I feel like it dropped interest in the scene a lot but perhaps I am wrong.
Well for brood war, ASL and BSL are both still going with korean tournaments vs foreigner (non-korean) and its still going well with great viewership.
SC2 is just not interesting for pros. Most of them are even dedicating themselves more to brood war. Just like pros say, Brood war can be balanced based on maps rather than unit changes, so people just get tired of over 10 years of changed unit metas in sc2.
The region lock absolutely decimated the korean pro scene. The quality of play dropped dramatically when loads of their teamhouses disbanded. Koreans are still generally much better players, but the quality of practice has obviously been much lower. Think of all the nerfs that theyâve done to broods and infestors and queens. Well, Innovation was beating Serral in the finals of tournaments long before any of those nerfs. How many times has Maru struggled to beat Serral? Exactly.
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Okay lol.
Sounds like region lock likely had an affect then.
Go watch twitch streams and ask various pros then.
Yes literally as I said to OP, that Pros dont care for SC2 as much as they do for Brood war or the very least compared to 2014-2016 golden years.
For someone named âAsIBreatheâ, you sure act like a mouthbreather who cant be bothered to google these answers. Idiot
Exhibit A: world finals, EUâs best player is knocked out by one of Koreaâs weaker Zerg players. He wasnât knocked out by Dark, Rogue, nor sOo â he was knocked out by Ragnarok.
They essentially banned Koreans from EU/NA premier events because they dominated every tournament they were in. The irony is that a small handful of elite EU players began to dominate those tournaments instead, and they had absolutely no competition. So, the policy backfired and to an extreme degree. It went from 10 or 20 koreans winning most events to 3 EU players winning most events. SC2âs esports popularity also happened to take a dive off a cliff at around the same time. It went from being #1 to being #100.
Affirmative action always backfires.
Brownbear did a nice analysis where the data didnât show it serious helped or hurt things overall. A handful of non-Korean players got a lot more opportunities but not so much players below the very top. It didnât do any favors for the sponsors of Korean teams but they werenât selling products or services outside of Korea anyway.
The interest in Starcraft II dropped heavily well before the region lock during the days of major Swarm Host stalemates and the rise of League of Legends. There were other major blows in Korea like the match-fixing scandal and the closing of the team houses.
Starcraft II did get some positive bumps from the free-to-play changes and some newsworthy events like Scarlettâs win in the IEM Pyeong-chang event before the Olympics and the Deepmind demonstrations. But mostly things have been fairly consistent with players and viewers.
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I am high skeptical.
EDIT: I decided to look up the article you are talking about and it starts with:
This section gets a few things wrong. First, the broader narrative that StarCraft is dead is not supported by the data. In mid-2019, Legacy peaked (
https://www.rankedftw.com/stats/population/1v1/#v=2&r=-2&sy=c&sx=a) at over 500,000 ranked accounts, roughly double the player base at launch and higher than any point of Heart of the Swarm âŚ
I believe this is highly deceptive because heâs basing this on âpeakâ accounts. That means if someone plays 1 game during a 2 month season it will be counted in this statistic. Also, itâs ignoring the broader trend of decline. Furthermore, itâs out of date and the correct statistic is half of what he listed at the time. Additionally, he doesnât mention how âfree to playâ propped up the decline â why would they go free to play if the game was doing fine? (Hint: they wouldnât).
If that werenât enough, he is trying to estimate how the player base changed based on a change to professional esports, which is very silly. You ought to compare tournament viewership statistics for pre and post region lock because this is a change to esports and how it affected esports.
Just based on how he frames this data alone I already can say I disagree with his premise. SC2 esports went from being #1 to being a minority at around the time the region lock occurred, and a biased interpretation of player base statistics is very poor evidence otherwise.
Frankly give me a break with this Brood war. I have been a long time war3 fan and player and after Reforged failure I dont wanna care about it as too old game, occasionally watch few people. I played SC1 again somewhere after 2011 and I still cant understand why should someone have their interest stuck on such an ancient game with such lacking controls? Great? Fine but it is after 2020 even SC2 I feel is not worth the time anymore, just watching something more worth like IEM once in a while I think they even killed Global Finals? In SC1 these people should have moved on with life like Innovation did but that is in SC2, the interest in SC1 does not exist outside Korea very much but it does for SC2 as you can see with a bunch of Polish players and overall EU/NA watch all these tournaments
And this region lock I dont know why it is mentioned last years as we can see they play on all regions only GSL seems to not be much by foreigners, whether because financial reasons going to Korea but as you can see a bit absurd that GSL makes players feel comfortable only when they play vs known GSL players, like facing the player Time and no one can beat him because 1st time they see him going thru not that he didnât play well but as I said, side effect of âGSL onlyâ
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Nostalgia bias is very real. They want to feel like a kid again â experiencing something new & exciting. Sorry, those days are gone. Youâre all grown up now. Everything is dull because youâve seen it all at this point. Thatâs not the gameâs fault. If broodwar is so great, why not go and play it? Itâs not broodwar that you are missing â itâs the feeling of novelty.