players instead of limiting itself to homegrown European and primarily German talent. An open qualifying tournament was held in Los Angeles, where the four Koreans punched their tickets to the main draw. The LA tourney epitomized the diversity of its Southern California surroundings, where American talents both past and present—Franklin "Nilknarf" Pearsall and Dennis "Shortround" Chan were in attendance—rubbed elbows with Canada’s Jonathan "KiwiKaKi" Garneau and Germans Daniel "Miou" Holthuis and Johannes "hanf" Morlo. However, the highlight of the tournament was undoubtedly the participation of the South Koreans, who flew over 6,000 miles for the chance to compete in perhaps the West’s most prestigious, individual-based Warcraft III tournament today (aside from the EM, the ESL is also the driving force behind the WC3L, the longest running and most successful team-based league in the world). The Koreans, as expected, did not disappoint. All four swept their respective brackets on the way to cinching a stranglehold on the top four slots, with Lyn emerging as the number one overall seed.  Lyn takes first place in the Extreme Masters Finals in Hannover, Germany. The EM was originally devised as a showcase for established European players as well as a platform for launching the next generation of European stars: the next MaDFroG, the next Grubby, the next ToD. The Los Angeles leg probably served more as a dry-run to test unfamiliar waters rather than a foregone conclusion for future Extreme Masters tourneys. In any event, the ESL understood that for the EM to succeed on the global e-sport stage, it needed the built-in, fanboy-fueled marketing machine that only the best gamers command. Enter the Koreans. Truth is, outside of Grubby, ToD, and the Chinese one-man army Xiaofeng “Sky” Li, few players have ever generated the seismic buzz of the Koreans. It’s the equivalent of getting an A-list movie star to open a movie. Not only can Lyn, Lucifer and company carry a tournament on the strength of their name alone, they also increase the level of competition, making it more appealing for spectators. Page:
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Friday November 27 2009 | |||||
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User Comments
Players who've "gone pro" rely more on tournament earnings than the new players who are, in effect, amateurs. Removing a major source of income makes it more difficult for a group of professionals to sustain themselves, and without them the overall skill in the community (and hence the spectator value) decreases dramatically.
In sum, I'm all for grassroots leagues/tournaments designed to showcase and develop emerging talent (where professional participation is excluded or limited), but these events should not have comparable prize money to those where the games are open to everyone.
As an addendum to the article and as a reaction to your comment, I want to point out that HoT had a period of incredible publicity last year, when he won SEC and took 2nd at EM (under ToD). He shot up the ranks as one of Europe's best players. Which reinforces the point that EM was a good proving ground for European talent.
But for this year's EM, there's no "buzz" about a good European performance. ToD and Grubby performing well (or badly) doesn't generate buzz. We've seen them rise and fall countless times. Happy performed well, but not well enough to get a +points to make his name "bigger" in the scene.
However ESL has never been about inviting players. The league system is designed so everybody can participate. Germany being the role model for this as of now. However this also includes countless qualifiers.
The Intel Extreme Masters is not a tournament for rising stars to boost their confidence. And what good would it be for players to say "we won the Intel Extreme Masters for the armless", if players like Lyn and Lucifer (the only two Koreans in Hanover) were not allowed to participate?
Looking back at the European main round the young talents generated a lot of buzz. However as long as inactive players like fire_de can beat them, they wont win any major international tournament.
sure they have the most progamers and they are with some chinese/european players the best, but there are so many talented and good players who can easily compete with 95% of the koreans. only difference is that talented players from europe are normally no "progamers" who are playin fulltime, but wc3l and other tourneys have shown that they are strong enough.
europe:
happy is a big talent who will be on top in the future, hasu showed great results in the last time, same as dowaq or xlord, neytpoh played great at the last stars wars or sth like this with beatin several koreans. not to mention the normal "elite" with grubby, hot, xyligan or sase who can beat anyone on a good day. tod needs to introduction.
would be even more excitin if deadman and creo would still play :D
china:
everyone knows there are plenty of new talents every month and they already have world class players with xiaot, fly, lyc, th000 or infi. sky needs no introduction, same as tod from europe or moon from korea.
like i said, my point is that there is no real "extremly one-sided" wc3 area. many players got just the korea bonus with this flag in front of their names, but they are nothing special compared to many top players from europe or china (or even america). of course they got unique world class players like moon or lyn, but so does china or europe with tod, grubby, infi or sky too.
just stop the hype, its not like korean players won every wcg, eswc or any other tournament, they have the most top player, yes, but they got the chance with beein progamers many others dont have, so its not that suprisin or?
ps: check the wc3l season, many "new" talented players who show great results, f.e. yaws & dark winnin nearly everythin in 2on2.
