With the help of IGN and Justin.TV, the well-renown Starcraft II figure, HDstarcraft, has arranged a spiffy $1750 invitational tournament.  The 16-player single elimination tournament will commence next week and will conclude at the end of March.

Invited Players (All Confirmed)

coL.CrunCher
IdrA
PainUser
DuckLoadRa
TheLittleOne
Dimaga
Sen
QXC
Select
Zelniq
Axslav
Incontrol
Catz
Socke
Nony
Strelok

Tournament Bracket

Click the image to go to the direct link of the tournament bracket

Prize Pool

Map Pool

GSL Crossfire
GSL Terminus RE
GSL Crevasse
GSL Tal’Darim Altar
Shattered Temple
iCCup Testbug
Shakuras Plateau

HD World Tournament Intro

Each player is permitted to veto one map and loser picks the next map.  Each round will be a best of 3 until the semifinals and finals.  The semifinals will be a best of 5, whereas the finals will be a best of 7. To check out the tournament games and results, you can find them at his Youtube channel, HDstarcraft.

The e-Stars Seoul organization has announced that there annual Counter-Strike 1.6 tournament will feature a $67,000 USD prize pot. The event this year will feature only CS 1.6, as opposed to including several Blizzard-created games in the past. This change is due to licensing issues between Blizzard and South Korean tournament organizers.

e-Stars Seoul 2011 will be played from August 19th to the 21st at the COEX D Hall in Seoul. The tournament will feature 8 Counter-Strike 1.6 teams, the names of which have not yet been released. The selection process for these teams is currently unknown at this time.

UPDATE:

If this wasn’t concrete before, I think IGN just made it a done deal. It was recently discovered that sixteen professional StarCraft II players have profiles on IGN’s people.ign.com page. The list includes:

• http://people.ign.com/ipl.idra
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.incontrol
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.sheth
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.axslav
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.agh
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.catz
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.vibe
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.select
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.fenix
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.spades
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.drewbie
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.ttone
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.stalife
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.minigun
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.kiwikaki
• http://people.ign.com/ipl.machine

Original Post:

Today word got out that gaming industry giant IGN Entertainment will be getting into the eSports scene, specifically with StarCraft II. According to an IGN employee and “a credible source who wishes to remain anonymous at this time,” IGN will be hosting a Proleague with a prize pool between $150,000 and $200,000. This news seems to be confirmed by this website, which shows a count down April 5th. To make the case even stronger, a cashed version of the Proleague site reveals a list of players and matches.

The matches listed are:

sixjaxViBE vs ROOTKiWiKaKi
FXOSheth vs ROOTMinigun
VTSpades vs coLstalife
EGIdrA vs LGAgh

There were some strong hints that IGN was planning something big with SCII. A few days ago, Edward from Root Gaming, now an employee of IGN in the e-sports division, posted some pictures showing off “a high end production facility, an employee holding a copy of StarCraft 2 and a number of the most well known players in the North American StarCraft scene,” including iNcontroL, SeleCT, Axslav, Sheth, CatZ, Spades, Painuser, TT1, Evoli and Edward from Root Gaming.

While IGN has yet to come right out and officially confirm any of this, it’s hard to dismiss all the evidence. It is interesting to note that iNcontroL was invited to the IGN office, considering that he is basically the face of the North American Star League, a direct competitor to IGN’s Proleague.

Source: SK Gaming

Major League Gaming has announced, via their website, the 16 players that will make up the MLG Dallas SC2 pools. These 16 players are the best from the 2010 season.

Pool A
(1) Root.KiWiKaKi(P)
(8) EG.IdrA(Z)
(9) Sockeh(P)
(16) FnaticMSI-Gretorp(T)

Pool B
(2) dignitas.SeleCT(T)
(7) Root.qxc(T)
(10) LiquidRet(Z)
(15) dignitas.SjoW(T)

Pool C
(3) LG.PainUser(T)
(6) Root.SLush450(Z)
(11) LiquidTLO(R)
(14) EGiNcontroL(P)

Pool D
(4) ROOT-drewbie(T)
(5) LiquidTyler(P)
(12) Agh_Antec(P)
(13) EG.Machine(Z)

MLG has also released the schedule for the Friday pool play. Matches in bold will be played on the main stage and casted by by Day[9], DJ Wheat, and JP McDaniel.

5:30 PM – 6:30 PM: Pools A & D Round 1
A- IdrA(Z) vs. Sockeh(P)
A- Kiwikaki(P) vs. Gretorp(T)
D- drewbie(T) vs. Tyler(P)
D- agh(P) vs. Machine(Z)

6:30 PM – 7:30 PM: Pools B & C Round 1
B- SeleCT(T) vs. Sjow(T)
B- qxc(T) vs. Ret(Z)
C- PainUser(T) vs. TLO(R)
C- Slush(Z) vs. iNcontrol(P)

7:30 PM – 8:30 PM: Pools A & D Round 2
A- IdrA(Z) vs. Kiwikaki(P)
A- Gretorp(T) vs. Sockeh(P)
D- drewbie(T) vs. agh(P)
D- Tyler(P) vs. Machine(Z)

