The Hard Talk: Community Contributors

I think Relic is actually working closer with the community Ipkai. They just do it with the wrong people.
I remember when you did ESL and received 0 from them, I remember Ami organizing OCF and receiving (next to) 0 from them, I remember me organizing tons of events with Rewind & One4One and receiving next to 0 support. For 141, I received some though.

It's because of our job, things like ESL now is actually working a bit. It's cause of events like OCF that people got interest again in these tournaments and it's because of the community's effort that this game is where it is. Months after months, Relic came up with ridiculous patches which made the game nearly unplayable. Cause of community efforts by playing the alpha, giving feedback and hammering on changes, that the game is where it is. It's because of the guides people wrote, cause of the Facebook VonKluge and his maintained, the events and casting by us, Stormless and others, the game is where it is.

Relic can kiss our hands and wash our feet cause we did this cause it helped their game becoming enjoyable. Many of us have put hours and hours of time in a game and got next to 0 recognition of Relic's side but I believe that has changed a bit. (Ingame adds, community spotlight, ...).

Newschoolers will disagree as they were not in the process which got the game to this stage. But who cares?

100$ Prizes? 250$ Prizes for ESL? Weird seeding, crappy overlays, A_E as lead caster who is only after promoting his channel, EU players winning NA brackets, always the same winner on EU side, weird rules, max 1000 viewers, ...
Call that an improvement? Lol. Compare that to the +2500 viewers of OCF, the hype, prizepool.

Yeah, improvement. Sure.

Your shit is really starting to get on my nerves. I'll come to the questionability of pretty much all your post on this page recently in a bit but first of all,
what the hell is "wrong people" supposed to mean?! Are you saying that people like A_E, Stormless and GG and the rest of that awesome casting team are wrong to work with?
And if so who should Relic then be working with?!

"Relic can kiss our hands and wash our feet" is most selfentitled bullshit I heard in a while. Who ever forced you to do anything for the game? You like(d) it and are therefore sacraficing your free time for
it. Alright that's fine and honorable since you are trying to bring joy to other people too but I hardly doubt that Relic ever asked you personally to do anything like that so what gives you the right
call them out for "not supporting" you in the way you want?

Where is the problem with A_E promoting his channel since he is already not receiving any money for what he does? Starting something with a 100$ prize pool that you haven't tried before from a topic that
you are not that experienced on is bad? Yeah Relic should totally throw 10.000$ out there for a single event that has no hype around it yet. Face it dude Relic is a company. They are trying to make money and
not to serve the community as a benefitial organisation or some crap. Trying to build and form a competetive scene with the help of ESL is gonna make their games interesting to a wider customer base and will
through that help to improve the success of the company. That's what it is and should be about.

"Allways the same winner on EU side" <-- beside that being simply wrong I don't understand what you are trying to say here? If every single tourney would be won by the same guy then what? Might be boring,
but the point of competetive events is that the best one wins and if one of them is significantly better than everyone else then that's it, doesn't matter if boring or not. On a side not I would be really
interested what you would suggest to "fix" this "issue" lel.

I am with you on the players swapping between EU and NA brackets. That is indeed very silly. That should prolly be changed in a way that players can only sign up for one of them and they have to do so indepent of other players that
already signed up.

2500 viewers on OCF, I am pretty sure that stuff was featured on the Twitch homepage which ESL up to this point wasn't as far as I know. Regarding the whole OCF prizepool thing I just want to say that I don't
think that this should be mentioned as a prime example of how to manage that stuff (don't want to jump on anyones feet here). Don't get me wrong I am not talking about the crowdfunding but the way this money
was handled is imo really questionable and I could imagine relic saw that the same way and might have not supported it for that reason.

