PartinG’s 2nd place, followed up by Rain’s victory in the GSL Code S, are very important moments in StarCraft history. StarCraft has basically always been completely (as in 100%) dominated by KeSPA teams, but suddenly, the hardest tournament in the world has players who have been off of those teams for a reasonable amount of time doing well. I think that there are a lot of factors that contribute to why this has occurred, and I’d like to try and explain them. Of course, we have to also take into consideration the fact that both of these players, despite not being on KeSPA teams, retain plenty of friends and practice partners who are.

The Korean Ladder

One of the big reasons for the ability of players outside of KeSPA teams to be able to bring their level up so high, is the ridiculously high quality of the Korean Ladder. While in StarCraft 1, every professional played Game-i, GameBugs, and eventually ICCup, they weren’t really that important, and not used for top-level practice. What then, has led to this difference?

1. Blizzard’s forced rotation of actual tournament maps.

This is a pretty big deal. Blizzard has, overall, kept the map pool relevant with the same (or a very close) representation of the current professional map pool. Forced compliance with maps has made the ladder worthwhile to find new strategies on new maps, something that the StarCraft 1 ladders never had. Instead, people played old favourites, like Lost Temple and Python, for years after they had rotated out of the professional scene. That would be like if we still had Metalopolis and Daybreak daily. A waste of time for any professional.

2. The difference between the first StarCraft 2 professional teams and KeSPA teams.

The beginning StarCraft 2 teams were run very, very differently than KeSPA teams. They were all start-ups without the rigorous training systems that the KeSPA teams had in place. While many of those KeSPA teams would have specific schedules for who would play vs who, as well as when Ladder would be allowed, the new StarCraft 2 teams were much more lax. Ladder became an important part of practice.

3. The head start of the non-KeSPA pros.

When the KeSPA teams started to go over to StarCraft 2, they were well behind their counterparts who had already been playing for a couple of years or so. You can’t practice in the vacuum of your own team house when there are hundreds of players with much more experience on the ladder. It just wouldn’t make sense.

4. KeSPA teams are smaller than ever before.

Remember back when we lost a few KeSPA teams, and the rosters were downsized greatly? That was actually good for the game. With so few players on each team, you simply cannot cover everything with your tiny roster. There will be play styles and ideas missing from in-house practice.

StarCraft 1 vs StarCraft 2, or, Mechanics vs Strategy

Let me get this out of the way: StarCraft 2 is more strategic than StarCraft 1. Both are RTS (Real Time Strategy) games, but they have different emphasises. SC1 is a Real Time Strategy game, and SC2 is a Real Time Strategy game.

SC1 is a game of speed and mechanics. Yes, there is a lot of strategy, of course, but it is certainly secondary to being able to make as many units as possible and to move those units in the right way.

SC2 is a game of strategy. Yes, there are lots of mechanics and speed required, of course, but those are much less punishing than making incorrect strategic choices.

(In fact I feel like putting a gigantic aside here in these ( things what ever they are called. Lots of people from StarCraft 1 complain about the “problems” with StarCraft 2. Now for the record, not one of these people loved SC1 more than I. Anyways, lots of the complaints have to do with the missing beauty of things like perfect Mutalisk Micro, or the perfect Reaver Drop, or the fun of microing Vultures. These things are beautiful, and there’s nothing quite like them in SC2. But, if SC2 had come first, there would be people complaining that SC1 lacks the deeper strategy that SC2 offers. These strategic choices that people are making have their own beauty…beauty which can be pretty hard to see. End of aside.)

(Oh, by the way, here’s a second aside. Part of the reason why SC2 is so strategic is the hard counters. The units we love to hate, the Marauder, the Roach and the Immortal actually themselves add a whole different type of depth that just doesn’t exist in SC1. These units truly punish you for poor moves or decisions, in ways nothing from SC1 ever could. There’s a lot more to the strategic depth than those of course, just a fun little side point I wanted to make.)

The deeper strategic aspect of SC2 plays into why Rain and PartinG can preform so well without the backing of a KeSPA team for multiple reasons.

The first is pretty straight forward. There’s such a multitude of different strategies, with so much variation in the meta game, that the ladder is actually useful. Radically new approaches for matchups are constantly popping up all over the place. These strategies move most quickly through the ladder environment. By playing ladder you are exposed to every single pro, as well as amateur thought which moves up the ranks.

The second is kind of related to what is written above. Once you have become a top level progamer, you already have acceptable mechanics. You can’t get there otherwise. In SC1, a lot of winning was about practicing with the best. If Sea[Shield] can get 11 more Marines than the average top Ladder player by the 12 minute mark, then you will literally never beat him by practicing on the ladder. On the contrary, in SC2, if you know your opponent is going Roaches, it doesn’t matter if he has 12 or 17 in the mid game push quite as much, because you are taking the fight in a choke with Immortal tech and Forcefields.

What I’m trying to say here is, it is far more important to be in the top 95% of macro players and know all the different reactionary branches of your build orders, than to be in the top 99.9% of macro players and have a general idea of what to do.