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> While there is a lot of tactics and strategy to work out, a huge part of a game like this is simply the ability to click on and order units about as fast as possible

= Short Answer =

TL:DR; False. Even 19,000 APM won't save you.

= Long Answer =

First off, a few terms so those that are't familiar with StarCraft aren't completely lost:

* APM = Acronym for Actions Per Minute. How fast you can click.
* micro -- ability to control your units individually (i.e. tactical positioning of units taking advantage of how many "game frames" they take to execute rotations and moves, along with taking advantage of speed and range of units)
* macro -- ability to produce units and keep all of your production buildings busy
* multitasking -- how well you can do both, and adapt to new strategy

Short term, someone with superior micro will destroy someone with better macro.
Long term, someone with better macro will destroy someone with better micro.

How well you can balance micro and macro IS what the game is about.

> Is there something I don't understand about the game here?

Yes. You are under the assumption that ALL you need to do win is have a high APM, which is false. While there is SOME truth to -- better players have a higher APM -- it ISN'T an absolute.

i.e. Spam clicking can get you up to ~400 APM. That doesn't mean you are efficient at micro and macro -- only that you can click like crazy.

The 2nd TL:DR; High APM doesn't tell me how good your macro is!

Correlation != Causation. A high APM suggests you are a better player; it does NOT guarantee it.

During the lifetime of a game your APM can and will vary. From the link above:

You can play the first 5 minutes of the game with perfect macro with 20 APM, then progress to 150APM by mid to end game and avg it out as 50

Another part of the problem is that APM has no standardized calculation; ergo some players use eAPM -- effective Actions Per Minute -- instead, which drop redundant commands

For example:

S...1...2...X

If a unit starts at 'S' and the user clicks on the sequence 1, 2,X -- that is 3 clicks -- where the first two are redundant. Does that mean they have a high APM? Technically yes, BUT the eAPM is closer to the "actual" APM.

The differences between low vs high APM has been debated for ages. There are:

* Bad players with low APM -- we don't care about these
* Bad players with high APM -- proof #1 that APM isn't as important as Strategy
* Good players with high APM
* Good players with low APM -- proof #2 that APM isn't as important as Strategy.

If you have two good players who can balance micro/macro then you'll see some VERY interesting, evenly matched games. The APM is only an indicator of potential problems.

> A computer could very obviously do this faster than any human unless it was artificially limited.

You are forgetting that all the "hard" AIs in RTS games typically cheat in 2 ways:

* They can see the entire map (doesn't have "for of war" -- it knows instantly where your base is without scouting)
* They are given more starting resources and/or can harvest resources faster

In Starcraft 2, Elite AI often has like 300 - 500 APM. With the HOTS (Heart of the Swarm) expansion Blizzard replaced the "Insane" with "Elite AI". The old AI is a che

Unless, of course, WWIII is a videogame war. Then we'd be all set.

You wish. Koreans and Chinese teams win international professional video game tournaments. The team the Koreans beat was European. The American team didn't even make it into the semifinals. The team the Chinese beat was nominally American, but only had two out of five American citizens. Two of the others were Korean and the fifth was filipino. Immigration at work...

I play a lot of CS:GO, and somewhat follow the esports scene. In my experience, the competitive community is largely separate from the Twitch community. Every time I've gone to Twitch to check for interesting CS:GO streams, the top streams were all gambling and or Russian. Twitch recently added a rule that streaming gambling for more than 30 minutes will result in a ban for non-gaming content; that's probably why the 3 top streamers have left. It has nothing to do with actual Counterstrike. Additionally, I've never even heard of the Twitch tournaments; as far as I'm aware players are mostly just concerned with the Majors, large tournaments sponsored by Valve that occur 3 times a year.

