Hi! Lookin back at my ''carrier'' as a replay and vod watcher, I've asked myself what was the most influential tournament in Warcraft history? I've been into the scene since summer 2004 so I can't talk about tournaments before WCG 2004.
How do I define influential? Well, I'm talking about those tournaments which brought new strategies to the game or made them more popular so that they established as default strats, tournaments that changed the impressions of which race is the weakest or the strongest.
In my opinion, the first World E-Sports Games in February/March 2005 was the tournament in whos consequence the Warcraft scene changed crucially:

- MagicYang played the mass DotT-strategy against 17Game.xiaOt in the groupstage, later in the final, Moon used it in a little other version later in the finals against Zacard and beat him 3-0. Since that time, the talon strategy got famous as a real orc-killer, it's been used by night elves all over the world and forced Blizzard to buff the orc's spirit walker's. It's a popular strategy to fight orcs up to this day.

- SK.Zacard was the first to use the blademaster seriously as first hero against YolinY.Sky in groupstage and against several other players in following games. That was a revolution since the blademaster had turned into a fungame hero in frozen throne. From now on it was and still is the default orc hero used against [i]all[/i] races and replaced the farseer in his job.

- YolinY.Sky: the one who lead the human race out of the darkness in which they've been considered as the games weakest race with orc as their most feared enemy.
A new build order, mass casters, beasmaster 2nd and a very aggressive playstyle instead of AM/MK/riflers/casters against orc was the new way. In the semi-finals, Sky demonstrated impressively that orc players have to prepare for a new era when he had a closely bo5 battle with Zacard which he lost 2-3. But in the following months, the strategy got more and more successful, many players started using it and orc was no longer superior to human.
Sky brought the revolution of human attitude also against the other 3 races. Today we talk about human being too strong, before WEG 2005 we talked about human being way too weak! Impressive that they haven't been buffed in that period, only the attitude/the style has changed.

WEG 2005 was something like the opening game for Moon's world domination tour, after it he tourned to the untouchable #1.
Zacard lost shape and his uprising time when he destroyed his enemies with cruel harassement and wind riders was over.
Chinese e-sports, at least in War3, got more popular, new talents from China entered the international scene so that today we can say that China belongs to the three greatest Warcraft-regions together with Korea and Europe.

My conclusion is doubtless: The most influential, the most important tournament for the game we love, by far the most creative and surpriseful one and in my opinion a beautiful event.

What do you think about this? Please write you opinion or comment on my argumentation!
Have a nice thread and a happy new year, merry christmas to everyone!

WEG3 with the epic UD mirror final was kinda great
PL IV & MWL was awesome too,it's very interesting to follow match by match

Personally I've always considered WCG 2004 a tournament that started a new era of Warcraft III, because it marked the end of the first generation of pro players (MaDFroG and FaTC but also names like Kaj, Myth to name a few), the rise of a new one (Moon & Zacard being introduced globally, Grubby and ToD becoming Europe's top dogs after training in Korea) and it was the tournament where Europe and Korea stopped being mostly seperate scenes (which still seemed very much the case after previous ESWC's and WCG's) but instead a international one was formed with competitions from that moment (such as WEG) including a range of competitors from all around the world which still is very much the case till this day.

Hehe thanks for your comment #2, it's always nice for me to find out something about the warcraft scene before my time.

Nice story.., Personally i liked the WEG series the most.

the most influencing tournament for me was WEG Masters. I didn`t sleept in the nights, because i watched all the games(cs and wc3). Furthermore a very emotional moment for me was, when i saw Zacard whining and Sky celebrating his birthday on the stage. Tod diary-entries were also very nice to read and informative. At least Grubby was able to win against Moon. He jumbed up from his chair and some chinese fans ran on the stage to celebrate with him : )

so far. merry christmas!

yeah i'm a member one of them...

LOLOL SENTIMENT etc.

totally agree with u...

merry christmas to everyone!

Weg 1

You are sick... Just.. search help pls

tournament won by none elf.

Thumbing down is just great x)

imo its not a tournament but a year 2007 wich got e sport in wc3 to a new era : /

lol disco & mlw why do you have to bring this moon is the best others suck flamingfest to every thread. You have made your opinnion clear now stfu.

I think the first time I was seriously excited watching a warcraft III match was blizzcon's Zacard v Grubby match. I was there in person, and that aclhe pitlord madness was legendary.

topic starter said it all. WEG 2005 borught us an nternational hardcore solo tournament system, tons of new strats and Euros, Koreans and Chinese clashing for the first time.

i heard that zacard comes back, is it true??

mb,i saw xiaot's blog that zad is considering if he comes back!

yep,it says that sase invited xiaot to a bar,at there xiaot found that zad was there too,they had a long talk and zad said that he wants back.link like this:
http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_4947cfab010009tj.html
it is xiaot's blog.

KODE5 UK qualifier 2005 - the first time i ever played WC3 on LAN. I lost every game ;D

Another personal one for me was ESWC05. I'd only been playing/watching WC3 for about 8 months at the time and it was still my "second game" after CS. Since watching FoV vs Grubby at that event it's totally taken over - still one of the best games i've ever seen and it's telling that in the Replays.net top15 movie about 5 clips were from just that one series of games.

WEG was also epic, as everyone has said. I remember getting up at 5am to watch games on PPL.

I wish i'd seen the old Korean TV leagues when they were new as well. I've seen a few vods, of course, but it's not the same as seeing it live.

summary like i just say,sase invited xiaot to a bar in beijingg,at there xiaot says he meeted tod and zad,zad gave xiaot a big hug,said'i love u man . u are my friend u know ? i want back warcraft3.' ;)

if he is in the army , how he was in a bar ?!

this blog is written at 30th oct 2007,at that time zad has finished his military service.

Oh really? Then he wasn't serving more than half a year. I hope this is true and that we can see Zacard playing again soon.

SK.Zacard anyone ?

WE.Zacard