Feedback to Hearthstone Esports and my plans going forward.

The thing that has defined me throughout my entire life is that whenever I find something

I'm really passionate and excited about, especially something I can improve in, I work my ass off

to get better at it. I often compare myself to others going for the same goals to see if I can get

to their level or even surpass them.

This leads me to why I love competing so much. It’s an avenue where I get to directly

test my skills against people with the same mindset as me and see if I have what it takes to beat

them. I thought that one day being able to call myself one of the best was something I could

only dream of, but in Hearthstone, the game I've dedicated the last six years and countless

hours of my life to in the hope of becoming #1, I can proudly say that I'm one of the better

players to have ever played the game.

The road of getting here over the years involved saying goodbye to many friendships

and the end of two relationships I held dearly due to the time I had to commit to my career.

These are not things I look back on with regret, I'm sad it happened but I never doubted that I

made the right choice. This might sound stupid to people with other values in life or to someone

who hasn't been in a similar position, but this is my all. I care about esports and the friends I

made through it more than probably any of you could imagine.

Where am I really going with this? As you already know, I got knocked out of Grandmasters

about a month ago in a 4-way tie with only tiebreakers deciding who gets relegated. I can go

into everything that was wrong with the tiebreaker system but at the end of the day it is too late

and doesn't matter now.

With how the system is designed; getting relegated puts me back on square one in the

Hearthstone scene. I would be happy to claw my back up, but the current schedule has such

long waits between important events that there is just isn't anything for me to do while I wait for

the next Master Tour. Before I talk more about the problems with this, I know those who aren’t

grandmasters will have recognized them yourself, and to you, I feel you. I have been trying my

hardest all year to improve this part of the system because I know how frustrated a lot of my

friends outside of Grandmasters are. I would share proof of my logs with HS esports over the

last year but sadly most messages are under NDA so you'll have to take my word for it.

With a top 8 performance at Master Tour Bucharest I am now qualified to the next two Master

Tours. The first one, Arlington, will take place Jan 31-Feb 3. The second hasn't been announced

yet, but looking at this year it would be safe to say that it is two months after Arlington, or right

around April. As someone who is already qualified I am not allowed to participate in any of the

open cup qualifiers for these events, so what’s for me is to play ladder, the only incentive of

which is qualifying for the next Master’s Tour after a top 16 finish. Since I am already qualified,

there is almost no reason for me to play Hearthstone competitively for quite a while. Blizzard

said at the start of the year that we would see some number of third party events to play in, but

there really haven’t been that many besides Battleriff ( which is a great initiative that I personally

loved) that did a three month league over the summer. I should mention HGG here, but it is only

for 32 people that earned their slot from finishes at Master Tours and another 32 invited players,

most of them being Grandmaster already. While HGG gives a small fraction of the competitive

player base something to play in, it’s far from solving the problem. Regardless, I think HGG is an

amazing initiative and while it doesn’t alleviate the problem I am talking about I still appreciate

HS esports for continuing it this year.

After HGG is over, I won't have a single Hearthstone tournament I can compete in until February

next year. There will be yet another several month wait after that for the next event. Don't get

me wrong, I love Hearthstone, but what has always driven me forward is to be even better for

the next tournament, to figure out the meta for a big event, or to prepare for the last few days of

grinding ladder. My drive, and the drive of many others like me, is the desire to compete! We

want the thrill of playing tournaments, making new friends, the rush of high-stakes matches!

Celebrating when either ourselves or our friends make it, whether it be winning a qualifier for a

Master’s Tour or the World Championship itself.

There are two things I want to say with this

1. I've told the people working in Hearthstone esports this multiple times. I know how much you

care about the non-GM player base, even though they don’t think you do. Your recent changes

to the system, like implementing ladder qualification, come from a good place but they are

missing the mark of what people want. There are so many of us that just want to compete and

right now meaningful tournaments to play in are scarcer than ever before. At the start of the

year you and I had a long talk about a weekly tournament series that were going to get held

between Grandmasters and already qualified players. I asked you almost every week when

they would start until you probably got tired of me asking and told me they weren't going to

happen anytime soon. If I had to guess, the layoffs happening around that time played a part in

it. I know the people working on HS esports are incredibly busy and hard-working as it is, but

this is urgent. Hearthstone might be doing great as a game on a big scale and among the

casual playerbase but there are so many of the top competitive players leaving because of

feelings similar to mine, and it hurts everytime I see one leave. Please give us a reason to play

this game that we love and have dedicated so much of our life to. That's all I'm asking for.

2. For me, personally. I wish I could say for certain what I will do next. My plan is to take

streaming seriously, and after I finish moving and fixing some computer problems expect

consistent streams in the future. I want the majority of it to be Hearthstone, because that's why

most of you follow me. But if I am playing Hearthstone day in and day out with nothing that I'm

improving on or striving for I will be miserable. This might mean that for some length of time

there might not be tons of Hearthstone content on my channel while I play other games that I

can compete in. Right now Magic just released a new format that I can enter qualifiers for every

Friday so I am having a ton of fun with that. I am also looking forward to streaming a lot of the

Legends of Runeterra Beta when it returns. And, of course, I am also looking forward to

Descent of Dragons, and when that comes out you can expect me to go all in on Hearthstone

again as I finally get to prepare for Masters Tour Arlington with my friends. My goal is still to

requalify for the Grandmaster league. This next year, I'm going to give it all I got. A shoutout

and thank you to my team @T1 that has been supportive of me through all of this.

One final thing; I had multiple people come up to me at Bucharest thanking me for being open

about my mental health and my struggles. There is nothing that makes me happier than hearing

my story has been able to help others. I feel a bit guilty as I have been very quiet about my own

mental health lately, but to be honest, talking about mental health and struggles is a lot easier

when you are in a good place yourself. There has been a lot going on in my life lately so bear

with me while I figure my own stuff out. Not all is bad though. I've been doing tons of progress when it comes to my physical health and I'm in much better shape than I was about a year ago! Either way, thank you guys so much for understanding.

TL;DR Competitive players have very few outlets to compete, please fix it blizzard. My content

might be a little more diverse going forward. Still trying to make Grandmasters next year.

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