A short interview with Diggity starting at 8:40 but filled with tons of great content from blizzcon.

A nice little teaser from MLG Orlando by StarNationMovie!

CSN just released an interview from MLG Orlando. If you ever wondered how I got my Slayer's jersey, the story is in this interview!

Patch notes and predictions

http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=279316

Balance

PROTOSS

Forge

The cost of Upgrade Shields Level 1 has been decreased to 150/150, down from 200/200.

The cost of Upgrade Shields Level 2 has been decreased to 225/225, down from 300/300.

The cost of Upgrade Shields Level 3 has been decreased to 300/300, down from 400/400.

The cost of Upgrade Ground Weapons Level 2 has been decreased to 150/150, down from 175/175.

The cost of Upgrade Ground Weapons Level 3 has been decreased to 200/200, down from 250/250.

The cost of Upgrade Ground Armor Level 2 has been decreased to 150/150, down from 175/175.

The cost of Upgrade Ground Armor Level 3 has been decreased to 200/200, down from 250/250.


TERRAN

Ghost

EMP radius has been decreased from 2 to 1.5




+ Metalopolis back with no close spawns for it or shattered temple!







Some of Thunder's predictions (old and new):

- players will learn to not reach 100 chronoboost at 10 minutes

- a protoss will learn how to use hallucination properly to metagame zerg

- zergs will learn to take cross map bases (as 3rds/ 4ths) like bw

- P and T will also learn to do the same in certain match ups

- Zerg will figure out how to harass with lings late game (targeting production)

- we will see a bisu build for sc2 (probably blink stalkers + dt)

- we will see a shield upgrade variation / follow up to the above:

will probably be blink harass off 2 base into a dt expo to 3rd or zealot archon expand (to soak up shield dmg on blink stalkers and archons)

- protoss will learn to place pylons

- zergs will use their overlords in ZvZ (bread crumbed from their natural to their opponents natural as they should  be) to actively turn on (and off) creepy highways when they want to be aggressive

- terran will learn to do more interesting add-on swaps

- terrans will use nukes to push back tank lines

- terrans will learn to use seeker missile vs tank lines much like they occasionally use banshees/sky terran

- zergs will start using burrow until terran is forced to make a raven (like bw with science vessels)

- zergs will use nydus (maybe even with hyrdas!) for mobility and not just for in-your-base all ins

- there will be more baneling drops and occasionally raven harass late game

a MUST WATCH game: RGN artist (T) vs (P) master

One of the most impressive games I have ever seen. This was game 5 (the $ match) for RGN Artist, one of the top Terrans in North America. He recently laddered his two NA accounts to rank 1 and 2 GM and is practicing with the likes of RGN Kiwikaki and Perfect, meaning his TvP is pretty beastly. However, Master, despite playing with latency from Korea plays an absolutely BEAUTIFUL game here on Terminus SE (new revised version for GSL Oct). Master was formerly on Fou but currently team-less. Check out this crazy back and forth game for some true starcraft 2 enjoyment.

FULL VOD (no youtube parts): http://www.twitch.tv/thundertoss/b/296402605

Some should pick this kid up ASAP. He's got a great attitude and after you watch you'll see it's simply icing on the cake. A beautiful, delicious, twelve layer, macro monster, micro master, multitasking wizard, decision making machine, map controlling, properly expanding, chocolate cake...
Not to take anything away from Artist's performance either, I  was just blown away by watching protoss played so well. Artist did an AMAZING job for a brilliant comeback and had me on  the edge of my seat. I love having such high caliber players wanting to play in my event and it is near indescribably how rewarding watching this game was for me.

Replay link (not vod): Master-vs-RGNArtist(PvT)terminusSE.SC2Replay
     study up all you gosu's!

Community Love

So this post is just a big thank you and a few paragraphs of brag about how awesome our ESPORTS community is (the starcraft community in particular).

Story #1:

So as many of you are aware, Destiny and Sheth did a 24-hour stream/charity drive yesterday. Thousands and thousands of you tuned in to help generate ad revenue (being matched by justintv/twitchtv!), participate, donate, and have a good time.

From Destiny's paypal alone, the SC community raised over $20,000!

 With Sheth's paypal donations and the ad revenue being matched by twitch.tv the total is close to $30,000!

 
It's so incredibly amazing to be a part of such a generous and charitable community and I hope you all are proud of yourselves (because I'm certainly proud of you).

Check out www.doctorswithoutborders.org/ so see some of the causes this helps support.