Regarding the article: I've never gambled, with CS:GO skins or otherwise, and I fail to see the attraction. However, it is undoubtedly a large part of csgo, and you see the effects of it all over. Many pro teams are sponsored by gambling or betting websites, and top players carry skins that are renamed with site URLs. Through the steam market and steam trading, Valve has provided TF2 and CS:GO players with a huge amount of freedom over their virtual items. Given the ability to do what they want, this is just one of those things that people are going to do. It's unfortunate, but I value the freedom that we have and I'd rather not see Valve go the way of Twitch and Riot, who micromanage their communities and closely regulate what players can do with their own virtual items. The worst thing that could happen is that Valve forms a community management team full of a bunch of idealistic boneheads who go around banning everything they don't like.

TL;DR: CS:GO is not dead; Twitch is dead; gambling sucks but Valve has always been hands-off with the community and forcing them to control the community will result in a worse steam experience for everyone.

Starcraft is not as calculation heavy as a game of chess, it is more of a test of human efficiency using a mouse and keyboard than anything else. Understanding that, a computer can do infinitely more commands per second than a human could ever do, so most traditional understanding of strategy would be thrown out the window.

Hopefully this demonstrates why a computer would simply trounce any human without even real AI. Strategies could simply be pre-scripted and unstoppable.

Sorry BoxeR, but you will be beaten.

Do you have any idea about the amount of money the industry moves (and that is NOT only the prizes)?

Does this include money that moves when the governing body of a sport sues a league for televising the league's own matches?

No one needs Blizzard's permission to have a SC tourney

Technically they do, at least if they're streaming the tourney to the public. The graphics of StarCraft and StarCraft II are copyrighted.

so... again... what is the restriction?

It's considered performing the video game publicly. Video games are considered audiovisual works in U.S. copyright law, and the owner of copyright in an audiovisual work has the exclusive right to perform that work publicly. Doing so without express permission is copyright infringement, as if you were offering to stream . Please see the article "Why Nintendo can legally shut down any Smash Bros. tournament it wants" by Kyle Orland and this appellate brief from a moot court.

I'd like to see people who have a financial stake at being good at games over 5+ years compared.

Even then it's hard. For example, one pro-gamer hasn't been winning as much as his prime, but he's said he hasn't been practicing as hard (his teammate just won the championship in Korea, and he definitely practiced hard).

Of course, we can't necessarily trust his self-assessment, but it shows that even people who have a financial interest can get burned out and lose interest in the game.

Why don't you just go away and do something useful?

Your Russian counterparts are active in this thread on another forum.
If it isn't obvious who the Russian shills are they go by the name PaleMan and Zeo (Claims to be from Serbia but whatever.)

Just go ever there and derail the discussion with more misinformation. At least you won't bother civilians then.

Yeah I mean how intimidating are names like MVP, MC or SlayerSBoxer? http://wiki.teamliquid.net/sta...

Or MEGARACER (aka Kim dotCom): http://venturebeat.com/2012/01...

FWIW one of the game handles I use is Cute Lethal Puppy. Is that intimidating enough?

Soulkey, is that you?

You're lucky Dear didn't compete in more matches.

Women in ESports are still making their mark on the scene. Early on it was just Tossgirl the first female pro to compete in all male leagues for Starcraft one. Along with her coach January coached one of the first Starcraft teams. And now Starcraft 2 is making head way for females in competitive gaming. "Ladies of the Swarm", http://wiki.teamliquid.net/sta... , is a great tournament run by all women and has a pretty decent prizepool too. While females in competitive gaming is trailing behind there is no lack of involvement. The best interviewers, translators, and hosts for major Starcraft events are run by ladies. They all do a great job too and it has been a pleasure to meet many of them. Other then this being a slew of statistics, it doesn't really show anything new in the article or attempt to suggest solutions to this "problem." Females, whether gamers or ESports entertainers, get their opportunities as equally as men do. And in fact they are welcomed with open arms from the Starcraft community. And if it means anything, one of the top non-Korean progamers is a female.

