After the release of the new WGTour Titans League which replaces the traditional Clan League, Karsten ‚pYRo‘ Haendly sat down with the head admin of the new league, Jacek ‚LastNight‘ Trybuła, and talked about the decisions which were made and future the league might have.
readmore.de: You were running the WGTour Clan League for 21 seasons. Why did you decide to stop the standard WGT-CL now and run the new WGTour Titans League?
Jacek ‚LastNight‘ Trybuła: Some people might think we – WGT – are dead, well, that’s not true. The new project has good prices and many top teams that haven’t played in the regular CL have now a chance to prove themselves in this new league. The Titans League is in fact a normal Clan League as we know it – we just gonna stay with one Division. I already said in my main news that the current Division 1 will become the Titans. We also plan to do a weekly video cast and this will most likely done by Xeris.
readmore.de: For what reason do you maintain the old WGTour Clan Leauge system for the clan wars?
LastNight: We have a good reason to use the old CL system. Many teams which have played the WGT CL are used to it and it is very popular and quite easy to use. It is also pretty easy to set and launch it so we don’t have to change anything or hire someone to create something new. The playoffs and finals will be done manually – new ladder draws will be created.
readmore.de: With this new league you have also set up many stricter rules, e.g. the teams aren’t allowed to postpone any of their games. Do you think this will turn out in a heavy setback or will the teams accept this rule?
LastNight: If they decide to take part in this league they have to accept it. This was my idea and I think this idea is really good. When two teams postpone a match it sometimes results in flame wars, where people keep arguing about the playday or time to get this done and then, when a CL admin makes a final decision, one team will always be unhappy. This rule should fix the problem.
The prizes are also really good and we expect the teams to not only show their skills but also show some professional management to the community. Postponing is not allowed but teams can get their matches done earlier, but the opponent has to agree and if he doesn’t, the team will have to either play without that player, replace him or simply forfeit this match. The rules are strict but they are usefull. I know some teams are against this rule or might not like it, but this is a professional league and we want to see the teams taking the league and its matches pretty seriously.
readmore.de: The Titans League will cover ten teams, eight of them you have already invited directly. Why did you choose these teams?
LastNight: I know some people are angry at me or WGT for choosing these teams and not inviting others. But I think these teams are the best but yes I might be wrong. We have decided to stay with ESC, ToT, RoX, LRM, ZZZ, eX, NaW as the current Division 1 teams but added SL to this list as SL has been doing really good in BWCL and in the regular WGT CL. As for the rest, they need to play the qualification rounds. Teams such as mTw or EG are really good and strong but have never played the standard WGT CL so that was the main reason to not put them in the main list. I think only time will show the decision I made was good or bad. I never said these teams are better than team XXX – this a list based on the results these teams had in leagues such as iCCup, BWCL or BWML and other various events.
readmore.de: When will you decide whether you will launch another season of the Titans League or get back the traditional WGTour Clan League?
LastNight: That’s a hard and tricky question! We will probably make this decision after the Titans League will be over or during the final weeks. I know many people will probably miss the regular Clan League but we belive WGT needed something big and this project is a good solution. It takes a lot of time to run a standard CL as there are many divisions, sometimes new teams join the league without reading the rules and later get kicked out and that’s really bad. The Titans League uses only one division so its much easier to run and control.
readmore.de: Will your decision about a new season of the Titans League depend on the sponsors support?
LastNight: As I’ve said before the Titans League is sponsored by Steelseries and BallerPoker so its a new big project and the anwser is yes. We would like to run as many seasons as possible, maybe even add some changes later on but everything will depend on their support. The Titans League is a bit different from the standard Clan League – its a big event for WGTour and for the teams especially with such a big prize pool. The standard CL offered arround $200-350 and the Titans League offers something about $1,400.
readmore.de: Again there is a new tournament with a worth prize pool. Although the world is stuck in a global financial crises your sponsors invest in such an old game. What do you think why they support StarCraft that much?
LastNight: We are happy SteelSeries and BallerPoker decided to help us out and support us – we are really thankfull for that, we can’t thank them enough! I don’t really know much about this since I was not the one organising the prizes, it was done by Xeris and Ilvy. StarCraft might be an old game but it still kicks ass and is a lot better than many new games and the fact it has so many fans and is so popular arround the world is probably a good reason to support it.
readmore.de: Do you think that the StarCraft 2 boom has a huge impact on the popularity of the current StarCraft leagues at all?
LastNight: I think so and I belive that SC2 will continue what StarCraft has started! StarCraft was and still is by far the best RTS game ever made and Blizzard wants SC2 to be as good as the current StarCraft we know or make SC2 even better! And since SC2 is so famous and a lot of people and community websites talk about it, it probably attracts many companies and sponsors. The leagues are being created, because we really lack them, teams need a place to prove themselves and show what they’re made of and a league is the perfect battlefield to get this done.
readmore.de: The beta for StarCraft 2 starts this summer. Will you also run a league for StarCraft 2 when the game came out for everyone?
LastNight: This might happen but I can’t really say anything right now. We have to wait and see how good this game really is and how many people it will attract. To run a new league you need to be sure that many teams will play it and it will take some time before new teams gets formed in SC2 but we think it’s possible and WGT might run another CL for SC2. We just have to wait and see whats gonna happen.
readmore.de: Thank you for the interview.