Thursday, August 7, 2008

Idra WCG 2008: ilnp redux?

Idra is not unfamiliar with special treatment. Since traveling to Korea to train on eStro, TL’s favorite pale redheaded egoist has been allowed to play from Korea for the TSL, and now apparently will be allowed to compete online in WCG USA without having to fly back to the United States. The obvious concern is that he could have a Korean semipro or pro to play for him.

As Media members and groupies are quick to point out, Idra doesn’t need a Korean sub. His improvement since arriving in Seoul is obvious: after being bounced out of his first Courage tournament in the first round, Idra made the quarterfinals in his second try, losing 1-2 to the eventual winner, zergstyle[gm]. But the fact that Idra fully deserves a slot does not mean he should receive a huge edge over the other players: not having to travel. In fact, since Idra already has a huge advantage over the other players in practice quality and volume, you could argue that he should be the last guy who gets this free pass. He’s the only participant in WCG USA whose job is "get better at StarCraft" and it's understandable when weaker players like Sadist complain, especially when the same online exemption isn't provided to others.

TLGG wishes it was around in 2003 during the original ilnp WDT scandal, but it’s never too late to take a look back. For those that aren’t familiar, WDT was a ladder where players paid an entry fee ($20) to participate in a tournament with large prizes. Ilnp (aka Dudey), a TL.net forum member, won the tournament, defeating many well-known top foreigners in the process. However, his tournament matches were played with triple the APM and a significantly higher skill than the community has seen from this player. It’s become widely accepted that ilnp struck a deal with a Korean pro to play for him and split the money. Remember, this was a time before hotkey fingerprinting was established and people believed it was possible to transform your play overnight.

Here are a few quick and dirty links about the whole incident:

Ilnp’s side of the story
Testie’s accusation
Nazgul’s response
Rekrul revealing it was Oversky

WDT Scandal Part II was promise by Smuft and Elky that the winner of WDT travel to Korea and receive a spot on a proteam. Obviously, this generated large sums of money in signups, as every 2003 version of Combat-Ex and LastShadow ponied up $20 to prove their mad skills. But not only did Smuft and Elky take back this promise, but they weren't going to tell the winner until after he arrived in Korea. Oh, how much TLGG wishes it were present during that conversation.
If you want to read more about ilnp and WDT, the TL Search Function will show you the way. Will Idra walk the ilnp road or play it straight? Only time will tell.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

And inc actually makes a constructive and useful post which answers your "hypothesis" or "argument" in this post;

"IdrA is playing against a guy who plays with him daily. If greg is dumb enough (he isn't) to use a korean it will be found out EASY and greg will be banned from everything. He wouldn't do it."

Anonymous said...

additionally greg has to play at 5 am or so HIS time. You want to call that an advantage? Maybe if you played the fucking game you like to write about you would know that that is far from an advantage.

Greg has also been warned that if he is 30 seconds late, has any issues or the admin simply forgets to set up greg (highly possible given WCG organization) then guess what? Greg is bounced out of WCG USA. Big deal? Damn rigt it is. He is possibly the best player in the USA. Being in such a fragile situation is hardly an advantage.

Anonymous said...

Oh the Media Gang is here to defend his beloved terran