In late November, hundreds of the world's best computer game players converged on Singapore to compete in the World Cyber Games Grand Finals. The largest annual gaming tournament drew competitors from almost 70 countries and featured a total prize pool of $400,000. Among the headline events were Blizzard's Warcraft III: Frozen Throne and StarCraft: Brood War.
The World Cyber Games was hosted across the street from the famous Raffles Hotel in Singapore's Suntec City, near the city's busy harbor. In order to accommodate the hundreds of matches being played throughout the week, the majority of games took place inside a private and secluded gaming area with very limited visibility for the crowd. However, to entertain the visiting attendees, Radio ITG (the team that broadcasted at the BlizzCon Invitational), was set up on two separate stages commentating matches to the live audience. Among the vendor booths, players were able to try World of Warcraft hands-on and pose with costumed characters from World of Warcraft.
Finalists
Warcraft III
1
SKYCN
2
BenQGeiLShort
3
4K_Grubby
StarCraft
1
fOru
2
[3D]Androide
3
Legionnaire
The Event
The first two days of the competition featured the group qualifiers, where only the top two players in each group would advance to the single-elimination tournament. Each player had to face-off against everyone in their group in a single-game round robin format. In the Warcraft III competition, there were few surprises as almost all the favorites were able to advance with a top two seeding. Of the notable players to fall during the group stage, the two 4 Kings members, Fury and Zeus19, were eliminated early on. In StarCraft, there were comparatively more upsets, with a number of players predicted to advance into the single elimination bracket not making it past the group qualifiers. Among these were the American player Day, the Spaniard Zelotito, and the German Zerg player Breakdown. The full group qualifier results for both titles may be found here for Warcraft III and here for StarCraft on the World Cyber Games web site.
The final two days of the competition featured the surviving competitors fighting their way through a best-of-three, single-elimination bracket in hopes to become WCG champions. In a finals match-up few could have predicted prior to the event, Warcraft III featured the American Night Elf player Shortround against the Chinese Human player Sky. Sky emerged as champion, tower-rushing his way to a quick 2-0 victory. In the consolation finals, Grubby defeated his 4 Kings teammate ToD 2-1 to take third place. StarCraft's finals featured the Korean Protoss player Foru against the Russian Terran player Androide, resulting in another clean sweep result of 2-0, in favor of the Korean. In the consolation finals, Australian player Legionnaire, having been eliminated quickly at BlizzCon, surprised fans by taking third place against the Chinese Zerg player Storm. The single-elimination bracket results are available on the WCG website for both Warcraft III and StarCraft.