Monster should be more his thing if you ask him. He has taken Red Bull money though for a 5th-8th place. http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Red_Bull_Battlegrounds:_Austin

League of Legends was actually the first game to have a pro issued a sports visa. To quote a friend "They're recognised as athletes for visa purposes because they come into the country and compete and then leave again so as far as immigration is concerned that's the one that fits them best. Unfortunately the vast majority of posters are too stupid to understand that and the topic turns to shit." source http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=421180

A build order will only help you out in the first minute of a game,

False. Almost any proper build order will cover at least the first two or three minutes of the game. More involved build orders, like the Terran Flash build will take you into the mid-game. And the start provided by your build order determines the course of the whole game.

whereas observation and scouting to identify what your oponent is doing is King.

When to build and send out your scout is, of course, part of any decent build order.

Starcraft (especially broodwar is all about counter attacks and overpowering or utilising your units skills to your advantage)

It's a big part of it, certainly. But a poor build order, a poorly executed build order, or a build order mismatched to what your opponent does will kill you before you ever get a chance to show off those lovely skills.

as X is horribly obsolete and slow.

Oh for heaven's sake, not this again!

[Citation needed]

Oh and here's mine:

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=357678

So, if X is so horribly slow and "obsolete" how come it gets better frame rates than anything else?

Seriously, for high performance stuff, Xorg (via DRM/DRI) basically allows a shared library to dump data straight at the graphics card without even the kernel; getting in the way for most of it. That is very efficient, and why X gets as good (and slightly better) frame rates than other "non obsolete" operating systems.

And do not even try to claim that this is somehow a new thing. On and off since it's inception, X11 has been the top performing GUI system (SGI in the 90's and according to the benchmarks Xorg now).

X11 deals with all the grotty stuff round the edge that isn't the domain of the graphics card very well, like wrangling windows and pointers, dealing with copy/paste and communication between clients, and also, of course, remoting. And it also knows when to get out of the way and let the efficient stuff be efficient.

The Japanese have solved air hockey. Now I'm waiting for Koreans to create the perfect AI computer to play Starcraft 2. (And I'm not talking about this guy.) The AI that comes with the game is inexcusably pathetic.

Actually, I think this is probably the only thing that needs to be posted in response to this question.

There have been no more than in other sorts of competition. There was the big match-fixing scandal (see the liquipedia article), and a couple of more minor things more recently that have been punished harshly, but, well, baseball's seen lots of this nonsense, too.

As for evidence that matches are actually rigged (with the winner decided in advance), well -- do you have any evidence that this is widespread? Actually, a good bit of evidence that it's not is that despite many of them trying, very few foreigners have done all that well in the GSL (Korea's premier Starcraft II competition), despite the fact that it would vastly expand their audience. (Whenever a foreigner seems to have a chance in a major tournament lots of folks outside Korea watch and root for them.) There's a lot of profit to be had if you could order the Koreans to throw a few matches to the foreigners to get them to the finals, but nobody has done it.

It's management alright. It's been management for years. Microsoft consistently hires the best people in the field (well, those that Google doesn't snag—prior to that, though, they were nearly unchallenged, and consequentially MS has had a huge number of very respectable older researchers and engineers, including a large contingent of ex-DEC people) and then squashes them with bad managers, who spend so much time politicking and infighting that they can't recognize genius like the Courier.

Unfortunately this is an increasing trend in the whole software industry; the very recent example of Diablo 3's utter failure to live up to hype, even though it's now the fastest-selling game in history, can largely be attributed to management changes in Activision. The underlying problem seems to be hiring management and leadership from non-computing sectors instead of promoting from within, although in MS's case it's more like a long-term family feud.

The folks at Blizzard do have internal deadlines, they just don't communicate them to the outside.

Last year, their timeline was leaked, showing the release dates of several titles for the next few years.

