Kim "sOs" Yoo Jin Crowned StarCraft II Champion at BlizzCon

[MarlaDesat]

Kim "sOs" Yoo Jin Crowned StarCraft II Champion at BlizzCon

The StarCraft II World Championship Series ends 4-1 for Yoo Jin over Lee "Jaedong" Jae Dong in a tense best-of-seven series.

The 2013 World Championship Series (WCS) began April 4 and ended decisively tonight, crowning Kim "sOs" Yoo Jin as the greatest StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm player of 2013. Yoo Jin will take home the $100,000 USD prize, bringing his lifetime earnings [http://www.sc2earnings.com/player/554/kim-yoo-jin] from StarCraft II to $135,260. In second place, Lee "Jaedong" Jae Dong wins $45,000. The best of seven series began with two wins for Protoss player Yoo Jin, narrowly taking victory in the first game and rushing to victory with cannons and early units in the second. In a long third game that saw both players come close to winning, Jae Dong took his first and only victory in the series. Jae Dong was unable to take another game, and Yoo Jin claimed his trophy when the series ended 4-1.

Jae Dong, playing for team Evil Geniuses, is a StarCraft legend. Jae Dong played StarCraft: Brood War professionally beginning in 2005, earning himself the nickname "The Tyrant" for his tournament domination and becoming one of four professional gamers to earn a Golden Mouse [http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Golden_Mouse]. Kim "sOs" Yoo Jin, playing for team Woongjin Stars, fought his way through other veterans to face Jae Dong. Jae Dong entered the tournament ranked No. 3, while Yoo Jin ranked No. 12. Yoo Jin faced and bested Choi "Bomber" Ji Sung, Song "HerO" Hyeon Deok, and Choi "Polt" Seong Hoon, ranked No. 8, No. 5, and No. 4 respectively. The first place finish for Yoo Jin his first in the 2013 WCS, with his highest previous tournament placement being second place at the WCS Season 1 finals. Jae Dong adds his second place finish at the Grand Finals to four other second place finishes this year. He has performed consistently well but failed to take first place at any tournaments in 2013.

The 2014 WCS will begin earlier in the year, allowing for four seasons of competition. Each season is composed of regional events from the three regional leagues and culminates in a Season Finals event. The three regions are WCS Korea, WCS America, and WCS Europe. In each Season Finals, the top five from each region (and a sixth from the region hosting the Season Final) compete in a 16-player cross-league tournament. Placing highly in WCS tournaments earns players WCS points in addition to cash prizes. WCS points determine player rankings, and the top sixteen ranked players qualify for the Grand Finals held at BlizzCon.

Source: StarCraft II World Championship Series [http://wcs.battle.net/sc2/en]

Permalink

 

[Tanakh]

E-Sports [...] the assumption that Asians always win... is totally true!

Lol whut? Do you even e-sport brah? That is only true in SC II and to a much lesser extent on LoL. Not at all in DotA, CS, WoW Arena, Bloodline champions, World of Tanks, EVO games (xcept SF IV) or other mayor E-sports.

 

[Denamic]

I was rooting for my Z-bro, but whatevs. T'was a good tournament, and I enjoyed every match I watched.

 

[BrotherRool]

Jaedong managed to get another second place finish? And in another final where he gets stomped by his opponent (in score at least). I don't know how one guy can so consistently get to the finals and be unable to win them just as consistently. This is his 5th second place finish in a major tournament this year

 

[AldUK]

Is it the EG curse? Jaedong wins countless tournaments in Brood War, switches to SC2, joins EG and can't get past 2nd place. FIVE second place finishes in 2013 is just cruel. It's not even about the money for him now, he just wants a win.

Dreamhack Winter may be his last chance to finish 2013 on a high.

Congratulations to sOs though, he's a nice kid and he really outplayed JD in the final. A cool $100,000 well deserved.

As for Naniwa... he dropped out in round 1 and it wasn't even really close. Disappointing for him, but like Jaedong, he has one more chance for glory at Dreamhack.

Can't wait!

 

[Carrots_macduff]

E-Sports [...] the assumption that Asians always win... is totally true!

Lol whut? Do you even e-sport brah? That is only true in SC II and to a much lesser extent on LoL. Not at all in DotA, CS, WoW Arena, Bloodline champions, World of Tanks, EVO games (xcept SF IV) or other mayor E-sports.

in other words, all the games that arent nearly as popular anywhere, especially in Korea.

if you watch esports you should know that when Koreans play games professionally, they're on a different level than we are here in the west

 

[Tanakh]

Well, it was a joke, so I'm not really bothered by the fact that I'm not 100% accurate. Besides, to the average viewer who doesn't make a habit of going in-depth, it would appear that Asian people win these competitions most of the time.

Ohh... kk. Well, now you know it's not nearly accurate

if you watch esports you should know that when Koreans play games professionally, they're on a different level than we are here in the west

Really? And here I tought EG, TL, FNATIC and [A] are on the level or better than most/all (depending on the game) Korean organizations. Good thing now I know DotA is not nearly as popular as SC II anywhere, or that EVO doesn't draw an audience, I will let twitch know his average number of viewers must be wrong on each game because you say so.

 

[funksobeefy]

ah I wanted the Dong to win so badly. But I am still disappointed by the fact that blizzard decided that any player can play in any region. That means that world finals only contain one foreigner and the rest Koreans.

