Year in review: Baltic StarCraft II eSports Scene of 2010

Hello, everybody! Tomas [SCLT] is on the line. With this article going live I’m officially ending year 2010 for BalticGamers.com project. The idea is to have a quick visual review of what really happened during this year in the Baltic StarCraft II and RTS scene.

2010 was very important year. With the launch of StarCraft II Beta and later with the launch of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty many Baltic StarCraft communities that were barely vegetating for many years, started to wake up and new communities started to emerge. I compiled a list of most important information and facts.

  StarCraft II Scene in Lithuania

Quick facts

Size of Lithuanian SC2 community: ~ 300 players.
WebSites: BalticGamers.com, StarCraftII.lt
Forum: BalticGamers.com forum
IRC (main): server: quakenet.org, channel: BalticGamers (WebChat)
IRC (Lithuanian SC2 community): server: quakenet.org, channel: sclt (WebChat)
Battle.net chat: SCLT
Community TeamSpeak3 server: ts.BalticGamers.com:9996
FaceBook page (Lithuanian): BalticGamers on Facebook
FaceBook page (English): BalticGamers on Facebook (EN)
Twitter news: Twitter @BalticGamers
eNewsLetter: Subscribe to BalticGamers.com eNewsLetter

In March of 2010 Tomas [SCLT] Mackevičius started development of BalticGamers.com (formerly StarCraftLT.com) with main focus on creating Lithuanian StarCraft II community and connecting SC2 communities of all Baltic states: Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. At about the same time two other SC2 activists SpiriT and Mast3r gathered many old SC:BW and new SC2 fans with the help of a Skype chat and organized first two SC2 Beta tournaments. After joining these two forces we already had a pretty good core of the community and were ready for the major launch of StarCraft II.

BalticGamers.com frontpage

CableGuy nonpc

Later new project StarCraftII.LT emerged, created by Andrius Ševčenko CableGuy [nonpc]. He focused on developing various ranking and tournament systems for StarCraft II. An option to see your progress in comparison to other Lithuanian and Baltic players made competing in SC2 ladder much more interesting. Lithuanian SC2 Rankings and Baltic SC2 Rankings made another way to interact for SC2 players of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Later Baltic StarCraft II Tournament Rankings (based on ELO ranking system) were introduced too.

StarCraftII.lt Lithuanian SC2 Rankings

StarCraftII.lt Baltic SC2 Rankings

StarCraftII.lt SC2 Tournament Rankings

You can download: StarCraftII.LT SC2 Tournament Rankings – 2010 – Full version.

Lithuanian StarCraft II Tournaments of 2010

In effort to bring Baltic StarCraft II communities together for the first time, we kicked off with the CW style friendly Baltic match. It was followed by monthly SC2 Baltic Cup tournaments. To accommodate players of all skill levels, SC2 Baltic Cup had 3 leagues: League A (Diamond), League B (Platinum) and League C (Bronze – Gold). SC2 Baltic Cup tournaments took place until the end f the year.

Right after the official launch of StarCraft II, Net7.lt organized First Lithuanian SC2 LAN.

1st Lithuanian Net7 LAN winners - Deltron (5th pl.), Nbs (2nd pl.), Arew (1st pl.), Shyn (4th pl.), Yuk (3rd pl.)

It is important to note, that in December 2010 First Lithuanian HoN (Heroes of Newerth) Tournament and First Lithuanian LOL (League of Legends) Tournament were organized.

Lithuanian StarCraft II players who helped creating community

Tomas [SCLT] Mackevičius – development and administration of BalticGamers.com
Andrius Ševčenko CableGuy [nonpc] – development of StarCraftII.lt and administration of tournaments, Lithuanian and Baltic SC2 Ladders
Vidas Zelčius [BearGoesWild] – articles, community activist
Zeratul09 [Plutonij] – articles
SpiriT – community activist
Mast3r – community activist
Eustacer – articles
Rengler – articles

Top Lithuanian StarCraft II Players of 2010

OK|Arew and Virus|Nbs (Quacky) dominated Lithuanian StarCraft II scene of 2010, earning most of the trophies and together with ex Fnatic|Krr becoming the first Lithuanian StarCraft II PRO players. Fargo at that time just started to spread his wings and get better positions in SC2 tournaments.

Vytautas (Arew) Graičiūnas

Laurynas Kisielius - Nbs (Quacky)

Sponsors that gave us a fast start

I would like to thank all sponsors that helped us to ignite Baltic RTS eSports scene: Net7.lt, LEVEL.lt, Baitukas, Eridanas. You guys made the difference!