And for community story #2:

It had been brought up before,  but with some invigoration and organization from every one's favorite korean/english and english/english translator Orange Milkis, it looks like reddit (aka r/starcraft) will be banding together to bring MKP to the next MLG event in Orlando. According to the post over on milkis's tumblr MKP will be allowed to represent r/starcraft with a reddit patch while competing. http://whitecosmos.tumblr.com/post/10204196871/update-on-mkp-to-mlg   

Make sure you all check his blog and of course http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft
to stay up to date on the situation and help bring him to the states!
GG GL HR!

+

=

Lastly, Story #3

In less global news, a few dedicated fans have come forward and approached Destiny, Minigun, and myself in hopes of putting on a 2v2 show match series centered around team GaB! Thanks to their initial donation, we are happy to announce season 1 of the GaB show matches. The first 5 events are covered and will be brought to you every other Sunday. After that we will gauge if the demand (and the prize $$) is there for a season 2. 

You can find the TL event thread here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=265362#1

Week 1: Sunday Sept. 18 @ 5pm EST (2pm pst)

 VS 

Axslav + Strifecro    X     Destiny + Minigun

Main stream with commentary from Thundertoss + Ascend will be available at:

http://www.twitch.tv/ascendtv

We are also trying to figure out the best way to bring you team audio from GaB and the opposing team each week. Follow us on twitter for updates and to hear when we are going live: @ascendsc2 + @thundertoss

A Starcraft2 Summer

So unfortunately I slacked off on my duties as esports blogger but I'm back at it! It's been a while so this post will also include some small recaps of NASL season 1 finals, MLG Anahiem, and the recent MLG Raliegh. 

There will only be a few pictures here but you can check the entire album(s) out on my facebook (facebook.com/thundertoss). 

So let's start with the most recent! This past weekend I headed over to Raliegh, North Carolina to battle a hurricane and watch some of the best Starcraft 2 players the world has to see duke it out. While Irene didn't show up with her A game (which was fine with me), MLG did not disappoint. Although not quite as intense an experience as Anahiem, the game play was phenomenal. Considering the location and the conditions I was again impressed by the amazing number of fans who showed up, and as a result, the enormous lack of chairs. If you didn't happen to trek out to NC (or even if you did) make sure you check out the full set of VOD's from the event over at MLG's website: http://www.majorleaguegaming.com/news/watch-all-vod-from-mlg-raleigh/

There are so many great games that don't get enough recognition simply because it would be impossible to fit them all into the time period with only the 2 streams. Ascend and I might try to go and cast some of the better games from the open bracket and pool play if we get the chance but since they are in VOD format we'll have to find a good way to do that first. 

I know Sundance was responding to some r/starcraft posts about maybe adding a 3rd stream or something to fix the down time (crowd watching) and to give some airtime to open bracket players so maybe we'll get lucky and he'll ask Ascend and I to help out with that (one can only hope ^_^). 

In any case, we saw once again the Korean dominance at Raliegh with the top 6 spots all going to Koreans, similar to the results we saw in Anahiem. The recent addition to Slayers, Coca (formerly of zenex) managed to make it all the way to the finals, playing a great series vs StarTale Bomber. The only non korean to make it from the open bracket was Complexity's Trimaster who beat a myriad of notable players although his performance may have slightly been overshadowed by his ability to make Idra rage hard enough to lose his F4 key as I'm sure most of you saw on reddit. 

Here's the list of the top 32 from Raliegh (thanks to TL wiki)

1.   Bomber
2.   CoCa
3.   DongRaeGu
4.   NaDa
5.   PuMa
6.   HerO
7.   HuK
8.   SjoW
9.   Noblesse
10.   KiWiKaKi
11.   SeleCT
12.   NaNiwa
13.   Rain
14.   DeMusliM
15.   SLush
16.   TriMaster
17.   TricKsteR
18.   Machine
19.   Sheth
20.   IdrA
21.   HayprO
22.   iNcontroL
23.   Ret
24.   mOoNan
25.   TLO
26.   Orly
27.   Drewbie
28.   Tyler
29.   HwangSin
30.   KawaiiRice
31.   ostojiy
32.   PainUser

Mirroring Greatness (Slayers boxer and Slayers MMA) 

From MLG Anahiem

The start of MLG Raliegh 2011

Another packed house for the SC2 area

Fans enjoying the games on main stage

A shot from NASL in SoCal

As I mentioned earlier, I missed posting after both NASL and MLG Anahiem but to put it simply, both events blew me away. Anahiem was probably my favorite event to date. The interactions with players, fans, and esports personalities was great. The after parties were awesome (especially since I picked the venue ; p ) and everyone had a great time. The most memorable experience was getting to meet Slayers Boxer and the rest of the Slayers team and getting my jersey signed. It was a surreal moment. 

I'm going to end this post here but I'll be sure to be on top of my reporting for the next event so that I can do a proper in-depth write up. Hopefully I'll see some of you readers at the next few MLG's this year!