In korea, Broodwar is huge, SC2 is growing. In the US and Euope, SC2 is all I really hear about. There are a number of big name tournaments: IPL NASL and MLG being the 3 most well known. With HD web streams and large prize pools, these events are what people go to a bar to see. The smaller more frequent tournaments (often 10+ a week) are promoted on team liquid and reddit

For those interested in where this is actually happening, here's a forum thread which has locations (with map) and descriptions for a tournament this weekend
Barcraft Thread
Barcraft Location Map

Some locations: Seattle WA, Toronto, San Diego CA, Washington DC, New York City, Portland OR, Tampa FL, Gainesville FL, Edmonton (Canada), Honolulu, Waterloo (Canada), Chicago, Boston, Dallas TX

People watch people play Starcraft? Oh this is just a Korean thing...

Actually, a lot of people watch other people play Starcraft 2 professionally and non-professionally outside of Korea. Look at the number of views in the videos in these channels: most of them have tens of thousands, some exceed 100,000. These are just some of the biggest channels, there are many others in youtube.

Not to mention the SC2 competitions outside of Korea: MLG, NASL and IPL -- these are the big leagues, there are many other smaller competitions going on every week.

And the dozens of SC2 streams in justin.tv and other streaming sites (TeamLiquid has a list on the right side of the page).

yes, their definition of cheese is horrible. Cheese: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Talk:Cheese Though, the Korean origin is dubious at best. This is a long standing gaming term meaning to break the normal flow of the game by doing something "cheesy". =P

Found an interesting post from Team Liquid, pretty much confirming your high ground theory: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=116142

I don't understand where all the hate is coming from. I love Blizzard for doing this and hated them when they didn't do anything against hackers in Warcraft3 in the end.

Hackers destroyed WC3, a game I played for many years, but in the end every other online game I tried to play online, I got either map hacked, disconnect hacked or crash hacked. Blizzard released a patch, a week later there was a new hack
I still like the game, but it became unplayable, it ruined all the fun.

And now SC2 arrived.
And hacks soon after.
The hacking is not only in the single player game by the way.
I was very sad when I saw the first map hacks arrive in SC2 and encounter the first hackers on the ladder. It was so great to read when they banned a lot of players that used the hacks and even better, they are now targeting the hack developers.

Also don't forget that SC2 is aiming to be more than a game. it's aiming to be the no1 e-sports game.
This week a game from old SC1 legend SlayersBoxer returning in a SC2 tournament, with 80k for the winner, was watched on a stream by more than 700,000 people. No joke.
Mostly Koreans, but more and more people outside Korea start liking E-sports as well. People who don't play the game at all watch the tournaments online and like it a lot. Some youtube commentators, who cast games with english commenting, have more than 100k subscribers.
There are even a few americans and europeans now living in Korea as professional gamers, people who earn their living by playing SC2.
It's becoming pretty big.

I would love it if E-sports got as big worldwide as it is in Korea.
But if that's your goal as a game developer you have to get rid of cheaters, like in any sports.
A football player who's caught on doping gets banned too and they will for sure try to find the provider of the doping and get him in a lawsuit as well.

Anyway, on SC2 fan sites almost everyone approves about Blizzard taking action:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=161168

Just thought it would be good to add this info to the discussion

Of course! Like most companies, they will do anything to get away ripping off their customers if the idiots continue to throw money at them. Naturally, their goal is of course to make money, but they (along with Activision) still seek to rip off their customers more than some other companies.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252

Well, Blizzard allows an orbital strike, but I prefer the tech reactor.

"I agree that anonymity allows people to be the kind of jerks that you wouldn't want to be if your reputation was at stake."

That very same anonymity also protects me from those jerks, and that is what I am pissed about--the forced loss of this protection.

Blizzard just circumvented ALL of my efforts to distance myself, as far as possible, from Facebook's data-mining practices. The deal between Activision-Blizzard and Facebook went through months ago. My guess (I can only guess, I no longer trust what they say) is that they have already shared my personal information with Facebook by now. I don't just feel betrayed, I WAS betrayed. The simple fact that I can no longer trust them is an indicator of that betrayal.

The whole "Real names in the forums" thing was simply an end-run around Blizzard's own privacy policy. The ONLY reason Real ID could be turned off was not because they wanted to provide us with an opt-out, but because child privacy laws are FAR more strict, and they had to in order to comply with those laws. The simple fact that the ONLY place to disable it is in "Parental Controls" seems to be enough confirmation for me.

