It’s been a bit of a strange year so far for MLG tournaments. Not for MLG, of course, who have been posting record attendance and viewership numbers along with rolling out a completely new stage layout. But for the viewers it’s been something of a shakeup. We’re approaching our second MLG event of 2013 - not counting WCS, naturally - and we’ve yet to see the standard format with open bracket, pool play, and championship bracket we’ve grown used to over the past several years, instead being treated to an invite-heavy 2013 Winter Championship and this weekend’s full open bracket.
What else has changed heading into Anaheim weekend? For starters, and perhaps the most important, is a drastically reduced prize pool. Gone are the days of the head-turning $75,000 purse we saw all last year and even this past March in Dallas, when only 32 players were competing. Although the total pool, a third of the original at $25,000, and payout structure now mimic other popular tourney series such as Dreamhack, it fails to lure in some other heavy hitters - in particular Koreans - to make the long trip, especially when it takes place in the middle of the WCS season.
That’s not the only impetus for drawing the big names. The huge delay in officially announcing that Starcraft 2 would even be a part of the event didn’t help, leaving potential competitors and teams a few precious weeks to arrange last-minute travel plans. Further still is the change in format, which demonstrates continued abandonment of pool play and a lack of insurance, of sorts, that those headlining players won’t be eliminated early on.
So what are we left with, as spectators? Well, one way we’ve heard it described that, at first blush, felt right: old-school. Instead of earth-shaking names such as Life, Flash, INoVation - or indeed, most prime competitors taking part in WCS Korea or Europe - we’re left with a mix of many mid-tier Koreans and foreigners. Where previous brackets and pools would be filled with well-known and intimidating names that would often overshadow everyone else, we now see something of a flattening of the power curve. Names like HuK, Suppy, Kane and even ViBE and Theognis now stand out as they become more commonly used, thanks to WCS. At a fundamental level, it harkens back to when people could have favorites to win, but who would win wasn’t necessarily a foregone conclusion.
Suppy's last appearance at MLG Anaheim last year earned him a breakout player award and the notice of one of the world's largest teams, Evil Geniuses.
?Photo: Evil Geniuses
There are a few notable exceptions, of course, and those exceptions are the ones we’re most looking to to take the crown. In short, it may not be unreasonable, given the player pool and the format, that we could see our first foreigner-dominated MLG Sunday. And that is something we haven’t seen in quite some time.
When we consider all of the factors together and place them into a context that includes the presence of a live-running WCS in both Korea and Europe, we’re left to evaluate the following:
- Korean players will not necessarily be running the show. There will be Koreans at MLG Anaheim, many of whom are quite good. Among them are HerO, Jaedong, HyuN and viOLet. There are also the select three KeSPA players that qualified to come west: Stats, Dear, and soO. And while one can never truly count out any Korean - Stardust taught us that much - the sheer number of foreign players, playing on home turf, and in an open bracket format, hints at a possibility that Koreans will not own all the top spots as we have come to expect from recent MLGs.
- Similarly, this could be the first MLG since Orlando in 2011 that a foreigner could take home the gold. Most of our hopes are pinned on a handful of standout performers, chief among them NaNiwa, who, despite a bit lackluster play of late, showed us at Dreamhack Stockholm that he is still very much capable of brilliant play. Other foreigners with potential include Grubby, SaSe, ThorZain, and mOOnGLaDe, all of whom have either been doing well or have been known for delivering upsets at major events.
- We may be able to do away with some of the assumptions - no matter how accurate they probably are - that have built up in the Starcraft 2 community of late. With the dominating KeSPA personalities - INoVation, Rain, sOs, Soulkey, etc. - not in attendance we will witness whether their lesser-known teammates can still brush away Korean and foreigner alike despite their relative lack of exposure. By the same token, this weekend can serve as an opportunity for those overshadowed by a newer generation of player to reclaim lost glory. Competitors with history and large followings, such as DeMusliM and ThorZain, are free to reassert their long-challenged claim as being players to be feared and respected. And for Americans, the continent’s best (not named Scarlett) will be out in force, and this weekend will act as something of a litmus test for the effectiveness of WCS and validate - or not - Blizzard’s claim that it will elevate play in the west. Now is their opportunity to demonstrate that they are no longer so much chaff to be swept away by whatever Korean or European happens along.
This brings us to one MLG Anaheim much different to its predecessors. In many ways it feels very much like a Dreamhack or IEM Global Challenge event: the new format, the adjusted prize pool, and even the stripe of competitor attending are all changes that give this weekend the appearance of something altogether new and, at the start, admittedly maybe not as exciting. But perhaps the very changes that make us want to dismiss this weekend’s event are the reasons it could wind up so special, much like aforementioned IEM Global Challenges have often done in the past.
