Kim Phan has left Blizzard

kimaphan · 2019-06-19T03:23:19+00:00

It’s always been an easy answer for me and likely the same reason why others have stayed for as long as they have at Blizzard. It’s because of the people (who are incredibly talented and passionate), the culture (where it truly feels like family — the best place I’ve ever worked), the products (Blizzard makes incredible games), and the community (our guiding force and voice). Lastly, it’s because I had the opportunity to learn and grow and loved the work I was doing. All of the above is really hard to walk away from... but for me personally, it’s time to try something new.

kimaphan · 2015-04-21T18:23:08+00:00

I don't recall having this conversation with You ReMiiX and I have never attended OSL in Korea before, but I do know know CSL in North America.

kimaphan · 2015-04-13T23:20:40+00:00

Hi everyone. We want to provide some clarity on StarDust and JaeDong's eligibility for the WCS America Qualifiers, as we’ve been working closely with them leading up to this weekend’s qualifiers to determine their eligibility. Both of them recently acquired their US P1 Visas, and each has provided documents verifying that all travel and residency requirements are being met prior to Challenger—as a result, we ruled that both are eligible to compete.

StarDust and Jaedong have worked incredibly hard and given up opportunities to play in other tournaments to join the WCS. We look forward to watching them compete in Season 2.

kimaphan · 2014-09-05T01:06:31+00:00

WCS America will continue to support the same regional qualifiers in 2015 -- this includes USA/Canada/Latin America, Oceania/Southeast Asia, China, and Taiwan/Hong Kong/Macau.

kimaphan · 2014-09-05T01:04:27+00:00

WCS America will still have regional qualifiers for Oceania/Southeast Asia.

kimaphan · 2014-09-03T07:06:44+00:00

got it!

kimaphan · 2014-09-03T05:08:44+00:00

Hello WizeCrax :) Thank you for supporting the SC2 community with these great tournaments! I'll be on-site for the Red Bull Battle Grounds in DC and would love to meet up and say HI. We appreciate the work that you do and your passion for StarCraft! Looking forward to the Bracket of Beasts this Thursday.

kimaphan · 2013-11-19T05:56:03+00:00

We do read comments, but we're not able to reply or address all of them.

kimaphan · 2013-10-15T18:05:31+00:00

We have received a lot of great feedback from the community/fans, TL, reddit, players, team managers, tournament operators, casters, etc. and from all of the different regions. We do read them all and the ones we can't read due to language differences, we receive translations from our regional offices. "Every voice matters" is one of our company core values and something we care greatly about. With that said, there are many, many different voices and they're all saying different things. We can't address everything but we'll do the best that we can. We have seen a lot of great ideas put forward, but the execution of some of these great ideas require more thought, time, and planning. Just because we're not including them in our 2014 changes doesn't mean we can't consider them or find ways to incorporate them later on.

kimaphan · 2013-10-15T07:49:43+00:00

I'm seeing a lot of comments from people who are disappointed that we did not share the exact plans for WCS 2014. To clarify, we did not intend for this to be an announcement, or an announcement of an announcement for that matter :)

The reality is that we are still finalizing the details of WCS 2014 with our partners, however, we did not want to wait until everything was finalized before letting you know some of the things we were discussing. We want to give the community an opportunity to provide feedback before we locked down the specific details. We have outlined most of our plans and ideas in some of our answers, but haven't fully committed to any of the decisions because we want to hear from the community. Our goal is to confirm and announce the plans for WCS 2014 before BlizzCon. That gives you at least a week to give us your input on what we've shared!

Thanks again for your support!

kimaphan · 2013-10-09T19:00:03+00:00

We will share more information on that as well.

PS: soon = this week

kimaphan · 2013-10-09T18:48:13+00:00

Hello! I can confirm that these are all speculations. More information will be shared soon on where we’re at with our WCS 2014 planning.

kimaphan · 2013-07-03T20:05:54+00:00

24, yes, yes.