It also occurred to me that it is possible that they never intended on implementing the full names thing on the forums, but instead used it as a smoke-screen to "minimize" the backlash from their real goal--full integration with Facebook. That integration may seem like the lesser of two evils to some, when the reality is that the real evil remains.

I have a 14-year old daughter that also plays (played...) WoW, using my wife's account. So now, even though Real ID is disabled, my daughter's chat logs can now be shared with Facebook. The WoW TOS is quite clear that they intend to/do share information, INCLUDING chat logs and voice communications, with their "partners" regardless of whether or not you have Parental Controls active. The really fucked aspect of this is that I have ZERO way of knowing how exposed I am in terms of privacy and that will remain the case until...it's too late.

As long as Blizzard has ANYTHING to do with Facebook, I will not give them a single penny, nor will I do any business with ANY company, EVER, that has anything to do with Bobby Kotich.

It seems that speaking with your wallets, as MANY people did in the case of the forums, actually works (unless it really was a smoke-screen). They caved to some small degree, I suspect in response to a slew of canceled accounts, so I will continue speaking with my wallet. $300 for 2 games and 4 x-pacs, 4 1/2 years of monthly fees for two accounts...and this is how they reward me for my business? A complete betrayal of trust? On behalf of an entire family of gamers, just let me say one thing...Fuck You.

Are Jack Thompson and Bobby Kotich somehow related? They both seem to have the shared goal of killing video gaming.

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=128252
(Warning! Long load time as the forum posts are all on one page, but well worth the wait if you're interested in understanding the motives/history of Bobby "Fuck 'em all!" Kotich)

According to this site, the implant will cost 100 minerals as well as 100 gas.

Yes, Mr. Kotick is one of the most hated people in the industry for good reason. Check out this extremely detailed and disturbing post on Teamliquid.net about how little he cares for his developers and the games produced by the studios under Activision.

Personally, I blame him for the deluge of bad decisions coming out of Blizzard regarding Starcraft II, including:
-No LAN play
-No cross-regional play
-Fees for tournaments and a more centralized, locked-down system in Battle.net 2.0

Most or all of these features were available in the Starcraft, which was released in 1998! I expect some or all of the features that the community is clamoring for will be introduced eventually--for a subscription fee. Because that's all Kotick sees in the Starcraft community: a bunch of passive cows who are just begging to be milked of all their worth.

And the worst part is, I pre-ordered Starcraft II anyway. Sigh.

This is true... but at the same time, saying ACE "competes" is a little bit strong of a statement. The other commitments of the people on the team means that they don't get nearly the practice time of any of the other teams, and it definitely shows. I mean, look at the rankings in the latest Proleague. Or the previous one. (Not sure why the stats aren't complete there.) Or the one before that. Or the one before that. The only team that reliably competes with ACE for bottom slot is eSTRO.

ACE exists, and it gives SC players in the military an avenue to play, which is a great thing. At the same time, the service still has a very detrimental effect on the players' skills. In addition to the unfortunately poor showings of ACE, I'm not really aware of any player who came out of ACE and was competitive at the highest levels, even if they were going into ACE. More commonly they come out and become coaches or commentators.

This is true... but at the same time, saying ACE "competes" is a little bit strong of a statement. The other commitments of the people on the team means that they don't get nearly the practice time of any of the other teams, and it definitely shows. I mean, look at the rankings in the latest Proleague. Or the previous one. (Not sure why the stats aren't complete there.) Or the one before that. Or the one before that. The only team that reliably competes with ACE for bottom slot is eSTRO.

ACE exists, and it gives SC players in the military an avenue to play, which is a great thing. At the same time, the service still has a very detrimental effect on the players' skills. In addition to the unfortunately poor showings of ACE, I'm not really aware of any player who came out of ACE and was competitive at the highest levels, even if they were going into ACE. More commonly they come out and become coaches or commentators.

