GGvision has given community a great interview with the one and only Dario “LiquidTLO” Wünsch. TLO talks about going back to playing random, and playing Bloodline Champion. He also talks about getting Rank 1 in the Euro Servers.

Source: GGvision

With StarCraft II starting to take off pretty seriously now in South Korea, the players have decided it is time to have a Players’s Association. 

Sung Je “IntoThe Rainbow” Kim, Ki Soo “Tester” Seo, Jung Hwan “Cezanne” Kim, and Gyung Lak “Junwi” Park were all nominated for the voting process. Gyung Lak “Junwi” Park received 26 out of the 84 votes, making him the first President of the Player’s Association.

Thank you to all the players who voted for me, I will try my best to become a president that every single player will respect and enjoy.- Gyung Lak “Junwi” Park

Junwi is expected to be the president until the end of 2012. His first action as president will be to have his clan, Incredible Miracle(IM), run a blood drive for Jung Ho “Violet” Woo, who was diagnosed with Acute Leukemia.

Source: ESFI

Dreamhack has announced that their prize purse for the 2011 in the amount of $235,000 (1.5 million SEK), 2.5 times greater than last years purse. The prize purse will be distributed over multiple events, including Dreamhack Summer and Dreamhack Winter.

Below is the official release from the Dreamhack organization:

DreamHack Winter 2010 was a true milestone as an event, attracting 17 768 visitors and renewing the world record as the Largest Computer Festival in the World with 13 292 unique computers in the network. DreamHack Winter also saw huge success on a global scale. Breaking records for international competitors, attendees and viewers made it the largest International event to date for DreamHack.

The DreamHack on Tour eSport finals culminated at the eSports arena ‘DreamArena Extreme’ with thousands of gamers live in the audience. Tens of thousands of gamers’ worldwide participated in 17 international qualifiers. 1, 4 million viewers from 92 countries followed the action from home, with SVT Play as the official broadcaster in Swedish. DreamHack crowned six new DreamHack-champions who competed for the 650 000 SEK Prize Purse.

2011 will be yet another historic year for DreamHack and its community by breaking the one million mark in prize money for eSports alone. Today DreamHack and partners are proud to present the sum of SEK 1, 5 million in DreamHack’s Prize Purse for 2011. The Prize Purse will be distributed over multiple events and the official tournament games will be presented shortly.

-The Prize Purse and tournaments will reinforces yet again DreamHack’s position as one of the leading eSports events worldwide. This year we will intensify our work around eSports, hold more qualifiers and focus on an even greater World Finals at DreamHack Winter in November, says Robert Ohlén, CEO of DreamHack.

First Official games to be announced live at Inferno Online, Stockholm, February 4th
Friday February 4th, DreamHack will participate in the launch party of the first Swedish eSports game ‘Bloodline Champions’ BLC. The presentation, party and exhibition tournament, with eSports stars such as TLO, SjoW and GeT_RiGhT, will be broadcasted online by LevelupTV. At 18.30 CET Stunlock Studios will present their Bloodline Champions eSports plans for 2011, and DreamHack will announce the first part of its 2011 eSports programme.

Make sure you don’t miss this, presentation and Livestream starts 18:00 CET.

Dreamhack

More information about Dreamhack and its 2011 events can be found by clicking here.

Major League Gaming, via their website, has announced the first details for their MLG 2011 Pro Circuit. The circuit will feature six tournament stops with three gaming titles, however there will be no World of Warcraft for this season. The 8th Pro Circuit season will feature over $1 million in cash and prizes, one of the largest overall pots in gaming history.

MLG has also announced that they will be adding Call of Duty: Black Ops to the game list. MLG had the following to say about the addition:

We’re still hard at work on the final details regarding Call of Duty®: Black Ops in 2011, and we’ll soon be ready to announce more information, including specifics about the available prizes.

Today, we proudly bring you the location and dates of the first two Live Competitions. We kick off the season in Dallas, TX on the weekend of April 1-3. From there, the Pro Circuit will head to Columbus, OH on June 3-5. Columbus and Dallas have proven to be popular mainstays on the Pro Circuit, and we’re thrilled to return in 2011.

Online registration for all MLG Dallas titles will open on Tuesday, March 1 at 7pm ET. The Halo: Reach tournament will feature 208 teams, while the StarCraft 2 tournament will see 272 players square off. Come compete alongside the best players the world has to offer in some of the most massive brackets in gaming history. More details on registration, including pass prices and the bracket size for Call of Duty®: Black Ops will be announced soon.

Major League Gaming

For the official prize list and more details about the 2011 season, click here.

Artosis has been doing some video interviews with a lot of the Code A qualifers. Here is one of the interviews with FXOmOOnGlaDe explaining what he did to get to South Korea, and also talking about what it feels like to live there.

Other interviews incluce Oak , FXOBoSS, Torch, Spades, VTLanier, and cArn.

To see the rest of the interviews visit Artosis’s Youtube channel.

For our next StarCraft 2 interview we’re actually going to do a cross-over piece.  Cross-over in that the subject is a Counter-Strike legend, having played for both compLexity and Team 3D.  Ronald “Rambo” Kim is no stranger to the coL Community so we thought you’d be interested in learning what he’s been up to lately.

Thanks very much for joining us Ron!  It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from you.  What has been keeping you busy over the past year?