  StarCraft II Scene in Estonia

Quick facts

Size of Estonian SC2 community: ~ 100 players.
WebSites: StarCraft.ee
Forum: StarCraft.ee forum
IRC: server: quakenet.org, channel: sc2.ee (WebChat)
Battle.net chat: sc2.ee

Estonian SC2 community was single-handedly forged by Tõnu Proosa a.k.a Earache [Acidrain]. He quickly started StarCraft.ee website where Estonian SC2 fans had a neat and nice place to meet the long awaited game.

StarCraft.ee frontpage

Being very skillful programmer, Tõnu Proosa developed automated tournament and bracket generation system. It has such great functionality and polished look, that it could definitely make jealous even most famous SC2 portals.

StarCraft.ee tournament system with bracket generator

ELO based tournament rankings are part of the tournament generator.

StarCraft.ee Estonian SC2 tournament rankings

SC2ranks.com service was used to gather Estonian players to Estonian SC2 ladder.

StarCraft.ee Estonian SC2 rankings

Estonian StarCraft II Tournaments of 2010

Earache [Acidrain] created 3 weekly SC2 tournaments to make it convenient for everyone to participate. Automated engine ensured that tournaments would happen come rain or shine:

SC2 Instagib

SC2 Week Igniter

SC2 Weekend Cup

Estonian StarCraft II players who helped creating community

Earache [Acidrain] (Tõnu Proosa) – Admin. Writing, programming and system development, maintenance
Mikami (Mihkel Manguse)- Co-Admin. Various ideas for further development of the portal
Yellow Fog – Weekend Cup flyer and the domain
Viktor – Week Igniter and Instagib tournament flyers, banners and various graphics
MelEst and Gvidco – Various ideas for further development of the portal

Top Estonian StarCraft II Players of 2010

Mikami (Mihkel Manguse)
RelaX
Viktor
Inori

cranx
Supertwister
Frez

KageyamA
Zorvalk

  StarCraft II Scene in Latvia

Quick facts

Size of Latvian SC2 community: ~ 100 players.
WebSites: Endless.lv, Zergiem.lv
Forums: Endless.lv forum, Zergiem.lv forum
IRC: server: quakenet.org, channels: sc2.lv (WebChat), endless.lv (WebChat)
Battle.net chat: endless.lv
FaceBook page (Latvian): Endless.lv on Facebook
Twitter news: Twitter @starcraftlatvia

Latvian StarCraft II community came to live in a dark lair of Zergiem.lv. Created by Aigars Sprogis a.k.a JudicatorG it gathered Latvian SC2 fans starting with SC2 beta.

zergiem.lv frontpage

Liens

CodeNo

Some months later Ivars Bariss a.k.a CodeNo and Martins Giberts a.k.a Liens started second SC2 project Endless.lv with specific focus on organizing tournaments and keeping community members active and engaged.

endless.lv frontpage

The duo did great job in making very polished and convenient Latvian SC2 Ladder which also has the ability to show the activity summary of SC2 players.

endless.lv Latvian SC2 rankings

Latvian StarCraft II Tournaments of 2010

Nice thing about Latvian eSports community is that it has internet café “Elik” in Riga, where anyone can organize LAN tournaments for a reasonable fee. That’s why we see smaller but at the same time more frequent LANs over there. AFAIK there were two SC2 LANs in Riga (1, 2) that took place in café “Elik” in 2010. Both of them were organized by imba.soLovey.

Most of the on-line SC2 tournaments were organized by Endless.lv team. They used creative ways to attract Latvian players, so we see such uncommon tournaments like FFA, Fun Mode and Fastest Map Possible.

We also have to give a credit to Novalogic who tried to organize First Open Baltic StarCraft II LAN in Riga, but could not get it trough…

Latvian StarCraft II players who helped creating community

CodeNo (Ivars Bariss) Creator and manager of endless.lv
Liens (Martins Giberts) – Programmer and manager of endless.lv
JudicatorG (Aigars Sprogis) – Creator and manager of zergiem.lv
imba.soLovey – organizer of SC2 LANs in Riga
Novalogic – community activist

Top Latvian StarCraft II Players of 2010

Endalay
DemiGod
Torque

Final thoughts

The most important thing is that all three StarCraft II communities of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are friendly and have very good relationships. We started with the website logo exchange, later we discussed plans on creating unified tournament registration system, so it would be convenient for players to participate in either tournament.

It is hard to disregard the fact, that separate national communities do not make the numbers big enough to create an interesting eSports scene. Only by unifying separate eSports scenes and creating one Baltic eSports scene we can make it viable and interesting for everyone. Thanks to everyone for participating and doing the best to make lives of our communities interesting!

Tomas [SCLT]