This is true... but at the same time, saying ACE "competes" is a little bit strong of a statement. The other commitments of the people on the team means that they don't get nearly the practice time of any of the other teams, and it definitely shows. I mean, look at the rankings in the latest Proleague. Or the previous one. (Not sure why the stats aren't complete there.) Or the one before that. Or the one before that. The only team that reliably competes with ACE for bottom slot is eSTRO.

ACE exists, and it gives SC players in the military an avenue to play, which is a great thing. At the same time, the service still has a very detrimental effect on the players' skills. In addition to the unfortunately poor showings of ACE, I'm not really aware of any player who came out of ACE and was competitive at the highest levels, even if they were going into ACE. More commonly they come out and become coaches or commentators.

I loved the original SC, but when BroodWar came out, I felt like i had to coordinate too many units' special abilities during a battle, in a very small amount of wall-clock time.

Even if you played as Terran, I would disagree that there are too many different things to do during a battle. Zerg and Protoss have significantly less variety of actions to make during a battle.
Terran vs Zerg
    early game: stim marines
    mid/late game: stim marines, siege/unsiege tanks, irradiate w/ vessels
Terran vs Protoss
    early/mid game: lay mines w/ vultures, siege/unsiege tanks
    late game: lay mines w/ vultures, siege/unsiege tanks, emp w/ vessels
Terran vs Terran
    lay mines w/ vultures, siege/unsiege tanks, cloak/uncloak wraiths
Zerg vs Terran/Protoss
    early game: none.
    mid game: burrow lurkers
    late game: burrow lurkers, swarm/plague w/ defilers
Zerg vs Zerg
    most games end early. rarely are special abilities used
Protoss vs Terran
    early game: none
    mid/late game: psi storm w/ templar, recall/stasis w/ arbiter
    occassionally: switch completely to carriers and build interceptors
Protoss vs Zerg
    early game: none
    mid/late game: psi storm w/ templar
Protoss vs Protoss
    early game: none
    mid/late game: psi storm
List of spells/special abilities rarely seen: disruption web, feedback, mind control, maelstrom, hallucination, parasite, spawn broodling, ensnare, yamato gun, ghosts, restoration, optical flare.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Spells

You can build a large stadium for Starcraft, but unlike pro sports, seeing it live on a screen strikes me as almost the same experience to seeing it at home on one of the Starcraft channels, which would significantly decrease demand to go see live matches.

I can buy that somewhat, but at the same time, a lot of the reason you go to live sports matches (or at least a lot of the reason I'd go to live sports matches) is to experience the live atmosphere and support your team/player.

In fact, I'd argue that a lot of the time you'd get a much better view watching it on your TV at home. Most seats are way too far back to have a decent view, and the cameras they have around the stadiums give a way better view. Nowadays you even get stuff like the first down line marked on the field... that's something that I actually missed when I went to the one college football game I've been to. Sports stadiums have large screens to show highlights, but at least from the little I've seen they don't show as much as you'd get watching on TV.

The fact that the market for Starcraft viewing there can support a (more than one I heard?) Starcraft channel seems quite significant.

True, and I suspect that the popularity is probably a bit more than MMA. That said, it does seem to me that it probably is still far less pronounced than, say, football is here.

(BTW, there are three channels I know of OnGameNet (which runs the OSL), MBC GameNet (which runs the MSL), and GomTV.)

It's not dispositive, but I'd point out that South Korea's population is about 50 million, versus just over 300 million for the United States. I wonder if the US was that size, and there were only two significant cities were New York and Boston, if we would still need as large of stadiums for ours sports.

I suspect you'd see fewer teams but stadiums of the same size rather than smaller stadiums.

This is somewhat supported I'd argue: the NFL lists 32 teams; the TLPD lists 12 teams for Starcraft. It's not quite diminished by the population ratio, but it's a little hard to compare too because so much of SC is the individual leagues.

