When a ship begins to lose the wind in its sails thoughts turn to what needs to go overboard. As precious as something may be, it's dragging the vessel down.

This was the case with the WC3L, a tournament where you needed five high class players in order to have a shot at a medal, in a world where few would want to afford such a team. The old rules were offloaded.

The reality of the situation is that ever since the Warcraft 3 player wages have risen, the WC3L became more a nuisance for teams than a tournament to go for. Good but not fantastic European players scream for salaries of €1,500. To have a realistic shot at the title you would need to spend over €8,000 a month for player wages. The team that won the last WC3L is rumoured to pay over double that amount. All this for an event that happens a year.

There were not many teams left that were willing to play this game because it just did not make sense economically. All a team really needs to get publicity and please its sponsors is two to three star players to play in individual competitions, those that have a real shot at winning events like the WCG and ESWC. You can argue this point however much you like from your chair at home but I have enough friends among team managers to know what their point of view is. That is the reality.

With fewer teams willing to give the WC3L a shot, the league started losing serious title contenders. A tournament is only as good as the race for the championship. As teams woke up to only wanting to have one or two star killers on the roster, WC3L was also destined to become a competition without many of the real Warcraft geniuses.

All this left ESL with a choice to either adapt to the situation and make the best of it or to see the WC3L become a decreasingly interesting product. The rules that worked for a few years became a weight that dragged the league down and had to be changed.

The new rules, where a minimum of two and a maximum of four players per team can partake in a WC3L tie, are a step in the right direction. It will be much easier for teams to build squads with reasonable WC3L championship hopes. We will see more competitive teams and more star players in the mix. As far as I know, there is already commotion behind the scenes and new teams are about to spring up because of the WC3L.

The competition now has the potential to be as exciting as the UEFA Champions League. So many teams will be good enough to go all the way that predicting who the finalists will be is impossible. It seems like we are in store for new excitement as new rivalries will be formed. Getting a WC3L finals spot will be more difficult than ever.

I hope that the ESL will force teams to use three players in the season so that we would avoid seeing two-man army teams. This is not going to be a new scenario, by the way, as one WC3L team was already carried by Manuel 'GrubbY' Schenkhuizen and Yoan 'ToD' Merlo in the past.

I don't think two-man-shows are as dangerous as they seem. Most top players have a weaker match-up or an opponent that can play really well against him. Take Xiaofeng 'Sky' Li's domination over Grubby in the last two years. Versatility will still be a big benefit and I am hoping that the new rules will add a new dynamic to the player choices. In the end, this is something new and can be as interesting as the previous system.

Of course all this is at the expense of the old WC3L magic that many got used to and grew to love. But what good is the magic of a league with no one to play in it?