So much for the fun and nice part. Now this is gonna get a little harsh but I feel like it has to be said:

You failed with Rewind events and stopped an ongoing tourney right in the middle which pissed a lot of people (including myself as a player in that very tourney) off a lot. Relic didn't support you at that
point and it appearently was the right descision. Then you started your 141 thing together with the great crew (seriously those guys are doing great work) behind that which actually looked really promising. Still I didn't expect much because I expected you to throw it
all again over some stupid ass personal balance believes again. I am just terribly sorry for the rest of that team that put together that great stuff for you screwing them over which is why I am happy so see VET3
rising up. However Relic decided to support you with that second attempt. That's right. They decided to support an over emotional crappy caster who already threw a project like that before over some personal bullshit.
If Relic ever made questionable descisions there is one. Now you obviously decided to ruin 141 too fucking everyone over who put work in it because YOU think the balance is bad. Where do you even get your
understanding of balance from?! You're shit at the game and your borderline retarded suggestions at the balance forums are leaving me with the impressions that you are not the learning from viewing type of guy either.

You then thank god did decide to leave the community and play CSGO. Alright thank you get the hell outta here and stop being a whiny jealous bitch towards VET3 events as well as writing about stuff in the forums
that you have clearly no idea of.

Stop annoying everyone here with your senseless horseshit and leave this game and it's community for what ever will happen to it.

I think Relic is actually working closer with the community Ipkai. They just do it with the wrong people.

I remember me organizing tons of events with Rewind & One4One and receiving next to 0 support.

Relic can kiss our hands and wash our feet cause we did this cause it helped their game becoming enjoyable. Many of us have put hours and hours of time in a game and got next to 0 recognition of Relic's side but I believe that has changed a bit. (Ingame adds, community spotlight, ...).

Newschoolers will disagree as they were not in the process which got the game to this stage. Weird seeding, crappy overlays, A_E as lead caster who is only after promoting his channel

Kreatiir pls.

Rewind and One4One were both short sighted events that never made it past their first speed bump. To come into this thread and claim that your efforts were totally overlooked is some self righteous bull shit.

You don't actually give a shit about the players or the community.

You attempted to shut down the clan clash season 2 MID EVENT simply because you personally did not agree with the direction that relic decided to take their most recent balance patch. You totally disregarded the commitment of the everyone involved, players, casters, organizers. All their time, effort and practice would have been flushed down the drain if you had it your way.

To come to this thread and act like you have the best interest of the community at heart is a complete joke. You lost your credibility with this community a long time ago.

I find it amusing that all of a sudden you think "Relic is supporting the wrong people". In the brief time you and I worked together on One4One you had nothing but negative comments regarding COH2.ORG, OCF, Ami, and Relic.

You've totally quit the scene several times after things didn't pan out exactly as you envisioned them.

I mean seriously man:

Relic can kiss our hands and wash our feet cause we did this cause it helped their game becoming enjoyable.

Just reread that. Come on man...Are we trying to make this game something great because we love it, or because we're looking for Daddy Relic to pat us on the back and tell us great job, keep it up!

It's painfully obvious to anyone that has either worked with you or spent any time in the coh2 community that you are petty and self entitled. If I were Relic I would be hesitant to work with someone of your character as well.

Relic put your event on the in game home page, they tweeted your events. They were willing to promote your hard work. But instead you threw a temper tantrum and pissed away all the work and progress because of one patch. Get off your high horse. Actually better yet, just take your "talents" to another scene because you've worn out your welcome here.

Or, you know, we could stay on topic and focus on what Kyle replied rather than lose ourselves in quoting irrelevant people

Or, you know, we could stay on topic and focus on what Kyle replied rather than lose ourselves in quoting irrelevant people

There's that, but I have this lingering feeling that Kreatiir will continue to post his non sense and I worry that people who don't follow the scene closely will actually believe him.

I like waffles.

They should improve the game rather than distract us with prize pools. Change the commander system, reduce insta wipes, and optimize. Content bloating is a bigger issue in COH2 than it is in BF4.

True, vast majority of Coh 2 players aren't participating in the Go4 tournament. RNG has always been common place throughout the span however, the arty fest of 2014, the Heavy tank fest of 2013-15, the mine wipes still prevalent, the lucky mortar strikes on bunched infantry. Idk, It's always been like that.

I don't know a lot about IpKai or whatever and his past experiences with both ESL and COH2.ORG, but I would like to thank him for being mature in handling a potentially charged subject for him. In a lot of other game forums, this would've gone down a whole lot differently.

fire PogChamp

"experienced community members have been left on the side lines"
This I would have to strongly disagree with. Numerous "experienced community members" have been consulted both before and during this ESL tournament series for their feedback and opinions. Not to mention, we hoped to work strongly/closely with the founders of CoH2.org in running the ESL tournament. Although key members were notified approximately a couple months prior to announce of ESL and were asked to work directly with Relic to make this tournament as great as possible, offering exclusive casting rights and other benefits as well, we unfortunately never received a response to this offer.