Also, we can look at other countries with big sports there. West Ham United (soccer) plays at Boleyn Ground; that seats 35,000. Lower than a typical (US) football stadium, but roughly on par with, e.g., Fenway Park. Manchester United plays at Old Trafford stadium, seating 76,000, larger than any of the US football stadiums I looked at. (Though still substantially smaller than a large college footbal stadium.) The UK also has ~60million people. There are five Australian Rules Football teams that have their home at Docklands Stadium in Melbourne; that seats 53,000. Australia only has a population of ~22 million.

It has nothing to do with SC2. "The drama all started several years ago – in 2006 – and exploded properly in 2008". At that time the development of SC2 was just announced(May 2007).

One of the biggest questions is if Savior's loose to Bisu in their epic MSL final was because of bets. It was a 0:3 loose to a noname in the final of the second rated league.

And it's very interesting who else was involved because all current stars including Jaedong and Flash were already on the scene at that time.

Savior achievements:
http://www.teamliquid.net/tlpd/players/135_sAviOr/

Proleague rules got changed and some suspects got removed from their team's roster: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=118849

Proleague rules got changed and some suspects got removed from their team's roster: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=118849

For more info, you can follow the coverage at teamliquid's forums. Click to expand the "spoilers". http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=119403

A couple posts (e.g. the top one on this page) dispute it's at that degree of popularity:

bjornkavist:

You over estimate the popularity of Starcraft. Since this is a Starcraft site that covers pro BW from a foreign stand point it seems like the biggest thing in the world. When sadly, when compared to Hockey in Canada, or Football in the States, its no where near as popular. Yes people know about it, tons do, compared to other countries but Koreand definately dont breathe Starcraft.

PanzerDragoon:

I would say SC is most comparable to MMA in the states; a niche sport with a decent sized hardcore fanbase, but not wide casual appeal.

Post 6: Just in case any of us want to create some videos for YouTube ... may we share any replays?

Zhydaris: There will be no NDA.

( http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=112115 )

A quick google search turned up the following for Starcraft. You probably want to do a bit of in-depth research before running these binaries... they may be buggy, fake, etc

One way might be to play Starcraft in windowed mode:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=72621

Or use a "high resolution" mod. There seem to be a lot of defunct mods like this that probably never worked too well, but the first link might be worth a shot:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=97122
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16643
http://freenet-homepage.de/ToiletGame/download.html
http://www.gamethreat.net/forums/user-downloads/38147-resolution-hack-release-4-0-a.html

A quick google search turned up the following for Starcraft. You probably want to do a bit of in-depth research before running these binaries... they may be buggy, fake, etc

One way might be to play Starcraft in windowed mode:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=72621

Or use a "high resolution" mod. There seem to be a lot of defunct mods like this that probably never worked too well, but the first link might be worth a shot:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=97122
http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=16643
http://freenet-homepage.de/ToiletGame/download.html
http://www.gamethreat.net/forums/user-downloads/38147-resolution-hack-release-4-0-a.html

EDIT: The competition's also been slashdotted, where it's being discussed by various people who don't know too much:

Perhaps a game not so dominated by rushing tactics would be a better choice of base game? It definitely seems an interesting idea, but there must be games better suited to an AI contest like this...

lol.

Depends where you look. Last month's KESPA ratings (the latest, at least on TLPD) put Jaedong at #1 and flash down at #6. In fact, the last time he wasn't #1 in that ranking was March.

Maybe if BNet is just used for a quick auth and lobby, then a LAN game is started, that might not be so bad, but it's not looking that way.

Blizzard will obviously be doing it this way, they're just being unnecessarily cryptic. Not doing so is a surefire way for Blizzard to piss off everyone involved in E-Sports/competitive gaming.

