#124 – StarCast: “StarCraft is Dead!” w/Harstem

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“StarCraft is Dead!” w/Harstrem – Episode #124

This Episode:

• SlayerS Disbands
• r/StarCraft started an internet forest fire ths week
• HotS Balance Update #6
• Data Mined Heart of the Swarm Models
• Stephano suspended
• Clan Support Coming in HotS
• WCS Asia Finals
• The Results
• GSTL Season 3
• IPTL
• OSL

Hosts: Garrett and Kyle

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News

SlayerS Disbands

• MMA and Alicia in team B.
• Ryung practices from home.
• Yugioh practices from home.
• Time was given to Puzzle, Coca and Min to think about their career and they have now switched to League of Legends. Puzzle, Coca and Min switches from SC2 to LoL
• Wanted to give up entering GSTL as half the main players are gone and even many players who were still bound by a contract refused to play.
• Ented anyway with 4 B-team players and 4 A-team players.
• Ganzi Incedent and Federation
  • Esports federation wants slayers to join, but with their new intel sponser, they are making good money without them.
  • Ganzi wants to join slayers, IM thinks their stealing players, Federation takes IM’s side.
  • Slayers now has no reason to join federation.
• TSL coach Mr Lee NASL incident
  • Mr Won (Startale coach) tells slayers that NASL is not paying flights for Korean players only, we should not participate in NASL with this sort of discrimination.’ he hoped that SlayerS boycotts the tournament. However we were already ready for everything including flights and hotel accomodation as our sponsor paid to play.
  • He claimed that all other teams will be boycotting but they all ended up participating anyway and Puma won the whole tournament.
  • As NASL season 2 began, Mr Won once again asked us to boycott and we wanted to boycott this time. So we told Mr Won that if this boycott will help to reach a beneficial agreement between NASL and the federation, we will surely join boycotting.
  • Boycott changes nothing, so slayers enters next NASL, and reseives complaints from Mr Won.
• Federation begins boycotting Slayers
  • We have heard from other players from different teams, that they were told not to practice with SlayerS players and not even chat on ladder. Players who were good friends with each other had to use a different account to secretly help our players to practice. When I heard about this, I asked Mr Won and argued however he said confidently “it’s petty but this is how far we will go to put restrictions on SlayerS’
  • Mr. Won replies: “this happens because you refused to join the federation and go on separate ways’.
  • “I don’t want our players to have unfair disadvantages because of their team. I will disband the team so take our players to your team. However we will formally request you (the federation) to be liable for damages you caused to the team and our sponsors.” And that is when we have finally gotten an e-mail saying that they will lift up the restriction.
• They still instructed players not to practise with SlayerS informally.
• MMA starts streaming and looking for a foreign team, house moral declines, players start making excuses not to play.
• Boxer starts funding team with own money.
• MMA is demoted and suspended from the house. MMA tries to leave, but has a contract. MMA calls the contract slavery.
• Alica and boxer loose faith in the team.
• Federation starts spreading rumors that slayers is dispaining because there not part of the sanctioned player trade.
• Slayers releases contracted players who want to leave and ultimately disbanded.

MMA is rumored to be in talks with both EG and Team Axiom.
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r/StarCraft started an internet forest fire this week
Links

• SlayerS disbands
• Artosis Makes Rational Sense
• SC2 will be dead before Legacy of the Void if Blizz doesn’t change its course
• Liquid Nazgul Thoughts on Destiny and SC2
• Gretorp’s Thoughts

Destiny’s Post

• Brood War
  • Came out in 1998
  • First Televised in 1999
  • Slayers Boxer enters the scene 1999
  • StarCraft Patch History Patch 1.8 the much needed balance and exploit fix for the scene. 2001
  • Slayers boxer earning 400,000 a year in prize and endorsements 2001
  • Competitive scene kicked up in 2002
  • August 2006, Public Ladder is brought down and private ladders take over
    • “The most hated feature”
  • Patch 1.16 is released 2009
• Stagnation and South Korea
  • League of legends is popular in cafes. Along with something called Blade Soul, World of Warcraft, Diablo and Rift.
  • Prize pulls are the same as the start other then MLG. Sundance isnt making money.
• Heart of the Bored
  • Its different enough to make money.
• How can we grow starcraft 2? You can’t. Only Blizzard can.
  • Ladder was not an important aspect of Brood War. It was about chat and playing games you wanted.

Artosis Post
PLEASE go read the full article.  Because we will only quote some of our favorite portions.

“People need to stop bandwagoning and jumping to conclusions.”

“We now have almost 14 years of RTS experience to work with. We are so much further ahead of where StarCraft 1 was when Brood War was released in terms of understanding how to play RTS games”

“that the only way to see game changing units is to make them insanely good like the WarHound.”

I listened to people decreeing the end of SC1 from 2002 until 2010 (when the SC2 Beta was finally released). They were all wrong, and anyone talking about it now is wrong too.

SC2 is the best damn game in the world. Its more beautiful and complex than anything else being played at the moment. There is absolutely no RTS game on the horizon which could possibly knock it off its pedestal.

Blizz to talk with a group about their concerns about BattleNet 2.0
JP just announced this. Catz and Mr. Bitter will organize a team>
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HotS Beta Balance #6
Protoss

Mothership Core
When Purify is cast on a player’s Nexus, it now also grants detection to 13 range.
Energize has been removed.

Oracle
The cost of Entomb has been lowered from 100 to 75, while the duration has been increased from 50 to 60 seconds.

Revelation has been changed to the following:
This ability will now also work on buildings, granting 3 vision around every unit it hits.
The duration has been increased from 45 seconds to 60 seconds, and the cost has been increased from 50 to 75.
This ability will no longer grant detection.
This ability will not affect cloaked targets, even if you have detection of them at the time.