8:30 PM – 9:30 PM: Pools B & C Round 2
B- SeleCT(T) vs. Ret(Z)
B- qxc(T) vs. Sjow(T)
C- PainUser(T) vs. iNcontrol(P)
C- Slush(Z) vs. TLO(R)

9:30 PM – 10:30 PM: Pools A & D Round 3
A- IdrA(Z) vs. Gretorp(T)
A- Kiwikaki(P) vs. Sockeh(P)
D- drewbie(T) vs. Machine(Z)
D- agh(P) vs. Tyler(P)

10:30 PM – 11:30 PM: Pools B & C Round 3
B- SeleCT(T) vs. qxc(T)
B- Sjow(T) vs. Ret(Z)
C- Slush(Z) vs. PainUser(T)
C- iNcontrol(P) vs. TLO(R)

MLG Dallas will be held from April 1st to the 3rd at the Dallas Convention Center.

As we have already reported earlier, Blizzard just released patch 1.3.0 for StarCraft II today. Aside from bringing some balance tweaks, bug fixes and general updates to Battle.net, patch 1.3.0 also locks the leagues and brings about the end to Season 1. With the end of Season 1, Blizzard is integrating a new “season-based reward system known as milestones.”

Now, you might be asking yourself “What are milestones?” Milestones are seasonal rewards that will be provided to ladder players in all of our StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty leagues. Each league will have four notable milestones. Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond and Master leagues will have milestones for the top 100, top 50, top 25, and top 8 players in each league division. For Grandmaster, milestones will be awarded to the top 200, top 100, top 50, and top 16 players. These milestones will each have their own unique icon representing the league in which the milestone was earned and the actual milestone achievement.”

The way milestones are awarded is relatively simple. As mentioned above, all leagues and divisions are now locked. You will have one week to play out whatever remains in your bonus pool. Once this one-week “bonus pool” period ends, all leagues and ladders will be finalized. With everyone locked into a specific league and rank, Blizzard will then award milestones based on the requirements listed above. According to Blizzard, this will be the standard practice for when future seasons of SCII end.

To get the offical word on milestones, click here.

Blizzard has announced via Battle.net that patch 1.3 for Starcraft II would be hitting the servers early this morning. The patch contains some changes to the UI in the interest of cleanliness as well as some requested features such as custom game bookmarking and sorting.

The post on Battle.net can be found below:

We’ve heard a lot of feedback since the launch of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty about the Join Custom Game interface navigation. We’ve definitely shared your concern about the current functionality and have integrated several substantial improvements.

Firstly, to clean up the interface, we’ve moved the Details panel into tooltips for describing each Custom Game. Just mouse over the games you want to know more about and you’ll find all the details you need. In addition, you can now bookmark your favorite Custom Games. This will allow you to find your favorite games easily, and the details tooltip will display the number of times a game has been bookmarked — useful information, no?

Games are now organized into several pages to make finding your desired game type more intuitive and user-friendly.

• You’ll find a Most Popular section which includes all game types. The most played games will be placed at the top for you.
• The Featured section will be a collection of new games we think are fun. Our latest picks will be shown here.
• If you want to browse through Custom Games based on a specific category you find the most entertaining, select the By Category criteria.
• If you fancy searching for potentially fun game types that haven’t yet attained Most Popular status, check out the Up & Coming section. The results you’ll find here consist of games your peers are starting to recommend frequently.
• You can also have a go at recommending Custom Games to others by trying Fun or Not. Players who choose this option will automatically be matched together for a specific Custom Game which meets some minimum requirements. Once finished, you’ll be asked whether or not you want to recommend the game you just played. Your recommendations using the Fun or Not system will directly influence the Up & Coming section. This is a great way to play and help promote fun custom maps that may have otherwise flown under the radar.
• At any time while using these various categories for finding Custom Games, you can bookmark your favorite games to easily find and play them again later. Just select the Bookmark page to find all of the games you’ve stored.
• Finally, if you know the title of the specific Custom Game you’re looking for, a search option has been added to the Join Custom Game interface.

We’re excited to introduce these improvements to help you find what you want, when you want, and with greater ease. Your feedback about the Join Custom Game interface updates is greatly appreciated, as we’re always looking for ways we can further improve Battle.net functionality, and the ability to navigate through all of the fantastic Custom Games being regularly added into circulation.

Battle.net

To read the full post and user comments regarding the patch, click here.

Weekend Update: March 18th-20th

by Alex “Yeunanimous” Yue

One of the tell tale signs that eSports is growing around the world is the flood of events happening each and every weekend. In an attempt to inform our visitors of all these events, we at CompLexity Gaming have decided to start a new series called called the Weekend Update. In the Weekend Update you can find a quick run down of events from the weekend, plus any news and results from them. Obviously, if you’re not the biggest fan of spoilers, you may want to avoid this.

