The 2009 World Cyber Game (WCG) online and offline qualifiers have now begun for multiple countries around the world, now its South Korea’s turn.

People will have a total of 3 chances to qualify for the national finals, the first two qualifiers will be online ladders scheduled as followed:

1. June 5th to June 9th (13 people advance to the offline stage)
2. June 12th to June 16th (13 people advance to the offline stage)

The third qualifier will be team battle (5vs5 single elimination), scheduled for June 18th to June 22nd, in which 1 team (5 people), advance to the offline stage.

How this works is, a team/clan will get 5 people, you send out 1 person and have them 1vs1 until they lose, and the first team to 3 wins will win. Whichever team wins the team battle qualifier, will advance to the national finals and be split up once they get there.
A small problem many people might see is that 1 or 2 people can play in all of the team battles while there can be a couple people who get a "free ride" to the finals.

"But there’s still 1 spot left", that is correct. The 27th spot from the online qualifiers will be given to the person with the most points from the first and second tournaments combined. This increases the player activity in both events. So just because you got 14th place in the first ladder and barely missed qualifying, you should play in the second event and you might gain your spot that way.

The first ladder registration end on June 3rd, while the second ladder registration ends on June 10th. The team battle registration ends on June 13th.

Starcraft players who are listed under the official Korean eSports Association (KeSPA) list as a pro gamer, cannot participate in the online portion of WCG Korea, they instead have to compete at the offline event.

The top 4 players from the offline event will advance to the National Final, where they will compete against 24 pro gamers in a chance to make it to Chengu, China, and be one of the 3 people to represent South Korea in the 2009 World Cyber Games (WCG) grand final.

The top 24 pro gamers are decided as so: Luxury and Stork get free spots due to their result last year, and the other 22 spots will be given to the top 22 players in the KeSPA ranking for July.

Tonight saw the last group match of the Quake 3 ESL Major Series between noctis and k1llsen in the group D. The group stage is now finally over and the next step in the cup before the playoffs is the relegation round. While the 1st's of each group are directly qualified for the playoffs, the 2nd's and 3rd's still need to play an extra match to make their way to the double-elimination brackets.

Relegation round

mouz`Cooller vs srs/rzr/cypher
FF|PROX vs blank|unity
[M]strenx vs k1llsen
LaMz|k1llmaster vs a1r-r41d

All these matches are pre-scheduled to next Sunday 13:00 CDT, 14 June 2009.


Q3 EMS4 - IRC: #esl.q3

This week the classic match of the week of AGP covers the WCG 2002 USA qualifier with the Group A match between Victor "Makaveli" Cuadra and John "Zero4" Hill (who stepped out of the tournament after the group stage).

The video, once again shoutcasted by djWHEAT, is available directly from the this page or from YouTube.

Last week the classic match featured the Miss QuakeCon 2005 final between Missy and MsX.

We’re back on schedule with this weeks episode of Starcraft Weekly, and we’re also back in the studio to give you that epic blue background that you missed in last weeks episode.

This week we focus on Dreamhack, ICCUP, ToT clan invites and losses, Valor tournament, WCG, Zotac Cup, Tip of the week, Sea.Really vs. Bisu, June’s KeSPA ranking, KTF name change, GomTV, and much more.


You can view Episode 13 by clicking here.

** update ** Around 500 demonstrants have attended the demonstration according to the local media and police. Check out some reports and photos, contributed by different sources.

Read here for my English report.

Self-explaining video (10 minutes).

Another German report.

72 photos on photobucket.
9 photos on flickr.
242 photos on flickr

62 photos by readmore (Advise me if this is advertising, then I remove the last link!)

Another youtube video: "Wer nicht hüpt, der ist kein Spieler!" Who doesn´t jump, is no gamer!


***** below is the original news *****

This Friday will be in Karlsruhe, Germany from 17 o´clock until 20:30 o´clock a demonstration.

This demonstration is against the cancellations or rather embargos of the scheduled ESL Intel Friday Night Games in Karlsruhe and Stuttgart. It is against the double moral standard of conservative politicians who demonize videogames and who cancel events in Stuttgart due to the school massacre in Winnenden and respect towards the victims, but who allow fair featuring shooting matches only a few weeks after the incident. This demonstration is for the public acceptance of videogaming as own culture.

It can not be, that we will be lumped together with homicidal maniacs, that they choose us, not so small but still marginalized groups of videogamers, as their punching bag even if it was their fault. It should be more about, that one has to deal with the initial problems of those amok runners and potential imperilled persons to identify the causes. Consequently to try to avoid the causes and not to condemn videogaming or to perform ignorance and double moral standards. Thus we will be lumped together. And every computer gaming person is affected by this. Not only the young people, also those who are older than 30 years, those who have family, those who enjoy their life and still play. Ranging from First-Person-Shooter players via World of Warcraft guildmembers, WarSow trickjumpers up to the Sims girls.

Among us gamers are also some idiots, who think they can insult others, or even try to be violent in real life, but in general it is peaceful. And how often are violent incidents at LAN parties?

If you can, then come around. This Friday. At least 200 visitors (see this survey), 3 local radio stations and maybe some TV coverage are expected. Unfortunately I have heard the day before yesterday about it, or else I would have posted this earlier. Be there, demonstrate and show unity!

The official website is in German only.

- Independent Friday Night Game, Demonstration für Jugendkultur! (05. Juni, Karlsruhe)

QuakeUnity has a video interview up with Mr. Johnathan "Fatal1ty" Wendell shot at E3 2009.

Fatal1ty discusses QuakeLive, the current state of the pro-gaming scene, the Fatal1ty summer camp program, and the new Fatal1ty products they are showing off at E3. The video runs 10 minutes and is available for download and streaming in HD.

