Winners So Far
We are one week away from finding out all of the participating states' representatives/winners. So far, one state has reported their winner:

Georgia: [GA]Cyanescens
Nebraska: [NE]the_butler
Oregon: [OR]tank88^^
South Carolina: [SC]u77Bluewolf
Wyoming: [WY]SiGn

Hopefully more states will get done soon. Remember that each state must report its winner by next monday, November 22nd. A winners list has been posted and will be updated here.

Name Format
The Battle.net user id format we will use for the finals will be: [State Initials]Name (ie: [SC]u77Bluewolf). If you are from Georgia, the state initial would be [GA] and so on. This is only required for the finals, don't worry about it for the state qualifiers.

Anti-hacking Procedures
For the finals, we will either require participants to use BWScanner or to play the games on PGTour. We haven't decided yet. For the state qualifiers, feel free to require either or none at all.

Maps
The maps that will be used for the finals will be:

• Neo Lost Temple
• Enter the Dragon
• Namja Iyagi
• Isles of Siren
• And we couldn't resist a map named after one of our own: Arizona

First game will be played on Lost Temple, with the loser choosing the second map and the loser of that choosing the third map if necessary. No two maps may be played twice in the same match. We haven't decided if it will be best of 3 or best of 5 yet so it could be possible that all five maps will be played. For the state qualifiers, you do not have to use these maps, although you may if you wish. Download the maps here:

USA State Wars Maps.zip

Update: Changed Lost Temple from Gamei to Neo version, so redownload the maps if you dled the pack with the first one.

According to Dark-Elk, GamerPro magazine's current issue has a small spot on Starcraft: Ghost and has the release date set for "tentative February, 2005." Ok so let's see what we have so far:

• GamerPro: 2/05
• EBgames.com (PS2): 6/2/05
• EBgames.com (Xbox): 6/15/05
• EBgames.com (GC): 2/2/05
• Amazon: 7/1/05
• IGN (PS2): 6/05
• IGN (Xbox): 6/15/05
• IGN (GC): 2/2/05
• GameSpot: 2005
• GameStop (PS2): 2/1/05
• GameStop (Xbox): 6/1/05
• GameStop (GC): 6/1/05

Consensus: Starcraft: Ghost will come out sometime in 2005.

There is a large gaming expo going on this upcoming weekend starting Friday, November 19th called Gamercon at the Los Angeles Convention Center. There will be a couple of tournament events, which will include Starcraft at 5pm on Friday. The tournament is BYOC and you must bring your own headphones and your own CAT5 cable to play. Win $40,000 in door and giveaway prizes including Intel Extreme CPUs, ATI video cards, Logitech Speakers, LG LCDs, and their Ultimate Grand Prize: a $3,500 gaming PC.

To enter Gamercon, you must register with at least the one day pass for $20 if you register online. Apparently a few Blizzard guys will be there, including a producer for Starcraft: Ghost and some World of Warcraft people who will speak there. For more information, go here.

Many states are beginning to get the ball rolling with plans for their qualifiers these upcoming weekends. To help your state out here are some links to create your tournament brackets if that's how you want to do it:

• BattleReports.com Tournament Manager
• BracketMaker.com
• PGTour Tournaments

I'd also like to thank the people that are stepping up to organize their state qualifiers, like Irishinized for California and Grass.nS) for New Jersey. By the way, let all of your online or real life friends know about this to increase participation.

Secondly, I'm happy to say that Alaska, Tennessee, and Mississippi look like they will be represented after all. However, nobody has yet posted in the Alabama and Hawaii forums, even though someone RSVPed in the earlier threads. Please respond in there if you want to represent any of those states. Nobody has responded in any of the earlier news posts from Delaware, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kansas, Montana, Rhode Island, Wyoming so we are assuming they will not participate at all. So for it looks like at least 39/50 states will be participating which is not bad at all.

Note: By the way, if you're having trouble registering for an SCL account, and you didn't receive a confirmation email, it is possible that your email provider has put it in the "Junk" folder. I know Yahoo mail and sometimes Hotmail does this so please check it, and if not email me. Thanks.

We are all excited about getting ready to move into the preliminary phase of the first official Starcraft Legacy USA State Wars. Here are a few notes about this tournament:

Format: 1v1, best of three
State Qualifier Deadline: Monday, November 22

Forums:
A big part of the philosophy of this tournament is that each state organize its own qualifier/preliminaries to select one person in the end to represent it in the state wars tournament. Not only would it be nearly impossible for SCL to organize all fifty qualifiers, but this way everyone gets to play a role in organizing and participating. In a way, the success of this tournament depends on everyone's cooperation. To make this easier, we have created a forum where each state can plan out its qualifiers. If you are an outgoing person, feel free to step in, take the initiative and start organizing the qualifier for your state!