GSL March Finals

First off there was the GSL March finals. Despite all the hype leading up to this match, the results were one sided. ST_JulyZerg may be a StarCraft: Brood War legend, but at the finals, oGsMC made him look like a noob. The final score was 4-1, with July taking one game by countering MC’s Forge fast expand by dropping Hydralisks and Roaches into his main. One thing that is worth noting about these matches is that MC never once made a Colossus, a staple in the Protoss vs. Zerg match up.

TSL3

Another big SC2 event that happened this weekend was the start of the Team Liquid Star League. Spanning two days and featuring sixteen of the worlds greatest players, the TSL3 saw some of the most exciting games of SC2 yet. In the interest of time, I will not recap each game, however you can see the results in the bracket below. For the VODs and in-depth discussion from day one, click here. For the VODs and discussion of day two, click here. Also, be sure to tune into the next matches in the round of 32, one of which features our very own CrunCher taking on EG’s Idra. Those matches will be airing on March 26th and 27th at 2:00PM EST.

Justin.tv Invitational #2

This weekend also saw the conclusion to the Justin.tv Invitational #2. The final match was between two Protoss players, Attero and Sockeh. Sockeh initially won 3-2, sending Attero to the losers bracket. From there Attero beat rox.kis.brat_ok 3-1, allowing him another shot at Sockeh. Unfortunately for Attero, Sockeh was able to come out ahead and win with a decisive score of 3-0.

GOMtv Global SC2 Team League

Lastly, the second outing of GOMtv’s Global StarCraft II Team League began on Sunday night. Gamers were treated to two matches; Team IM vs. ZenNEX and FOU vs. Team SCV Life. Starting out with IM vs. ZeNEX, IM’s Zerg superstar Losira (winner of this past GSL Code A tournament) was able to pull out an “all kill.” What was interesting was that ZeNEX didn’t send out any of thier GSL players (Kyrix and Byun).

Moving on to FOU vs. Team SCV Life, the audience was treated to highly competitive match, with Team SCV Life winning the match by the score of 4-2. Unlike the IM vs. ZeNEX games, both FOU and Team SCV Life sent out their heavy hitters. Gamers got to see Leenock sC and The Best from team FOU as well as Fruitdealer and Alive from team SCV Life. For a complete breakdown of both matches, click here.

Those were the major events of this past weekend. Let us know what you think of this new Weekend Update article series by leaving a comment below. If you know of an event that is happening that may not be on our radar, feel free to drop up a comment with a link to the event. If there’s enough interest, chances are it will make it into next week’s edition of the Weekend Update.

The waiting is almost over for the tip-top players in Starcraft II. Blizzard has released information regarding the prestigious upcoming league, the Grandmaster League.  The Grandmaster League will only consist of the top 200 players for each region and will launch two weeks prior to the beginning of the second season of the Starcraft II league.  Below is more information regarding the league like the requirements to enter and stay in the Grandmaster League.

The Grandmaster League commences two weeks after the start of the second StarCraft II League season and is limited to the top 200 eligible players per region — it is truly the most prestigious Battle.net league for StarCraft II players and will determine who belongs at the top of the ladder. Qualification for this league takes place during the first two weeks of play following the start of a new season, after which potential Grandmaster League candidates must play one more match in order to receive their promotion. Keep in mind that play isn’t separated by league, so Diamond or Master League players will still have the same chance as before to face off against the Grandmasters.

Players must remain active to avoid being removed from the Grandmaster League.  Grandmaster players who let their bonus pool pile up will automatically be removed from the league, making room for more active combatants.

FAQ

Q. How do I enter the Grandmaster League?
A. To enter the Grandmaster League:

    *     There needs to be an open slot within the ladder.
    *     You need to be in the top 200 players according to a rolling average of your skill rating.
    *     You must be eligible.

Q. What does eligible mean?
A. To be eligible, your unused bonus pool must be less than 180.

Q. Can I be removed from the top 200?
A. Yes. If your unused bonus pool exceeds 270, you will be removed from the Grandmaster League.

Q. Is there a way to see who is in the Grandmaster League?
A. Yes. Click on the in-game ladder icon, and then click “Grandmaster” to see the current season rankings.

Q. How active do I need to be to stay in the Grandmaster League?
A. Your unused bonus pool must remain under 270. This means you can’t get three weeks behind. This is equivalent to roughly 45 games.

Battle.net

Earlier today co-founder of ESEA, Craig “Torbull” Levine, posted the prize breakdown for ESEA Season 8. This list included the prizes for each game and division. The total amount of payout continues to grow every season, with this season reaching a groundbreaking $62,050 total in prizes. StarCraft 2 will be making its ESEA debut this season with a total prize pot of $5,000. Here are the prizes for the invite divisions, and the new StarCraft 2 division:

Counter-Strike 1.6

Invite Division – $15,000

1st place – $7,000
2nd place – $2,300
3rd place – $1,800
4th place – $1,200
5th place – $1,000
6th place – $1,000

Team Fortress 2

Invite Division – $5,250

1st place – $2,520
2nd place – $1,100
3rd place – $870
4th place – $750

StarCraft 2

Open Division – $5,000

1st place – $2,800
2nd place – $1,200
3rd place – $600
4th place – $200
5th place – $100
6th place – $100

For the entire prize breakdown, click here.