Who did Relic ask?

the deserts of Salt have gone quiet kreatiir has dispersed

Greetings All!

Definitely an interesting read, although it appears that the conclusions were derived from a lack of information so me being the giver that I am felt obligated to fill in some of the gaps.

Now I can only speak of what I've seen in the time that I've been with Relic so I will keep this limited to that but otherwise, let's talk ESL.

"announced understatedly/low-key announcement"
So not exactly sure what you meant by this so maybe you could explain or provide exampled of what you expected the announcement to be like? In any case, our announcement included a email blast to all users who have signed up for a Relic account, a press release from ESL, multiple social/blog posts and in-game banners encouraging sign-ups over the course of 3 - 4 weeks.

The $18,000 Commitment
So this is something I've seen coming up quite a bit since the tournament was announced and I apologize for not addressing it sooner. Now, there is a difference between a $18,000 prize pool and a $18,000 commitment and there is a possibility that potentially someone at Relic misspoke at one point regarding these terms but for that I am uncertain. Regardless, what we had is a $18,000 commitment. This means we are committing $18,000 towards running an ESL CoH2 tournament. So, believe it not, ESL does charge for their services and a significant chunk of this commitment went to pay to use their tournament running tools. What was left thus went into the prize pool.

As many have noticed, as of today we were able to significantly increase that prize pool due to some renegotiation of our original contract with ESL in which Relic took on a portion of the workload to free up some of the budget to go back to the players.

Rules
I just wanted to clarify that vet coh2 players and tournament organizers were indeed asked for feedback regarding the original rules and as you know the rules were amended after the first Go4Cup after soliciting additional feedback from the community until the majority of participants felt the rules were in a good place.

Official Caster "Prize"
For the Call for Casters competition, I do have to agree that "prize" was probably the wrong choice of words. Something along the lines of "grant exclusive rights" or something like that should have probably been used. In terms of valuing this, well Stormless, GG and A_E can speak more on it than I can but based off the spikes in views and followers they've received from becoming the "official ESL casters" it definitely has come with its rewards. Of course as A_E mentioned we did send them a Relic swag bag, coordinated with ESL to send them some swag as well. Not to mention we have a couple other exciting things in the works for them which all-in-all will hopefully make this endeavor worth it for them.

"experienced community members have been left on the side lines"
This I would have to strongly disagree with. Numerous "experienced community members" have been consulted both before and during this ESL tournament series for their feedback and opinions. Not to mention, we hoped to work strongly/closely with the founders of CoH2.org in running the ESL tournament. Although key members were notified approximately a couple months prior to announce of ESL and were asked to work directly with Relic to make this tournament as great as possible, offering exclusive casting rights and other benefits as well, we unfortunately never received a response to this offer.

Deflect the blame to ESL
So to be honest, I am not sure how this would even be possible. Let's be straight, ESL has been great and have given us access to some amazing tools. But when it comes down to it, Relic is the tournament organizer, ESL is just the host/tools for this tournament. If anyone were to be blamed for not running the tournament well it would be Relic and we would take ownership of that. That being said, I think the tournament has been a great success so far, with great match-ups, amazing casting and a decent level of participation considering the commitment level involved in playing a cup form start to finish. We also have high hopes that with the increased incentive that these things will continue to improve between now and the end of the competition.

Lastly, I just want to finish with Go4 Cups and Pro League cups are by no measure comparable as one is an entry level tournament format and the other, well as it suggests a pro level tournament with a budget of 10x or more to that of a Go4.

Thanks for raising these topics so clarification could be provided and thank you to everyone in the thread for your feedback!

Looking good, digging the increase in prize pool! And thanks for the clarification, it is really appreciated. Just one tiny thing, I sincerely wish the map pool was focused on more from a purely competitive standpoint. Mappers that are completely focused on competitive play have only partly been given the chance to sharpen 1v1/2v2 maps to be as competitive as possible.