 

[dharmaBum0]

sOs was stellar throughout the tournament, I'm a bit surprised at how low the expectations of him were going into the final. JD is great, but sOs really outplayed him.

o.t. SC2 community needs to support better casters; Many of the "second-tier" casters are so much better than the big names. I will never understand how Day9 is so popular.

 

[Meestor Pickle]

Both are great players, I would have been happy to see either win. Its awesome watching matches between these two.

 

[Seanchaidh]

Never been interested in the RTS E-Sports gaming scene. Is SC1 still being played, or did everyone just jump ship to SC2?

Nothing televised anymore. There are still tournaments, though, and streams. I think it's mostly SOSPA, if you care to see it. I don't really know how accessible it is. SC2 dominates the professional scene in part because Blizzard wanted it to do so. Blizzard started making noise about its copyrights and Brood War on Korean television around the time Wings of Liberty was released, which ended up with KeSPA making the transition to SC2 not that long before the release of Heart of the Swarm. Viewership has fallen rather dramatically from Brood War's heyday, and League of Legends now fills the void in Korea.

Still, SC2 has been far, far more popular internationally when it comes to E-Sports than Brood War was. And sOs really did play an excellent tournament. One thing the article didn't note is that both Jaedong and sOs played Brood War professionally. They were even on the same team for awhile.

 

[shintakie10]

I was really sad to see Jaedong lose because he's my boy and I really wanted him to win, simply because of how heartbreakin it was to watch him take second place over and over and over.

Alas that didn't happen.

Really, the final was a pretty weird set of games though. Jaedong basically threw away game 1 because he absolutely would not commit his armies of ultras against an army that had high ground, and a wall, but absolutely no anti-armor except Stalkers (lol) which left him supply capped for a good 5-6 minutes while sOs just kept buildin immortals. By the time Jaedong decided it was time to actually do somethin, he decided to try to base trade. With Ultralisks. Against an army that could kill buildings far more efficiently than Ultralisks.

That worked out exactly as you'd expect. Jaedong wiped out a single expo and lost his main, almost all his tech, and an expo. Didnt lose any units though! Except his units were absolutely terrible against sOs comp and he absolutely needed to free up supply to tech switch to Mutas, but again he didnt commit. He just meandered around the middle before finally decidin it was time to do somethin after he lost his second expo.

I'm not sure if he just got frazzled by bein in the finals or what, but it was very frustratin to watch live (note, I absolutely could not do better) because after watchin his earlier matches I know he can do better. Its like he just forgot how to be his normal aggressive self.

Game 2-3 Jaedong did really well, but got messed up by sOs weird cannon rush build. sOs had some ridiculously sic micro on Phoenixes durin this game.

Game 4 was brilliant. sOs made that ridiculous expo up on the top left corner that Jaedong never noticed. Jaedong desperately workin to deny sOs his third (that he already had) because he thought sOs wasn't on his third. That absolutely beautiful use of infestors and infested terran. Then the finishin move, 37 mutalisks spawn within seconds of each other. Jaedong played poetry in motion this match.

Then Game 5. Ugh, game 5. I have no idea what happened to Jaedong here, but he, not literally but basically lost to a proxy pylon. Seriously, almost lost to a bronze level rush build. I honestly think that if sOs had actually committed to the proxy gateway rush he would have won that within 8 minutes because Jaedong just was not playin well this match.

All things considered though, I had to give it up to sOs. He played brilliantly and beat the best Zerg player in the world. Props and claps around. He talked about how the only thing he could think of in the booth was holdin up the WCS trophy at the end and how that got him through and I was like, cool okay I can get behind this.

Then this happened.

Spoiler

And all my respect for him went out the window.

Aside from the ridiculously childish move, I am incredibly annoyed at how disrespectful he was with this move. This is just classless and just...disrespectful.

I dont know if its purposely meant as a dig at Jaedong "This is my Dong" or if he was just bein a little shit about it, but come on. I expect this kind of crap from LoL, or EVO winners (note, I have never actually seen an EVO outside of that whole sexism and racism thing), but I've always felt that the top end of SC and SC2 were some of the best and humblest people out there and the biggest tournament of the year for SC2 ends with that image in my head?

Fuck. That.

 

[dharmaBum0]

sOs was stellar throughout the tournament, I'm a bit surprised at how low the expectations of him were going into the final. JD is great, but sOs really outplayed him.

o.t. SC2 community needs to support better casters; Many of the "second-tier" casters are so much better than the big names. I will never understand how Day9 is so popular.

Second tier? As in who? Most of the casters who are left are considered first tier. Day9 is popular because he is charismatic when it comes to esports and brings a lot of enthusiasm to the games he casts and works well with other casters. Funday Monday helps.

Second-tier wasn't the right way to say it, but the stage-2 casters (rotter and bitter) were far-and-away better. Day9 and whoits on the main stage were awful.

But Day9 has always been just poor at casting. He tempo is too slow, he always misses key events happening on the map, and when he isn't stating the obvious he's babbling. I credit him knowing plenty about the game, but you'd never know it listening to him cast.

He is serviceable in a pinch. And paired with a decent caster he's not all bad. But no one on main stage was particularly good.