Hey Guys, Gals, Boys, and Girls,

This will be the first of hopefully many blog posts to come, please don't flame me/troll me too hard, but if you have any constructive criticism or anything you think I missed or needs to be corrected please post below. My blogs will mainly be discussing Starcraft II, as well as eSports in general but also some miscellaneous thoughts on various other games and events.

The North American Star League Season 2 Finals just came to an end, and I want to discuss some of the good and the bad of the tournament from my perspective. Let's go ahead and talk about the bad news first. One of the biggest and most noticeable flaws is that this season none of the Korean based teams/players decided to attend this tournament. One of the biggest draws in my book is having the best talent available playing and competing. Even though a lot of the foriegn players (the non-Korean players) are popular, skilled, and well known it seems that the Korean players tend to draw more attention. I think not only did the in person venue suffer because of this, but NASL 2 probably did not maximize their viewership online as well. Here are some minor tidbits, as that was probably my biggest gripe in regards to the actual tournament. This is probably a personal preference, but I'm not a huge fan of the Gretorp/Orb casting combo. They don't mesh very well, whereas I feel Gretorp and inControl were a better combo during NASL Season 1. Another thing I wasn't a huge fan of and apparently most of the players weren't either was the combined booth set up, instead of the typical 2 booth setup. I'm not sure if it's because I'm just used to having the separate booths, but it seems to make for a better show than having them cramped and both walking into the same one.

Now let's talk about some of the good! The NASL introduced (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong) the red carpet concept. Basically they played music that the players selected as they entered the "arena" down a red carpet. Fans could extend their hands and give high fives to their favorite players. Not everyone's a fan of the WWF/WWE, but this concept seems pretty cool to me and could have been more successful if there were more fans. Some of the players really enjoyed the concept and ran down the carpet high fiving the people that were there left and right with big smiles on their faces. I think this concept should be considered especially for the other major tournaments like IPL and MLG. It's pretty cool for the players and the fans. Hopefully it would help generate more hype and enthuasiasm in the venue.

Anyways thanks for reading guys. If you guys have any incite on what you saw this weekend and want to chime in as well please do so below.

-Taytortots