Stephano does it again folks – coming through from the French nationals undefeated. Going all the way through the winner's bracket only dropping one game. Being taken to an unlikely reset by the Spaniard Vortix in the finals, showing a dominating two game set afterwards, Stephano won the European Finals of Blizzard's StarCraft II World Championship Series, securing himself a $24,000 paycheck and further enforcing the fact that he will be a force to be contended with on the World stage in China November 16-18.
Below is a list of the top seven from this tournament, as well as the Europeans who qualified from winning their National tournaments:
- 1st: Stephano – $24,000 + Seed
- 2nd: VortiX – $9,000 + Seed
- 3rd: LucifroN – $3,600 + Seed
- 4th: LoWeLy – $1,800 + Seed
- 5th-6th: BabyKnight – $1,600 + Seed
- 5th-6th: Grubby– $1,600 + Seed
- 7th: Nerchio – $1,200 + Seed
- 8th: Happy – $1,200
Looks like that EG Curse that I keep mentioning really is, as Stephano so bluntly put it, "bullshit". Walking down the runway to the interview area with his tongue hanging out, in a very Jordan-esque fashion, Stephano is not what you picture when you think of an eSports superstar. At least he backs up his swagger with superior skills – in his post victory interview when asked about what winning the European title means to him he simply replied: "More money in the bank, I guess", and when pressed a bit more by the interviewer, he amended to his statement to add "Of course, its an honor to go to China representing Europe and France. It's amazing!"
A huge congrats to Stephano and Evil Geniuses on the win and of course, to everyone who qualified for China. I also wanted to take a moment to thank Dreamhack for a wonderful production this weekend – really put our WCS finals here in North America to shame. MLG and Blizzard need to be taking notes: a dedicated venue JUST for WCS, not combining it with a MLG event, and better production quality overall need to be applied next year.
You can watch the finals that will be live in China from November 16th through the 18th, and we'll have all the coverage you'll need as those dates grow near.
Photo credit: Carl Oscar Aaro via Flikr
Dustin Steiner is GameZone's eSports Correspondent! Follow him on Twitter @VGHC_Deitis and check out Video Gaming Hard Corps, where he is a local tournament organizer for the S. FL. Fighting Game Community.