As usual (in my experience) people vastly underestimate how critical it is to have the best possible map pool for tournaments.

Were competitive mappers consulted to try to sharpen the map pool to get it as good as it could possibly be for the tournament? Thanks.

Oh, I forgot to mention!

I just wanted to throw out an open invitation to all tournament/event organizers for CoH2. If you are looking for support I am happy to work with you and do what I can. Although it is unlikely we will be able to support you financially, we are happy to promote your tournaments through our social channels, in-game banners and on Twitch. For those lacking a strong Twitch presence we can also work out the possibility of casting your tournament's matches on Relic's Twitch channel and further casting support from some of the community's top casters.

Thanks!

Oh, I forgot to mention!

I just wanted to throw out an open invitation to all tournament/event organizers for CoH2. If you are looking for support I am happy to work with you and do what I can. Although it is unlikely we will be able to support you financially, we are happy to promote your tournaments through our social channels, in-game banners and on Twitch. For those lacking a strong Twitch presence we can also work out the possibility of casting your tournament's matches on Relic's Twitch channel and further casting support from some of the community's top casters.

Thanks!

I decided to make a coh2 event: it's a big party where everyone is invited to celebrate me having all 452 achievements of coh2 .
So if u can help me out by somehow getting it fixed (i still need one ) that'd be great .
On a more serious note u'r doing a hell of a job Keep it UP !

I decided to make a coh2 event: it's a big party where everyone is invited to celebrate me having all 452 achievements of coh2 .
So if u can help me out by somehow getting it fixed (i still need one ) that'd be great .
On a more serious note u'r doing a hell of a job Keep it UP !

Don't give him too much credit

(miniKappa)

Don't give him too much credit

Well not just him , but the whole relic team .
I mean imo the game is at the best stage it has ever been .

Well not just him , but the whole relic team .
I mean imo the game is at the best stage it has ever been .

I know I was kidding, they're doing great ^^

Pretty much this. People tend to forget that a larger, far less vocal part of the community just enjoys compstomps or team games for fun.
It took Relic a while to get their stuff straight but I'm liking where Relic's going for the past (few) months. Ipkai, as much as I repsect your opinion, I feel like it's a bit too late for stuff like this. Just my two cents

+1
Fact:
Over 2 million unique users log onto Starcraft 2 a month but only about 500,000 play 1v1 games
http://waywardstrategist.com/2015/08/20/a-multiplayer-platform-is-not-enough-for-an-rts-to-succeed-ready/

As an old school RTS fan (I'm 37) I have been playing strategy games for over 25 years and over 10 years of MMO experience. Before multiplayer became widespread, I grew up with LAN parties and old strategy game such as C&C, Starcraft: Brood War, Total Annihilation and Warcraft.
At COH2.org, there are several vocal posters that are spreading the myth about SC2, like if this game is supposed to be like the "Gold standard" in RTS. Starcraft: BW, especially in South Korea have quite possibly the most loyal Blizzard fan base in RTS, why?

Gametrics, South Korea’s internet cafe and game ranking stat:
http://www.gametrics.com/ (use google translate to read in english)

SC: BW is more popular (top5) than SC2 which doesn't even make it into the top10 rankings.

One of the primary reasons why RTS is dying is because Blizzard with SC2, neglected the casual player which are the fastest growing player community.

Former WoW Lead System Designer, ghostcrawler:
Why are SC2 dying?
https://ask.fm/RiotGhostcrawler/answers/134859308427

Similar to SC2 forums, some people in this COH2 forum seem to fail to realize that an RTS game's competitive success lives or dies by its casual accessibility. For more details about this, read NeoDestiny post below which is a pro streamer.
It was not until the last expansion Blizzard with the new "Archon mode" have started to integrate more casual player features into SC2 core gameplay. Fan based mods/maps have made this available for many years, but now it's a core feature.

Since HW1 (I played this for over 3 years since beta, with or against all the top HW players), Relic has slowly been building a Macro core gameplay that is more casual player friendly than SC2 while keeping a relative high skill ceiling in COH2 Micro. Same thing with Total War: Arena which was designed for the casual RTS/MMO player. Next logical step will be Warhammer: Arena as the perfect MMO/RTS hybrid. Also don't forget about Halo Wars 2, an RTS which is bigger than COH2 and likely to use COH2 style squads to make Halo Wars 2 more casual player friendly. So both Relic and CA are more or less on the right track.