Also, the piracy issue isn't small scale piracy at private LANs, but large scale piracy in China:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=96603

A few thing about Haofang: It is biggest gaming site in China, it has millions of users for many games including SC and WC3. It is free and using LAN(TCP/IP protocol) to allow players to play.
How Haofang works: You download a small program for Haofang, run it, tell it where your SC folder is. You join a room(max 255 players because TCP/IP can handle max to 255)then hit RUN, the little program will load your SC up and instead of log on to Bnet you go to LAN, and can find many games their to play since 255 players in the same room is a lot.
Why it is bad: Cos millions of players in China were/are/going to using pirated SC/WC3 to play without any limitation.
Why Blizzard cares: Of course they care, if even SC2 is going to last only half the life of SC the next big market is definitely China(cos Korea is given). If things going on like SC/WC3 Blizzard is going to lose tons of money.
Did Blizzard do anything about it: Yes they did but failed. A few year back Blizzard sued Haofang but lost and Haofang is continue to grow and now become the most recognize site in China(among gamers of course).
Why is Haofang able to sneak pass Blizzard: Haofang told that they only allow players play via LAN(TCP/IP) they do not do anything to mess with Blizzard Battle.net and thus can not be judged. I know it is bullshit since it allows players with pirated copies play multi play which is the life SC, but it holds true in the EULA and Blizzard can do nothing about it.

Because they didn't report it first either? The posting date on the article is from January 27. This topic was posted by the student teaching the decal on January 22, to a popular foreign (i.e. not Korean) starcraft website. Or you could just link to the facebook group, or the class website.

When the face of the top first person shooter or real time strategy game changes from year to year, it is a very difficult to garner a strong fan base.

However, in South Korea this is not the case, where since it came out in 1998, StarCraft: Brood War has been at the top of professional gaming. The OnGameNet StarLeague has been around broadcasting StarCraft matches since 1999 and Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation, one of the top four South Korean television networks, started it's own MBC StarLeague of their own around 2001. Both of these leagues are going strong thanks to their fans' love of Blizzard's creation. I am one of these fans of StarCraft pro gaming in Korea, though I don't contribute to their revenue, I follow the leagues through Team Liquid's coverage and watching live streams of the matches late at night on SC2.org.

The rules of the game are critical to its excitement. Letting certain glitches be used by the players, or limiting the game's UI can make or break balance of a game. In games with unknown information, keeping players in a sound proof booth is important too. There were a few notable instances where a pro gamer was about to make a fatal move, but stopped at the last second due to the crowds reaction to the impending encounter.

It will be interesting with the advent of StarCraft 2 on the horizon whether or not Starcraft: Brood War will continue to be successful in South Korean pro gaming. Many of the gamers and commentators have said they will go where the money is. Will the fans support their tried and true game of 9 years or will they move on to its next iteration? Whatever the case, this article hints that with 20% of South Korea's population following E-sports, pro gaming will be alive and kicking for quite a while.

When the face of the top first person shooter or real time strategy game changes from year to year, it is a very difficult to garner a strong fan base.

However, in South Korea this is not the case, where since it came out in 1998, StarCraft: Brood War has been at the top of professional gaming. The OnGameNet StarLeague has been around broadcasting StarCraft matches since 1999 and Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation, one of the top four South Korean television networks, started it's own MBC StarLeague of their own around 2001. Both of these leagues are going strong thanks to their fans' love of Blizzard's creation. I am one of these fans of StarCraft pro gaming in Korea, though I don't contribute to their revenue, I follow the leagues through Team Liquid's coverage and watching live streams of the matches late at night on SC2.org.

The rules of the game are critical to its excitement. Letting certain glitches be used by the players, or limiting the game's UI can make or break balance of a game. In games with unknown information, keeping players in a sound proof booth is important too. There were a few notable instances where a pro gamer was about to make a fatal move, but stopped at the last second due to the crowds reaction to the impending encounter.

It will be interesting with the advent of StarCraft 2 on the horizon whether or not Starcraft: Brood War will continue to be successful in South Korean pro gaming. Many of the gamers and commentators have said they will go where the money is. Will the fans support their tried and true game of 9 years or will they move on to its next iteration? Whatever the case, this article hints that with 20% of South Korea's population following E-sports, pro gaming will be alive and kicking for quite a while.