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Posted on October 23, 2010, David Moss BlizzCon 2010: New Leagues for Starcraft 2 Multiplayer

So you’ve finally climbed all the way into the diamond league. You’re at the top of the heap. No one can call you a noob now, right? Well Blizzard has a surprise for you, in the form of two new leagues ABOVE diamond. That’s right, get ready to feel inferior all over again as you try futilely to claw your way into the “Master” or “Grandmaster” league.

I asked Starcraft 2’s lead artist Allen Dilling why the Starcraft folks want so badly to crush our self-esteem. He explained to me that it was less about crushing self-esteem and more about creating some really epic matches. Allen pointed out that there is a “big difference” between a high level diamond and a low level diamond. This is a point I tend to agree with him on, especially while getting owned by people with APM that is twenty or thirty times my own. So the idea here is to pit the really good players against other really good players, seems fair enough.

The Master League will be comprised of the top one or two percent of Diamond League and the Grandmaster League will simply be the top 200. By putting all the top players in their own league, the odds of truly earth shattering battles are multiplied, a fact which Blizzard intends to capitalize on. Featured replays from games in these leagues will appear on Battle.net and be easily viewable to the wretched masses of the lower leagues… I mean other players.

Not only that, but Blizzard also intends to make your own replays more accessible to your friends. They’re currently working on a cloud storage system that will make replays easily viewable if you choose to share. Soon you will be able to show the whole world that game where you nuked some unsuspecting noob into utter oblivion. Now that’s progress.

There is no official word on when these leagues will be put into effect, but it is the next big change to Starcraft 2′s multiplayer.