Legacy of the Void: Archon Mode
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/blog/16658015/legacy-of-the-void-archon-mode-11-8-2014

The most important features in the new expansion to make SC2 more casual player friendly. A similar "Archon mode" would be perfect to polish team play in COH2 for casual players and mentor new players. COH2 8vs8 can then be played on 4vs4 maps(2 player for each army/faction), 4vs4 on 2vs2 maps, 2vs2 on 1vs1 maps. Team play RTS is still in its infancy which requires new gaming modes.

Day9 TV making a Team RTS with Artillery game studio
http://blog.artillery.com/2015/10/atlas-design-update.html

Small squad-based skirmish RTS are best suited making the transition into Team RTS's as Day9 talk about. Something Relic has been doing for years now.

LOOKING FORWARD TO THE FUTURE OF RTS GAMES
http://waywardstrategist.com/2015/07/22/looking-forward-to-the-future-of-rts-games/

A popular RTS blog which I recommend to read, also from COH/DOW fan.

Finally, good post from SC pro-streamer NeoDestiny sum up why Blizzard failed the RTS genre:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/11m21k/starcraft_2_will_be_dead_before_legacy_of_the

History
For a little bit of backstory, Brood War was ENORMOUS in South Korea. ENORMOUS! It was broadcasted on national television to millions of people. Players like Boxer earned almost a half million dollars per year in salary + endorsements. Brood War was, for a lot of people, considered THE definitive E-Sport. Over 100,000 people#History_of_Starleague) were attending OSL finals.
There's really not much to argue about here. Starcraft: Brood War was enormous. Brood War was an undeniable stepping stone in order to get to where we are today. So why does it feel like growth has stagnated in Starcraft 2? Surely there's only one direction to go from the end of the Brood War to the start of Wings of Liberty, and that's up, yes?

Stagnation and South Korea
People expected Starcraft 2 to only build upon Brood War and explode in popularity over the 2010-2012 seasons. "E-SPORTS E-SPORTS E-SPORTS" people would chant on the forums. Leagues such as IPL, NASL and MLG were raising all sorts of capital to invest in these tournaments with the idea that we'd be getting hundreds of thousands of viewers.
But that growth never came.
Even Sundance went on Live on 3 to explain that he's still "not making money" and that the amount of money being spent now was more akin to "investing" than anything that was turning a real profit. We haven't seen the explosion in prize money we've been hoping for.
IPL's prize pool has remained the same from seasons 3-5. The NASL's prize pool has remained the same since its inception. MLG's prize pools have been rising, but they are the only ones to push relatively innovative monetization schemes into the market (such as the $20 PPV model, + high production gold membership content).
So we haven't really seen the explosive growth that we were kind of expecting and hoping for. There are no million dollar Starcraft 2 tournaments. And, arguably the worst news yet, South Korea didn't bite.
A quick glance shows that almost 25% of all South Koreans are playing League of Legends in PC Bangs. It's by far the most popular game, with the next game falling in under 13%. Brood War comes in 8th place, at 3.4%, and Wings of Liberty doesn't even make the top 10 list.

Heart of the Swarm Bored
There's been a lot of hype concerning Heart of the Swarm. Streamers were looking forward to the (hopefully tremendous) boost of popularity due to having access to the Beta. Players were hoping for innovative new mechanics and play, reinvigorating what was becoming a relatively stagnated and uninteresting gain. I can speak from personal experience here, and from watching others play, that most of the HotS excitement died off in about one week. There was a noticeable bump in viewers for a little while, but everything has pretty much settled down now and people are back to Wings of Liberty.
To me, personally, this is one of the biggest nails in the coffin for the Starcraft 2 scene. Brood War was a whole different game, it changed everything and it remained popular for some 10 years, arguably defining a generation of South Korean athletics.
________________________________________
Alright, now that we have the history out of the way, it's time to get into some of the more controversial topics and ideas.

