Surely everyone here knows that foreign SC2 is not in good shape. The days of foreigners, or even the single best foreigner, being able to compete regularly with Koreans are long gone; these days, the world outside of Korea is lucky to get a single representative at Blizzcon, with a points format tilted towards the foreign weekend tournaments that are supposed to favor them. Of course, everyone has an opinion on how to fix this.

The magic word for many seems to be "infrastructure". And it's true - even if it isn't what it used to be, the top SC2 teams in Korea have a potent infrastructure for maximizing success. Teamhouses, coaches, and practice partners, all based in Seoul, not to mention long winning traditions. By contrast, foreign teams often seem like little more than loose collections of friends, or players that share sponsors but little else. The few teamhouses available have results that could be charitably called "mixed", and coaches seem practically unknown. The difference in infrastructure is clear, and it's not hard to see how this leads to very different results.

So how does WCS fit into this? Blizzard probably had multiple reasons for creating WCS, including just maintaining high-level SC2 events outside of Korea with the end of MLG, IPL, etc. But a large part of the narrative of the creation of WCS, at least from many community figures, is that it would provide an incentive to grow the foreign scene. With a big-money tournament that was (at least in theory) exclusive to non-Korean players, they would have an incentive and some motivation to practice harder, play better, and get to the level where they could compete with the true best in the world.

So how has that actually worked out? WCS is, essentially, a single-elimination tournament. You keep winning, or you go home and wait a couple months for the next event. This seems to run counter-intuitive to the idea of creating a real impetus for long-term improvement - only the best of the best will actually have a tournament to compete in for most of the year, and the same applies to the big-money prizes that supposedly provide motivation. It also goes against the idea of getting sponsorship, the real fuel for Korean infrastructure. Why pay big bucks to sponsor a team when a few bad results means no one will be seeing your logo anywhere? Also, the short-term nature of WCS encourages the same practices of living apart that are common to foreign SC2 - live at home, fly to the event, and fly back. The same could be said for its individualistic nature.

Let's take a step back and look at Korea - what is and has for a long time the real core of Starcraft in Korea? It's not the GSL, not the SSL, and it wasn't even the OSL or MSL. It's Proleague - the event that lasts for months, provides a reason for players to team up and practice together. It provides weekly exposure for the big Korean companies that fund the whole thing, and weekly games for the top players that compete in it - not to mention opportunites for the underdogs to prove themselves. Although I was not a BW fan, it is difficult to look at the Starcraft infrastructure in Korea and see it as inspired by anything other than Proleague and the OGN and MBC team leagues that preceded it.

There have been foreign team leagues before - IPTL, SC2L, and even the recent Shoutcraft stuff I guess (was that actually a league?) While fun at times, these have had obvious flaws. They were all online, of course, and casted from replays even, which is understandable but limits them in terms of being big events. More importantly, it was obvious that most teams never took them completely seriously - they were secondary events to the big individual events. In order for a hypothetical foreign Proleague to be anything like, well, Proleague, it would need to be the main event, and it would need to be live and in-person.

So, here's my proposal. Whereas, for the improvement and betterment of non-Korean SC2 players and the community in general, etc etc etc, it should create a foreign version of Proleague in lieu of WCS. It would be held in two specific locations, one in the US and one in Europe. Teams would be based at one or the other and chiefly play within their own region, with perhaps occasional trips to the other region (think something like how interleague baseball used to work, if you know anything about that). After determining one champion in each region, they would meet in a grand final to determine the best foreign SC2 team of all. The beauty of it would be, there wouldn't need to be a region lock - any Korean players that wanted to compete would need to live and play full-time in that region (unless they wanted to commute weekly) and be fully assimilated. Other details about the format could come later, including the funding model - it could be a wide distribution of prize money, or even direct funding to teams more like what Riot does.

Now, obviously, in order to be viable, this would need significant funding from Blizzard, probably a lot more than WCS. No one outside of Blizzard knows exactly how much they care about SC2 continuing on as a viable eSport, or how much money they're willing to spend to make it happen. But if they do care, and they do want it to be viable outside of Korea, I think this is probably the only way. It would provide an incentive for real teams, for training, for the "infrastructure" everyone is talking about. It would draw fans and improve players. It would ensure that top-level professional SC2 is a thing for a long time to come.

tl;dr kill WCS, make foreign Proleague, SC2 becomes not ded gaem