Scheduled: 04:00 CDT, 7 June 2009 to 07:00 CDT, 7 June 2009
Schedule: Passed

Averatec-Intel Classic Season 3 will run for 20 weeks from March 29, 2009. Unlike most of the other StarCraft leagues, there will be no preliminary matches, all matches are considered as a part of the knockout tournament. Averatec-Intel Classic Season 3 will be broadcasted live in English by Daniel "SuperDanielMan" Lee & Nick "Tasteless" Plott.
Now we're finally in the round-of-16 and GOMtv will only show 2 matches in a best-of-3 format on each Sunday in the next 4 weeks. The first 2 matches will be:

04:00 CDT, 7 June 2009
Baby (#82) Wemade FOX -vs- skyhigh (#28) CJ ENTUS (BET) 1 2 3
GoojiLa (aka Kal) (#10) STX SOUL -vs- July (#23) STX SOUL (BET) 1 2 3
Maporder: A Garden of GOD - A Ridge of Heartbreak - Outsider

pixelatedgeek.com Video-interviewed Fatal1ty during this years E3. Fatal1ty interviews are usually full of self promotion and easy questions, this one is a bit different, heres a transcript snippet:

PG: So, in spite of all of your amazing achievements, it seems like people in the gaming industry – both players and professionals alike – think that you’re a douchebag. How do you feel about that?

Fatal1ty: I don’t uh – I think that’s totally uh, bullcrap. Huh huh.

Watch the whole Video interview here.

New weekly North American leagues for QUAKE Live teams are being run on quakenight.com:

* West and East leagues
* Matches are to be played on the designated night of each league
* Match start times will be between 7 and 9pm of the local timezone (PST for West, EST for East)
* Round Robin regular season
* Top 4 teams advance to single elimination playoffs

The current leagues are:

* Monday 4v4 Clan Arena (West)
* Tuesday 4v4 Team Deathmatch (West)
* Wednesday 4v4 Clan Arena (East)

The first West games will be played on June 8 (CA) and June 9 (TDM). East will begin on June 10 (CA).

We are also looking for another East admin. If you are interested please message f27-ben on IRC.

Swing by #QuakeNight on irc.gamesurge.net, and sign your team up!

Global Gaming (GGL) is having a Quake Live 2v2 Randomized Clan Arena Tournament beginning June 9th and ending on June 11th.

The tournament takes 16 players and creates 8 random teams from them, these 8 teams will then compete in a Single Elimination Best of 3 bracket. The first round starts and ends on June 9th at 9pm est and the Semi and Finals will be played on June 11th beginning at 9pm est.

Gamefire will be casting the matches and will also have a live video feed!


See the bracket and read the rules

For more information you can contact us at #ggl on gamesurge and quakenet.

Artosis talks to IdrA right after doing the Tasteless interview which you can find below.

IdrA answers some very important things like who the best foreign Zerg player is, the best foreign Protoss player, the best foreign Terran player, thoughts on Advokate and Strelok, best in each race for Chinese players, thoughts on who the best overall foreigner is, a little on SC2GG StarLeague, Ansadi StarLeague, Valor tournament, and the GOL tournament.

Click here to view the video interview




Artosis takes Tasteless out for a cup of coffee and talks to him about what’s going on lately in the Starcraft eSports scene.

Some of the things covered are season 3 of GomTV, Daniel "SuperDanielMan" Lee, Valor tournament, upcoming show match between Strelok and TossGirl, ESWC, female pro gaming, Starcraft 2, BlizzCon, update on his life in Korea, new store on his website TastelessGaming.com, thoughts about finishing school, new projects in the future, and much more.


Click here to view the video interview.

The third week of id software's campaign "6 Maps in 6 Week" brings us another ctf map. Here is official release announcement that covers Bloodlusts background and information about the next map:

In 1999, id Software contracted two young developers, Michael "Casey" Goodhead and Dave "Zoid" Kirsch (known collectively as "Threewave" to create 3 Capture the Flag arenas for QUAKE III Arena. The first in this 3-pack was called Bloodlust - and now the source from which we bring you our week 3 release. In revisiting this map over the last couple of months, the team here decided to make some renovations before releasing it in QUAKE LIVE, and we're very happy with the additions, changes, and polish we've been able to contribute. Bloodlust is perfectly suited for 8 to 10 players and rewards teamwork.

Our long-time friend Casey continues to bring his talents to the game industry as the Game Design Director at Threewave Software.

Although we've now released back-to-back CTF arenas, next week's release will certainly quench the thirst of our Duelers. Stay tuned.

Source: Official News - Threewave

It's not often we cover consoles here at ESReality but at times you see technological advances that you simply can't help not writing about.

Project Natal, which was just announced at E3, is basically a facial, voice and motion recognition system for the XBOX 360. In one of the demonstration videos, we see a girl interacting with a digital boy on the screen, Milo. The digital boy reacts to what the girl says and they seem to be able to hold a conversation while they follow each others movements. As the video progresses, the real girl can actually see herself transmitted into the game. Then she decides to draw a picture to Milo, so she draws a picture on a piece of real paper, passes it to the TV and the boy actually grabs it, seemingly holding the picture in his hands, inside the TV..

See what Steven Spielberg calls "a historical moment".

This week I brought in the experts to give their opinions on the situation with LAN events, not only in the US but worldwide and what the gamers can do to help bring the good ol' LAN event back. Back to help us out is ceppy, who helped run QuakeCon and ESWC 08. Also joining us is Dave "killdashnine" Derington the organizer of Warfactory, whose also worked for CPL, ESWC and MLG.

A fairly long and extensive discussion of the state of LANs across the world, and what the gamers need to remedy the problem. We also talk about how Warfactory got its start, and reminisce about the high points of gaming.

Head on over to Ready Up Radio to download the podcast.