Hi there. Well, I’m still pursuing my dream of playing golf professionally one day, so when the sun is out, you can probably find me at the golf range working on my game. During the evening, I’ll be hanging out with my buddies, or pursuing my new hobby of producing music.

Recently you were seen playing for Team WinOut after taking a break from Counter-Strike 1.6.  What was that experience like?  Was it nice to be back in the CS scene?

After that long break, I had an itch to play competitive counter-strike again. So, when I was approached by those players to play again, I said sure why not. It was a fun experience because the team had some great personalities and a good sense of humor.

In December of last year you told ESEANews that you were no longer interested in investing long hours into the game.  Why is that?  Are you bored with the game itself or did the long hours catch up with you after all these years? 

In order to contend internationally, It takes around 4-6 hours, 5-6 days a week of practice with the team, not to mention the side practice you have to put in to improve your aim. I’m not going to play the game unless I know I can contend for world championships. I stopped having fun practicing, and that’s when I knew I didn’t want to do it anymore.

Recently you were seen playing StarCraft 2 at MLG Dallas before being forced to drop out due to your status as a staffer.  What drew you to the game?  What previous RTS experience do you have?

I’ve always been an avid RTS player. My first PC game was command and conquer. I later transitioned into starcraft, age of empires, and then into WC3 Frozen Throne, becoming a top 10 solo player at one point.

After being an FPS player for so long, was it difficult to transition to SC2?  What similarities do the games have?  What do you like more about SC2 and what do you miss about 1.6 when comparing the two games?

It was inevitable that I would become a Starcraft 2 player, but I guess that just goes with any game Blizzard produces. The hardest part of transitioning into Starcraft 2 was being able to control my macro. WC3 was more of a micro based game, so in order to play some good starcraft, I had to work hard on my macro and build orders. I miss traveling and competing for world championships with my 1.6 teams. It’s always a good feeling to know after winning a tournament, that you are probably the best player/team in the world, until the next tournament. I enjoy the strategy and solo aspect of starcraft2. Win or lose, either you outplayed your opponent or the opponent outplayed you.

Do you plan on making a serious run at SC2 or are you just playing it for fun?  For a professional gamer, is there any difference in the training regiment between the games?

I’m playing starcraft 2 for fun. I don’t have any aspirations to play it professionally, but I’m always watching replays and tournaments as a fan.

What do you think the future holds for 1.6?  Are we finally witnessing the final days of the game or do you think it still has a few years left in it?  Do you think CS:Promod will ever be the savior fans are hoping for or is the Counter-Strike series doomed to fade away?

I don’t really know what the future holds for 1.6. But, I do hope counter-strike in some version or form will be around. It’s just too good of a team FPS game to not have in tournament play.

How long do you invision yourself being involved in eSports?  Do you have plans to move away from the scene towards other careers or is it your goal to build a future inside professional gaming?

I can see myself playing video games until my hands stop working. Hopefully before then, I will be able to use my gaming experience and knowledge to establish a career in competitive esports, developing games, or anything video games!

Thanks very much for taking the time to sit down with us!  Any shoutouts or final comments?

Thanks for the interview! GL HF!

Welcome to the second edition of THE MIND OF THE GAMER. 

MotG is a series hosted by Daniel “Sheekthief” Coreano of Ragequit.tv.  The premise of the series is to watch replays and demos of pro players while they describe why they did what they did and what they were thinking at the time.  Learn new thought trains and ways of approaching your game from the best out there!  Get into the Mind of the Gamer.

For our second episode Sheekthief sits down with our very own Ryan ‘SUGGY’ Hryczynski of compLexity’s StarCraft 2 squad.  Ryan discusses some Protoss game play and explains the different things he was thinking during the match. 

Enjoy!

The Blizzard Starcraft II top 200 has been released for this quarter on the battle.net website. Included in the top 10 of the population are both rsvp and CrunCher from CompLexity. Currently ranked first is SeleCT.

One question is often asked by the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty community regarding our new leagues and ladder system: “Who are the best players on the ladder?” We have plans to one day have the best players, based on their current rankings, compete against each other. In the meantime, we can pull some internal numbers, do a little math, and come up with a list of the best players in each region. Here are the top 200 players in North America. We’ll update this list approximately every week until it’s time to have them compete.

Battle.net Top 200

The top 10 is:

• 1. SeleCT
• 2. Kowi
• 3. NrGostojiy
• 4. PiQLiQ
• 5. coL.CrunCher
• 6. Katari
• 7. FXOmOoNan
• 8. ROOTDdoRo
• 9. ppgBubbles
• 10. coLrsvp

The full list of 200 can be found by clicking here.

The long wait is finally over as CSPromod beta 1.05 has been released! The update to the successful counter-strike source mod has been in the making for exactly one years since the previous version’s release. The reason it took so long is because the development team decided to port the whole mod over to the Orange Box engine so it would not become obsolete. Aside from the entire code rework, there have also been model creations and a major rework for model animations. For an entire changelog from version 1.04, check out the changelog

The CSP team posted only the following on their site for the release:

You know what to do.

To download the mod, click here (keep in mind you need a legitmate copy of Counter-Strike: Source installed on your computer.)

AskJoshy has released an interview with The V Week 2 champion FXO.Sheth who beat out LiquidTyler 4-3 for the coveted weekly championship.

If you missed any of these exciting and heart stopping games the VODs are right here.