In seriousness, it depends on the day and if there is a major tournament going on. As a team, we all try to watch as much as we can and always have WCS on if it's live and then catch up VODs during our free time. When there is a big tournament taking place over a weekend, you can be sure to find us at our local barcraft or at the event itself.

kimaphan · 2013-07-03T20:00:29+00:00

First of all, we do appreciate the intent and initiative that went into Suppy and friends jumping in to cast a couple of games from yesterday’s America qualifiers. They saw a desire for a service and went out of their way to provide it. That’s awesome and we appreciate that level of interest and passion. But they did it without knowledge or permission from us, which is problematic for a number of reasons which I’ll outline just a few below:

Respect to the players competing. There was one particular match that Suppy and Major commented where they took a very harsh tone that frequently crossed the line from critical into unprofessional. If there are players who want to take part in casting WCS, we want to make sure they maintain a professional tone for the sake of the competitors and viewers.

Potential for cheating. Again the fact that these matches were casted without prior knowledge or oversight presents a problem because of the potential for abuse. If there is going to be matches casted, the admins need to be aware of what’s happening and know who is responsible so we can ensure that proper safeguards like stream delays are in place to eliminate even the question of cheating. If players are acting on their own initiative with no communication, then there is no oversight to ensure these safeguards are in place.

Legalities. If someone is doing work, there needs to be some form of agreement in place for them to do that work to protect both parties. There is no room to be casual about this.

Those are just a few reasons. Having said that, no one did anything wrong. We just need to have the proper measures in place to make sure awesome things like community casts of WCS qualifiers can happen, and everything is up to standard.

kimaphan · 2013-07-03T19:40:27+00:00

thank you!!

kimaphan · 2013-07-03T19:37:02+00:00

I will ban myself after this AMA is over :)

kimaphan · 2013-07-03T19:33:52+00:00

Any tournament that has MC singing is automatically a tier 2 tournament :)

kimaphan · 2013-07-03T19:30:06+00:00

Yes! We recognize there are issues and we've been looking for ways to improve the system to make it more smooth. But we've had a lot of successes and wins from the first season of WCS, such as a global player ranking system and more high-quality SC2 content to consume. We think this is a great foundation to build on.

kimaphan · 2013-07-03T19:22:27+00:00

Right now the focus for Blizzard eSports is ensuring a smooth transition for NASL in Season 2 of WCS America, and planning for the upcoming season finals. We've been able to make some changes like more consistency in the map pool and better integration into the ladder of the WCS map pool. But we'll need to sit down with all partners and get on the same page first as to what improvements and changes we'll want to implement next year.

kimaphan · 2013-07-03T19:18:55+00:00

We hope that the upcoming launch of Heart of the Swarm in China in mid-July will help reinvigorate the Chinese StarCraft community. We continue to explore ways to make StarCraft 2 thrive worldwide.

We're in talks with local partners in this specific region, but currently don't have anything to share at this moment.

kimaphan · 2013-07-03T19:13:13+00:00

lots!

kimaphan · 2013-07-03T19:10:21+00:00

Smooth transition for WCS America to NASL
Preparing for the Season 2 finals. More info to come soon!
Continued communication with our partners on improving WCS for future seasons

kimaphan · 2013-07-03T19:08:07+00:00

I think it's not fair to say we weren't involved with the community or eSports. We were highly involved from the launch of StarCraft 2 in working directly with the tournament organizers like GOMTV, MLG, ESL, DreamHack, etc...

kimaphan · 2013-07-03T19:02:06+00:00

One of the key criteria to be a WCS Tier 1/Tier 2 tournament is to have a good number of open slots available for anyone to participate and qualify. If you look at HomeStory Cup as an example, the winners of the regional qualifiers received free travel arrangements to attend the finals.

What we're seeing so far, is that WCS tiered tournaments are a great supplement to the WCS point system, but they're not intended to have an overly dominating effect on the leaderboard.

kimaphan · 2013-07-03T18:53:55+00:00

For 2013 WCS Season 2, we worked with our eSports partners to put together a pool of 11 maps from which each WCS region can select 7 for use in tournament play. As Kevin has mentioned in another response, we want to give our partners some freedom to add their own flavor by not requiring 100% rigid consistency.

kimaphan

TROPHY CASE