23-year-old Yoan 'ToD' Merlo (left) is the bad ass of Warcraft III. If he isn't whining about event conditions or dropping a game for his team mates, then he's got the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) committee robbing poor ole Jae Ho 'Moon' Jang (right) out of his nth title.
An American user was, stereotyping aside, potently stupid when commenting about the situation, he felt cheated by the decision to “let ToD advance” to the playoffs, exclaiming that the “ESWC is a joke of a tournament”. Quite right. How dare those French organisers take their tournament over the Atlantic and bring their bias with them, it's downright disrespectful. Why, in my day we'd have bent over and let Moon rob us of our riches thrice over by now! Your $10,000 a month salary not enough, sir? Oh, help yourself to the $12,000 first place prize money as well, we insist.
Joking aside, the irony is that three of the four second stage groups were settled by the same rule, yet only Moons group caused “controversy”. It doesn't matter if we didn't know about the rules, they were archaic and against the spirit of competition - Moon winning. So let's call out the ESWC, nay Matthieu Dallon, nay the French in general! You my good people are the lowest kind of scum and should drown in your own cheap wine!
While you could argue the way the rules decide which is a better player is silly, the fact the rules were applied so thoroughly makes a welcome change. There's none of the “oh, the admin accidentally tripped over the LAN cable restarting the game...” that you find in Asian tournaments. No matter how you look at the stats, ToD deserved to go through. Whether it's by including all the group matches, in which case the Frenchman has a 5/4 ratio over Moons 4/3, or only including the games between the tied players, where Le Sulk has a better record; 3/3 to the Koreans 1/4.
While Manuel 'Grubby' Schenkhuizen beat Du Seop 'WhO' Chang and Moon beat ToD, rules are rules and the show must go on. If ESWCs rules mean the playoffs miss the MYM pair, I'll personally miss Grubby, then I'll be glad because the ESWC is obviously doing something right if this is all we've to whine about.
I mean seriously, guys, have you not noticed Martin 'Bonecracker' Hušák? The Czech “dark horse” who topped his group, beating Wh0, Christophe 'Wolf' Laporte, Nikolaus 'SonKiE' Cassidy and Daniel 'miou' Holthuis before hitting a wall in the second group stage.
Then there's Kim 'SaSe' Hammar, I mean, he's made it to the playoffs. Shouldn't he have lost to some African progamer by now? Granted, his second group wasn't all that hard, Xiang 'TH000' Huang is an okay player, but I was more impressed with him not losing to Przemek 'Paladyn' Wadoń in the first group stage. I mean if there was ever a “SaSe situation” then going out in the first group stage was something SaSe perfected. But, he's beyond that, he even took a map off ToD!
There's so much happening at ESWC and all we can think about is fucking Moon, you know what? I'm glad he can't manage to win either ESWC or World Cyber Games (WCG) because it shows, contrast to how he looks, that he's human.
Bad rules just like stupid users make for exciting tournaments, oh and before I forget, ToD, s'il y a encore des problèmes, donne Matthieu un peu d'argent et ça va aller.
News
Bad rules make good tournaments
An American location can't hide French bias
Loading comments...
More columns
Are team leagues a thing of the past, are they passed their sell-by-date? Have they become nothing more than an occasional and sometimes enjoyable novelty, or are they the backbone of the Warcraft3 world?
With SRS now down to just two solo players, The Zechs Files wonders if we'll see more gamers playing with themselves and asks the question, is the team league finished?
In a change from the scheduled WoW column, I decided to do something a little more topical. The title sums it up pretty well.
This year's World Cyber Games would have been remembered as a tournament of mishaps and scandals. But then, the passion of true gamers saved the day.
Thanks to losing to eSTRO in the group stage Meet Your Makers will not meet highly-rated opponents until the semi final.
With halloween behind us, and Wrath just ahead, The Zechs Files invites you to gaze deep into the crystal ball, as we try to predict the fate of one of the game's most powerful set-ups.
I actually wrote an essay not so long ago about the "Three P's" - Patriarchy, polymorphous perversity and penis envy. I'm not suggesting this would be an appropriate place to debate the subject, but more a case of I know what I'm talking about ;)
Every top player will tell you that the top8 teams/players can all beat eachother, it's all dependant on who's having a better day. That is why, in my opinion, all high prestige tournaments should use as little group stages and as many double brackets as possible, it makes for alot more exciting games to watch, and it smooths out the luck factor quite a bit.
Then again, the reason why ESWC is so loved, is because of all the upsets happening; the team or player that everyone expects to win, hardly ever wins ESWC. New stars are born. That is the magic of ESWC (and it's poor and dubious ruleset).
The direct match between tod and moon, grubby and who, had no significance because it was a 3-way tie not a tie-breaker between 2 players.
About Bonecracker, the streamers didn't even bother to stream his games... I think there's a lot of people who want to see the games of him beating sonkie and who.
Why dont you just ignore those whining fanboys ?
No...you make another hate-article.
Well done Sk-Gaming.
"If ESWCs rules mean the playoffs miss the MYM pair then I'll be glad to see them cuddling in the corner, Cassandra handing over Kleenex (other brands are available) to wipe away those big boy tears"
Yeah.Funny mb.
But this is an official page with official articles.
And this article is even worse than all the crying fanboys.
rules are made for the situations like this,who is eliminated can only blame himself
just bullshit no more no less
fair rules
Let’s write a lot of bullshit and create some controversies, is this SK’s now policy? G_G
U DONT KNOW anything in ESPORTS , oh and learn to write so ppl can understand something
why dont SK kick you already
Rules are rules , I agreed
Are you actually blaming the rules or are you defending tod? it's so full of fake sarcasm and useless flaming you can't even get the meaning of it in the end... Awfuly written if you ask me...
Yeah, that's the way to be professional
don't you have an editor in chief who has to read and validate articles before they become public?
The ideal thing should have been a replay best of 3 among the tie breakers and then advance the winner. AFter all 5/4 is 1.25 which is less than 4/3 which is 1.33 . :(
I was personally sad that this had to push Grubby out, I am happy Moon lost but not in this manner. They should have had a re round and it's not like the audience doesn't want them to play or anything, more games between these guys in a tense situation would make it awesome to see.
A well written article that although it maybe isnt on the most necessary of issues to be raised, I found it entertaining and topical.
edit: ha, meant for the comment below ;D
Although: "Xiang 'TH000' Huang is an okay player, but I was more impressed with him not losing to Przemek 'Paladyn' Wadoń" - you must be joking?
what world do you live in?