Remember, BlizzForums uses the same account/password as SCL so you can just log right in if you have an account here.


The deadline to choose your state representative is hopefully set for Monday, Nov 22 which is two weeks from today. This gives you about two weekends and many weekdays to play your games. On Monday, each state must name the player that will represent it in the State Wars phase of this tournament. If it looks like many of the states are not ready, we will extend the deadline but for now, the 22nd is key.

Maps:
At the moment, we have not selected which four maps will be used in the final tournament. In this post, please comment on which maps you think should make the final cut for the qualifiers and finals. Lost Temple will certainly be used for its universal popularity and familiarity. For now, for the qualifiers, you may use any maps you wish to count, as long as both players agree on them.

State Teams:
In the last thread, some people voiced their opinion that maybe we should have state teams and they can play against each other like nation wars. The state threads we set up is a perfect opportunity for everyone to get to know who is in their home state so that this type of thing may be possible in the future. A great time to get organized. Unfortunately, the population spread of Starcraft players is imbalanced (ie there are way more players from California than Wyoming) so this might not be possible, but we are hopeful and it could bring the USA community together. But that will be in the future, so don't worry about it for now.

Anyways, please comment on map selection and please start organizing your state qualifiers here!

Ok so first of all I'd like to say that I'm happy about two things:

1. That players from so many states across the USA visit SCL so thanks for being such loyal members.
2. That there is such a high interest in this tournament.

I think what makes this tournament appealing is that it's not limited to any top percentage of players like an invite tournament so that anyone can participate. The states as of now that have nobody representing them are:

• Delaware
• North Dakota
• South Dakota
• Kansas
• Massachusetts
• Montana
• Rhode Island
• West Virginia
• Wyoming

We haven't started planning dates and stuff yet so if you're from one of those states and you'd like to play, please leave a comment soon so we can finalize which states are not participating.

Next topic, Format. Is 1v1 what most of you would like to go, or is there a higher interest in 2v2, or maybe both? Please leave your opinion in this post. Thanks a lot!

Canadians: We are aware that many Canadians come to SCL since we are very North American oriented. If this tournament turns out well, perhaps we will hold a Province Wars, and maybe USA vs Canada with the winners of each. So we haven't forgotten about you. Thanks for your patience.

I had this idea pop up in my head while I was watching the elections last night, and I'm wondering if there would be any interest in this type of thing: a State Wars tournament for Starcraft.

Basically each state that wants to participate can organize its own small preliminary on Battle.net whenever. We can set up forums where you can organize it amongst yourselves. Then the winner of each state (ideally 50 players) will compete in an SCL organized event and narrowed down to one state, which will win the tournament.

I am thinking that this type of tournament would give a chance for everyone to participate instead of being limited to top American gosus and what not. I remember doing a census and there were no players from Alaska and a few other states so we probably won't be able to get players from every state to play, but that's unavoidable so it's ok if there are a few states missing. Remember, we only need at least one player from whichever state for that state to participate.

Anyways, let me know what you think in the comments.

Also please state (pun intended) which state you're from so we can see which states would probably participate.

on.sp33d has informed us that the CPL has again chosen to exclude Starcraft from any of its major tournament events:

"Once again CPL reveals their "professionalism" and finds a pathetic excuse to exclude SC from CPL (I'm sure many have heard in the past, how CPL rigged polls against SC).

CPL|Tonya: guys, in case you hadn't figured it out yet - you are all being banned from CAL one by one - enjoy your vacation.
CPL|Tonya: all the SC people were part of a botnet bot

Where they pulled out such an excuse, I don't know. Apparently, gamers from other communities can spam insults for minutes at a time, while *any* one gamer that is even known to either play SC or affiliated with other SC gamers are somehow responsible for the SC community as a whole and is enough to rid of SC supporters. CPL's justification of their actions? All SC idlers in #CPL are bots.

On November 02 2004 06:01 CPLTonya wrote:

Glad you guys found this all so amusing

Despite what you think, impersonating our bot is hardly funny. The CPL channel is a business channel, not a channel for you to treat as your arena of pranks.

The CPL network manager advised me 2 nights ago that some of the people in the channel using SC tags were part of a bot, and I told him as long as there was no trouble to not worry about it - that it was there to support SC in CPL, and I had no issue with that.

I see now how important it was for you to support SC in the CPL.

