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Opening Week—Day 4: A Legend Falls in WCS and the West Rises in HGC

Opening Week—Day 4: A Legend Falls in WCS and the West Rises in HGC

Opening Week of the 2017 World Championship Series (WCS) Global Finals has concluded, and the best 16 players in the world have been whittled down to eight. The playoff bracket has been drawn, and we now know who will be facing whom on the big stage at BlizzCon. It’s been an exciting week seeing how these players got here, and this final day of Opening Week have given fans some of the most memorable moments of the year.

Without a doubt, the story of the day is the fall of Park ‘Dark’ Ryung Woo to Mikolaj ‘Elazer’ Ogonowski. Dark has been a consistently powerful Zerg all year, beginning with his run to the grand finals of the 2016 WCS Global Finals, but his greatest achievement may have been his record against foreign players. Against non-Koreans, Dark had never lost a series at a live event.  He hadn’t lost to a non-Korean player in an online match since 2012, and his map record versus foreign players was a staggering 72-8. Today, all of that dominance was stopped in its tracks as Elazer took down Dark with some very aggressive tactics in a close three-game series. If you like dramatic, seismic shifts in the pecking order of pro StarCraft II players, the third game of their matchup (@00:19:30), is a must-watch VoD.

Group A also saw some remarkable action. Juan Carlos ‘SpeCial’ Tena Lopez completed his tear through the top Korean players when he knocked Kim ‘Stats’ Dae Yeob down to an elimination match with his previous victim, Jun ‘TY’ Tae Yang. Two of the most favored players to go deep in the tournament had to fight each other for survival. As Dan ‘Artosis’ Stemkoski remarked, “both of them have been considered the best player in the world at some point during this year.” Stats ultimately fell, and he joins Dark as the only Koreans, two of the best in 2017 at that, eliminated from the WCS Global Finals.

The drama in this tournament is sure to continue as the action moves to Anaheim for the knockout rounds at BlizzCon proper. Join us on November 3 at 12 noon PDT as the playoffs of the WCS Global Finals begin.


The final day of Opening Week for the HGC Finals was chock full of dominant performances, starting off with China’s top seed, Super Perfect Team (SPT),  running over Soul Torturers, the regional representatives from Taiwan.

SPT were met with the brick wall that is Ballistix in their next match, however. Hailing from Korea and after playing much of the year under the name L5, Ballistix are back at BlizzCon and aiming to defend the championship they won at 2016. Ballistix’s Warrior player Jong Hoon ‘Hooligan’ Park would be deserving of the MVP of the day award, after ringing up 29 total assists on Heroes like Muradin and Tyreal in his team’s matches against both SPT and Team expert. After defeating both of these teams 2-0, Ballistix now turn their sights towards Anaheim and the playoff bracket that will unfold on the BlizzCon stage.

Down but hardly out, Team expert defeated Soul Torturers in the first elimination match of the day and moved on to play one final series against SPT. Clearly a cut above the rest of Group D, Team expert were able to snowball an advantage on both Battlegrounds of the final series of the day, making them the eighth and final team to earn their spot at BlizzCon.

Ballistix, MVP Black, Roll20 Esports, Tempo Storm, Team Freedom, Team Dignitas, Team expert and Fnatic— one of these teams will take home the HGC Finals trophy in less than a week’s time. Catch all the action and follow along with the bracket at playheroes.com/esports.  

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