How do we grow Starcraft 2?
You can't.
This sounds like a dick answer, but I'm going into full-on asshole mode for this one. The people telling you that e-mailing sponsors to thank them for supporting teams etc...etc...and that it's really helping the scene are lying to you, or are delusional. It may help just a bit, but the impact is incredibly minimal compared to the most important factors - SALES. Companies don't sponsor events so that their PR people can jerk off over e-mails all day long; they sponsor events to get a monetary return on their advertisements.
Here's a simple formula.
I invest $x into an event knowing that it gets y viewers. I expect z% conversion on those viewers and my average sale is $a.
The money you invest into a team is the sponsorships that we hear about. The viewers are the number of people that watch tournaments. The "conversion" is a % of people that will make a purchase based on the investment in advertising, and the sale amount can be used to determine the worth of advertising.
If MLG gets 150,000 viewers and their conversion is .5% (750 people) on a particular product and my product sells for $30 each, I can expect to gross ~$22,500 in sales from "sponsoring" said tournament. If I were going to advertise or invest in MLG, there are no amount of "friendly e-mails" that are going to cause me to invest more than that into it, because it's simply not worth my time or money to do so.
Yeah, I simplified this quite a bit. Brand image (people being happy/associating your brand with positive ideas) and loss leading (losing money in one area in the hopes of using the marketing to gain money in another area) do exist, and it IS a good thing to tell advertisers that you have MADE A PURCHASE of a product DUE to them sponsoring a particular event. However, I get this feeling/notion that people think that if we just go on these mass e-mailing sprees that somehow it will "grow e-sportz!!111" or cause this huge influx of money into the scene.
In the end, it all comes down to money. The best way to grow E-Sports is to acquire more viewers.

If we can't do anything, who can?
There is only one person right now who can grow Starcraft 2 in the way it needs to grow. One entity, rather.
Blizzard.

Starcraft 2 is suffering from a lot of problems. It has been from the very beginning, but Blizzard has failed to address them time and time and time again. They are continually proving themselves utterly incompetent when it comes to managing a game as a competitive sport backed by a casual community.
People, ESPECIALLY people in this community seem to fail to realize that a game's competitive success lives or dies by its casual accessibility. Yeah, in a dream world we all want this ULTRA CUT-THROAT COMPETITIVE FUCK YOUR FACE game where OH MY FUCKING GOD SKILL CEILING SO HIGH NO MULTIPLE BILDING SIELECT FUK AUTO-MICRO OH MY GOD SO COMPETITIVEEE!1111...But in the real world, no one wants to play that game except competitive people.
Competitive games are not fun.
It's not fun to play ranked matches that affect a ladder ranking. Why on earth would you play a game that gives you ladder anxiety? Why would you play a game where 11/11 or 6 pools or 4gates can kill you in under 4 minutes? Why would you play a game that punishes mistakes so cruelly?
The average, casual player wouldn't. One of the Starcraft 2's major problems is its inability to understand that its primary audience (the casual gamer) has been completely neglected.
Let's look at Brood War for a second. Check out what you see as soon as you log in. The chat + friends list takes up almost 70% of the screen! If you want to play "Melee" games (kind of the equivalent to Laddering in SC2) you have to click the "Join" button on the right, and then filter for the melee games you wanted to play. Starcraft 2 has taken a relatively minor and extremely unpopular feature of Starcraft Brood War and made it the focal point of their game. Why in the FUCK would you design a game around the most unpopular feature of its predecessor?! This shows a clear and disgusting lack of understanding on Blizzard's part and is entirely unacceptable for a company trying to design a competitive game.
I try to give people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to things like these; obviously the people in Blizzard who work in the positions they work in are there for a reason, so I assume they know more than me about these things. But this...oversight...I just don't understand. Everyone who played Brood War played for the UMS games; the 2v2v2v2 BGHs; the 3v3 zero clut!111 nr 20 and 2v2v2v2 FMP!. When most people think of BW, they remember playing hundreds of games of Evolves or Bunker Wars or that fucking Yugioh! or DBZ game.
WHY WOULD YOU MAKE THE FOCAL POINT OF SC2 A COMPETITIVE ASPECT WHEN 95% OF CASUAL GAMERS HAVE NO DESIRE TO COMPETE?!
This lack of understanding on Blizzards part is the number 1 reason why Starcraft 2 is dying, and their utter failure in understanding even the most basic concepts of designing a casual-friendly game are mind-blowing.