@#7: Infi is vastly improved and, in my opinion, the second best player in China behind Sky (I would say he's tied with Fly100% but Infi would win a head-to-head matchup with Fly as well as enjoying a slight racial advantage). However, I wouldn't rank him top five in the world just yet. That clique is reserved for players, like Sky, who have won at least one of the major international LANs like ESWC, WCG or WEG. Until then, I would say most of the Koreans are ahead of him (Moon, Soju, Lucifer, Lyn), as are Grubby and ToD.
Also, in the context of the sentence, I think the point was not that Sky is the only good player in China, but the only good player that the average WC3 fan would pay to see.
Point i am trying to bring across is, if you remove the Koreans you are doing no one a favor, the pros will have a lack of income, the amateurs a lack of experience and the fans a lack of good matches.
Last year, Extreme Masters generated a lot of buzz on its own -- big prize money, continent-wide qualifiers, reaching out to a lot of European players.
I imagine that ESL is testing the waters to push EM to become international. That is, there's EM in Europe, USA, China -- then a culminating LAN finals. (I might be wrong, but this is my theory, I don't know what the sponsors would prefer). But this particular one, we had qualifiers for Europeans + one qualifier in the USA. ONE. That tells me that this was more of a test-run, rather than a big shift of direction (from European to being fully international), else, there would at least be two? or three. Anyway, I digress.
So the point is, for this particular tournament, one qualifier managed to change the tide of battle drastically, and find two players who qualified out of one LAN tournament cinch the top titles; while the Europeans who slaved it out for months on weekly games were merely bleeps in the radar.
Next year, if EM decides to push to include players internationally with their own respective qualifiers and/or open the tournament to the world right at the beginning; I fully support it.
Like I said, I don't think the Europeans should be coddled or babied into a prize. But last year, they competed straight on, went through qualifiers, group stages, relegation... this year they went through the same, but the tournament ended up being won by someone who got a slot out of a 3-day qualifier.
Competition is amazing with great players. I'm not saying Lyn and Lucifer did not deserve their win. They did what they had to get to the finals. But they seem out of place to join the finals against people who played through relegation and end up winning it all. :)
Chinese one-man-army is a figure of speech, a flowery description of Sky who virtually dominated the scene for a VERY long time. This does not mean that China doesn't have any players aside from Sky.
So I don't know what you are thinking focusing on a 4-letter word and replying with statistics of a player completely unrelated to the article, when I simply used the words to describe a very capable player who is considered one of the best players consistently.
I just feel saying Grubby and ToD are Europe's only hope may have been a slight overstatement, definately not 2 years ago but today.
SaSe has never taken a title for his own, and is highly erratic when it comes to performance. Some days he wins big, some days he just loses unnecessarily. Besides, he did not even qualify out of the relegation nor was at the EM LAN finals, so of course... I "forgot" him. :P
But in a nutshell, I just find it "unfair" (using this word LOOSELY) for the Europeans to have to play through qualifiers, group stages, relegation, etc. etc. only to lose to two people who played a 3-day LAN event in LA.
Of course Lyn deserved to win. He beat everyone. But I'm debating his participation more than his victory.
It would've been different If the whole Extreme Masters event had an extensive international qualifier. As #17 said, the reason they only had one international qualifier was the lack of time. If there were around 3 qualifiers, then we'd see more of a mixed participation, maybe a qualifier in China too.
Last Extreme Masters was purely European. This year, they held ONE qualifier. And the two people who managed to qualify out of that tournament were on the top 4.
I am not, and will not, be against Extreme Masters opening its doors to international players in the future. This is not what the article is about. This is about THIS particular tournament, and how ONE international qualifier swayed the result towards the Koreans. :)
part of them really unkown because they not have sponsors or power to flight to events like ROCKY from Israel/Russia ...
Just watch ToD and Grubby replays from week to week. You can tell how much they have been practicing, and many weeks I doubt they have even played 8 hours, nevermind the minimum of 30 to be in top form. They are still top players because they stay on top of the game, but they let their actual playing ability slide far too often (for what ever reason, in all honesty they probably have other obligations like school).
Winning is a matter of desire, dedication, practice, and attitude. The Korean players accel for that very reason. They have a lot of incentive to play compared to players from other parts of the world. Look at the number of asian leagues, televised events, and tournaments. Any player who wants to compete at an international level from Europe, and North America especially, doesn't have nearly as many motivational factors.
"I have a life", "imbalance", "bad map", "random", "luck" - Mantra of failure
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