at the start of sc2 alot (and i mean a fuckton) of korean pros/semipros from broodwar switched and started practicing like crazy.

in foreigner scene there were not nearly as many pros from bw/wc3 to practice, we were playing alot of tournaments being competitors hiding builds from each other to gain an edge and so forth. all korea had was GSL.

so korea started off with a higher player base that had the mentality to play all day long. players like Mvp who was winning in the start came from broodwar environment, same goes with MC and Nestea afaik.

so higher hardcore player base, right practice mentality and higher experience from RTS in general them personally and culturally. this is how they got best almost immidietly, MC started winning every foreigner tournament.

years later the real Kespa pros switched, they had an amazing ladder to practice on against these non-kespa players and they were living in team houses. some of these guys has been playing living and breathing starcraft for years while most foreigner pros still were going to school/working. only a few amount of pros (like me for example) quit school for full-time progaming.

i hope ive painted a picture of how their infrastructure gives any given korean player a higher chance of success over a foreigner.

just take the fact how some of our best foreigners have moved to Korea just for that practice have come back and preformed better than ever. their talent or work ethic didnt necessarily increase by going to Korea, but it was the competition they had in their practice hours that made them get better.

ive played this game damn many years fulltime now, i dont exactly practice all day long like i used to back in the day but seeing some of the comments on reddit is what makes pros like myself feel very cheated. many of us worked damn hard barely scraping by on a sub-300 euro salery at best for years playing because of the love of the game and believe in esport growth

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