Here are a few suggestions just right off the top of my head, that would increase SC2's popularity among casual gamers:
• More ways to get achievements (everyone fucking loves achievements, look at: X-box live, Square-enix's online play, Steam, PSN, origin, WoW, to name a few)
• Customizable decals or skins for units (no affect on play, only visual)
• Paid/unpaid name change (THEY ALREADY ACCEPT PAYMENTS AND YOU CAN ALREADY CHANGE YOUR NAME, THE BACK-END EXISTS, WHY NOT MAKE A FRONT-END FOR THIS WHAT THE FUCK?!)
• Fix the clusterfuck that is "The Arcade" (I don't even)
Blizzard is by no means an indie company, it's not like they lack the funds or the resources to do any of these things. The fact that we had a game launch without chat channels...I don't...what...how...my God....
Players LOVE "building" towards something when they play. That's why people grind out games on League of Legends - they always earn points every game that they can put towards new champions or runes. There is no reason to play more than a few online games of Starcraft 2 before putting it down and being done with it. This is a HUGE FUCKING PROBLEM.
What's worse, Blizzard seems to be completely oblivious to all of these problems with Heart of the Swarm. Clan support? WE DON'T WANT CLAN SUPPORT, JUST LET US CHANGE OUR NAMES. Ability to play unranked games? This is nice, BUT FIX THE CLUSTERFUCK ARCADE, casual gamers don't give a fuck about 1v1s!

So what's going to happen in the next few years?
I'm sorry if I come off as pessimistic, but with the way that RioT and Valve are doing SO MANY THINGS right with their respective games, I can't see SC2 being considered a serious competitive game come 2 years from now. LoL's growth has been explosive, DotA 2 is...well, fuck, it's DotA and Valve, what else needs to be said? Both games push their marketing HARD (RioT pushes their youtube and runs all sorts of promotions to get people involed in the community, DotA has HATS MAN, HATS!).
Starcraft 2 has....people clapping during Blizzcon when players don't spawn in close positions and people screaming in agony when lag screens come up. And don't give me this bullshit about how "IT WASN'T B.NETS FAULT!", IT DOESN'T MATTER THAT IT'S NOT B.NETS FAULT, IF IT WAS ON LAN THEN INTERNET WOULDN'T BE A FUCKING FACTOR. And them having the nerve to say that emulating the b.net server locally would be impossible is a fucking JOKE.
Again, sorry if this sounds pessimistic, but if this game is going to grow and be considered a serious contender to LoL or DotA 2 over the next few years, the only person we can really rely on to step up their game is Blizzard. The community can help, a bit; purchasing products and letting advertisers know you are making purchases based on sponsorships + telling your friends about the game. But Blizzard HAS to make some kind of serious attempt to appeal to the casual player and to bolster interest and support from the casual gamer.
The ball's in your court, Blizzard.

"experienced community members have been left on the side lines"
This I would have to strongly disagree with. Numerous "experienced community members" have been consulted both before and during this ESL tournament series for their feedback and opinions. Not to mention, we hoped to work strongly/closely with the founders of CoH2.org in running the ESL tournament. Although key members were notified approximately a couple months prior to announce of ESL and were asked to work directly with Relic to make this tournament as great as possible, offering exclusive casting rights and other benefits as well, we unfortunately never received a response to this offer.

It's unfair to mention this without also saying that you did so in the very same email in which you not only declined our proposal for SNF6 without even a negotiation, but you also said that you would not financially support any coh2.org events in the future. You basically crushed our dreams that we have been working on for 6-7 years and told us that any money now and in the future for COH2 tournament organizing will go to ESL.

It's unfair to mention this without also saying that you did so in the very same email in which you not only declined our proposal for SNF6 without even a negotiation, but you also said that you would not financially support any coh2.org events in the future. You basically crushed our dreams that we have been working on for 6-7 years and told us that any money now and in the future for COH2 tournament organizing will go to ESL.

calling Relic a shitty little company on yoink's stream right after they paid you for SNF5 probably didn't help.

Amazing how it always comes back to $$$ for you Ami. Really shows where your priorities are. God forbid people do it for the love of the game...