Tempest
This unit’s native bonus damage to massive units has been removed.
This unit no longer requires a Fleet Beacon.
We have added a new weapon upgrade called Quantic Reactor at the Fleet Beacon which will grant Tempest attacks +35 damage to massive units.
Quantic Reactor costs 200/200.
The cost of this unit has been changed from 300/300 to 300/200.
The supply cost for this unit has changed from 6 to 4.
The scale of this unit has been lowered from 1 to 0.9.

Sentry
Hallucination no longer requires research.

Zerg

Viper
Viper acceleration has been increased from 2.125 to 3.
The radius of Blinding Cloud has increased from 1.5 to 2.

Spore Crawler
This unit no longer requires an Evolution Chamber. (notes in widow mine section)

Terran

Battle Hellion
This unit has been renamed to “Hellbat.” (obviously no thoughts needed because it’s just. that. awesome.)
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Widow Mine
The setup time for this unit has been increased from 2 seconds to 3 seconds.

Data Mined Heart of the Swarm Models
Awesome looking Hellions and Ultras!
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Stephano has been suspended by EG for one month
EvilGeniuses’ newest member Stephano was suspended for one month without pay or tournament privileges. The quick backstory is: Stephano was in a ladder game vs 2GD and starting typing a bunch of very trolly comments with “jailbait” and slightly racist undertones. It definitely seems to have been done in jest; problem is that Stephano had no idea that 2GD was streaming at the time. So the Internet saw it and things got bad really fast.
Stephano issued an apology, and there seems to be plenty of thanks to EG for handling the PR quickly and correctly.
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Clan Support Coming in HoTS
Community Manager Cloaken posted:
“Clans are coming in Swarm. Stay tuned for more info.”
_________________________________________________________________________________________

The Results

WCS Asia Finals

• WCS Asia on Liquipedia

Protoss BONANZA!

• 1st – SK_Rain (P)
• 2nd – StarTale_Parting (P)
• 3rd – Liquid_HerO (P)
• 4th – CJ Entus_herO (P)
• 5th – StarTale_Curious (Z)
• 6th – Samsung KHAN_RorO (Z)

_________________________________________________________________________________________

GSTL Season 3

• GSTL on Liquipedia

FXOpen vs TSL
5-2 TSL

• RagnaroK had the most impressive run in this series.  Winning four games in a row finally being knocked out by GuMiho.
• Poor all-kill star GuMiho had to go up against Symbol in his second game and lost securing the win for TSL.

DRG down to Up and down.
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IPTL

• IPTL on Liquipedia
• VODs

Last night:
IM vs TSL

• TSL didn’t fare as well in the IPTL this week losing to IM 5-3.
• IM_True and TSL_Polt both won 3 games each, Polt being the only player to secure wins for TSL.
• IM_dreamertt knock out Polt and Revival to close out the series for IM.

_________________________________________________________________________________________

OSL

• OSL on Liquipedia
• VODs ($11.99 per season)

MC vs DongRaeGu
4-1 DongRaeGu

The finals will take place next Saturday.  Get excited for SKT_Rain vs DRG!
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Coming Up:
GSL Season 4, Code S Finals This Weekend!
GSL on Liquipedia
Mvp (T) vs Life (Z)

Dreamhack Open: Bucharest

• DH: Bucharest on TL

Best of luck to today’s guest Harstem!
_________________________________________________________________________________________

Feedback

James writes in about free to play
If blizzard had a free to play model I would argue that we would see MORE content, rather than Garrett’s stance that we would see less. If your income was based around selling small bits of content, the obvious thing to do is make more content to sell.

Selling the campaign makes a lot of sense but only in small chunks. Let’s look at Diablo for example, Imagine having the option to pay for either a single map, the Act, or the Entire game after playing Act1 for free. Basicly it’s the standard shareware model from the 90′s but with a much easier distribution model thanks to the internet. This creates a need to make a more compelling experience than the standard one we have now, just because if the game sucks you make less money. The idea around it is that you can hook customers into the game at first, then convince them to purchase the next part for slightly more than an upfront purchase, in exchange for the privilege to pay as you go.

This isn’t even the best part though:
After the main storyline is complete, Blizzard could have the option to include Season passes/individual purchases to additional content, perhaps similar to what Scenarios in WoW are. If blizzard released a new map every week with the same production quality we’ve come to love, but in small episodic chunks that would enable such a schedule, they would be rolling around in more cash than they already are. I personally would pay for what is expansion DLC if it was good enough, on top of having already owned the game.

Additionally, having a purchasable campaign directly ties into a cash shop for custom maps, the same feature that is currently alone in a dark room with the dance studio. The possibilities for the cash shop though have already been discussed at length even on your own show and not the point of this email.

While F2p games tend to always be thought of as skins or play only one race on rotation, to myself it makes more sense to monetize the story and to create an even greater user base on the multi-player game to shorten queue times, and grow the popularity of the game.

Now Garrett, after this are you now less inclined to say “Mmergh”?
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SC2 Quotes Trivia

We have been doing trivia for the last few weeks.  If you’d like to participate you can tune in live to StarCast every Thursday over at Twitch.tv/AmoveTV.

“Starcraft 2 was designed to have a best race. You play the worst one.” – Day9

“If this game is balanced I am queen of England.” – NightEnd (this is HARSTEM’s favorite quote btw)

“My greatest skill is enjoyment of the game.” – Grubby

“I don’t think about it, I just know what to do and when to do it.” – Stephano

“A pitchfork is for fucking hay. A trident is for killing bitches.” – djWHEAT

Happy Birthday Captain Noobing

Harstem Interview

(with Katy Perry Karaoke!)