Everyone was talking crap about the NA server and then Hitman, rank #1 on NA, steamrolled rank #1 on EU, with 5 minute games in WCS. It was probably the most one-sided series I have ever witnessed. EU had an absolute dearth of players with aggressive playstyles, and this problem was so severe that you could get to rank #1 on EU without knowing how to defend basic 1 base attacks. Translation, EU players are APM spammers with near zero strategical comprehension of the game. Their approach to the game is to spam the same build order on repeat like a robot. Then someone like Hitman comes along who knows how to win using a different class of strategies and the EU players just flop. This series showed that EU is just a bunch of APM spammers.
The skill to play SC2 is non existent today. If you went back in time 10 years, Serral wasn’t even in the top 100. Now he’s the goat. Let me guess, your theory is that Serral rose the ranks against all odds to become the GOAT, even though his play is mediocre.
Reality check, Blizzard deleted the korean scene with the region lock, and this obliterated the popularity of the game, reduced the number of tournaments and deleted 95% of the pro scene. Serral went from #1000 to #1 because he stuck around to farm what few noobs still play this EZ game.
There used to be a major tournament almost every week, and yet Serral didn’t win anything back then. The koreans won almost every tournament for years straight. You’d think he’d have won at least one back then just due to the sheer volume of tournaments, but, no, his first tournament win was in 2015.
But, here you are, saying that the game has become harder – that skill has increased?
SC2 has literally never been easier. I can literally roll my face on the keyboard and get grandmaster. In the past, you couldn’t even get into GM without 5500 MMR, and it would kick you out at 5300. To get to 5500, you had to beat many players at >5500 mmr. You’d have to beat five of so 6k players, 20 or so 5700’s, and 100 or so 5500’s. Right now, there are “GMs” with 4800 MMR. You can beat these people by typing “EZ” at the start of the game. It takes zero skill to play SC2 because nobody with skill plays this game anymore.
I can’t remember the last time I watched a replay, optimized a new build order, or learned how to scout an enemy build order / developed a custom counter to a build. All that is literally irrelevant. You sit at the keyboard, spam APM, and you are guaranteed GM. You can do nonsense build orders like 5 hatch before pool and it will work. It will beat pro players. Literally. I have a replay where I beat Puck with this. I have a replay where I beat PartinG with 3 hatch even though he did a 1 base allin. Strategy is totally irrelevant to this game. It’s all about how fast you click.
This is radically detached from reality. NA has always been the most active server in SC2. NA players are what keep SC2 afloat. No, no, it’s a couple APM spammers from EU who farm tournaments that keep SC2 alive!
When Idra streamed, he had 12k concurrent viewers. That’s more than entire tournaments have these days. The absolute worst thing Blizzard could’ve done for SC2 was to let pro’s like Idra to retire. They should’ve been on their knees, begging and pleading, for Idra to stay in the game. They should’ve given him a blank check and told him to put whatever number on it was necessary to keep him streaming.