I appreciate all of the time you put into your 'prank' and into these comments on this forum. I assure you it all will be credited to the character of the SC community, and will be vital to the determination of whether SC will ever become a part of our events.

Best Regards,
Tonya

Response from Excalibur_Z:

I am shocked. Whatever amusement was provided from that prank ended, and rightly so, when both of those guys were g-lined. That's all there is to it. Any further action was unwarranted, especially the drastic measures employed.

1. The idea that all the SC people were bots is ridiculous. This seems like more of an excuse than anything, with no real proof behind it. All of the SC| nicks who joined were real people with hostmasks originated from around the world, and I've talked to most of them personally. You messaged me with "don't bring bots into my channel," but you know me better than that.

2. SC had more people join #cpl than any other game. The SC| tag phenomenon was much more successful than its competitors. You said in #cpl that "if CoD doesn't fill out 100 registrations by the end of the night, it will be SC's turn." I heard no such announcement after CoD failed to meet those requirements.

3. I have been a member of #cpl for over 2 months and caused no trouble, and because of this frankly childish overreaction I'm permbanned from that channel and was put on your ignore list.

This was not appropriate at all. Many people have lambasted me for my foolish idealism, claiming that the CPL will never accept SC because they are biased against it, and I ignored it and thought some bridges could be built. However, now I'm starting to see that there may be some truth to those claims after all.

Was mass banning SC| people a reasonable course of action for the prank committed by two? Perhaps, but I think the timing and level of reaction is a little too convenient to hide such an apparent bias.

But that's okay, the SC community won't cry over this. CPL has done nothing to contribute to the success of SC, and so it seems it will be forever.

A handful of SC players on irc decided to show some optimism and good spirit by forming a #worldcybergames channel on irc.gamesurge.com and are now idling with the WCG| tag (it's mostly for fun).

Either way, we won't cry, because we know our worth."

The Starcraft community in the CPL was never meant to be. Starcraft is a game dependent only on its gameplay, not on the latest technology and thus offers no incentive to sponsors. Also, it would take a miracle to get a hundred Starcraft players to pay a nunrefundable ticket plus travel and lodging expenses just to take part of an unsure byoc tournament. It is a shame that the CPL has to result in such shady and desperate measures just to exclude us. Rigging polls, offering an impossible scenerio to include us, and then banning everyone because they think we are all bots. And as said, Starcraft is already an international success, and CPL will now have never played a role in that.

We have added three great new images to our galleries, one 2D and two 3D. First up is Geek's entry into the hybrid contest. It's a crazy Zerg/Protoss hybrid done up in his usual comic style. Check it out here.

Next up we have two incredible Battlecruiser renders done by Enterprise-E.

This is a little render of a large Battlecrusier fleet flying silently above the land. i know the terrain is all but realistic, this has 2 reasons: a) it's my second attempt ever at creating a terrain, b) i intended it to resemble the characteristics of StarCraft maps...

The idea for this image was an in-game experience. i played a game on "Fastest Possible Map" (yeah, i know most SC players say that's lame, but for me it can be fun to play a game with huge fleets on it, and i use to play games just for fun, and never was a hardcore gamer). Here i forgot to set the race, so i became Terran. i suck heavyily with Terran, so as a last-resort strategy i walled myself in and began building BCs. Luckily my defences were more than enough, so it turned out that i had a HUGE fleet of BCs, and began swarming the enemy bases with them, taken out their main buildings with Yamato cannons, and finally won the game:-)
Oh, and this is a scene from this game i'd imagine if SC was "real". i hope You like it.

Check them out here.

French Site Relaunched
boris informs us that after longs problems due to server crash, French site www.rush-time.net is back. A new admin team has been set up with really good French players to offer the best replays possible. You will find replays of the best European and Korean players including ForU, ArtOfTerran, Grrr, Elky, etc. They can be found here.

LAN Party in Germany
Jun Huang informs us of a Lan Party that will take place in Frankfurt, Germany along with a cash prize Brood War tournament. The event will take place in Frankfurt on November 19-21 and is called FMLan101. Here is some info:

Address:
Hanauer Landstrasse 151-153
60314 Frankfurt am Main

Entry fee: 18€ (Find out how to pay less here) / 20€

Prizes:
1st:30€
2nd: 10€
3rd: 5€
4th: Bottle of Coca-Cola ^_^!

Spots: 40
Tournaments: Starcraft: Brood War
Age: 16 years old and above
Starts: 18:45 Friday, 11/19/04
Ends: 12:30 Sunday, 11/21/04
Registration: here
Directions: here

Feel free to find more info here.