Team Liquid

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Team Liquid
Location Netherlands[1]
Founded 2001
Manager(s) Netherlands Victor Goossens
Sponsors The Little App Factory
Razer
Twitch.Tv
Barracuda Networks
Divisions Dota 2
StarCraft II
Website www.teamliquid.net
www.teamliquidpro.com

Team Liquid is a professional electronic sports organization. Founded by Victor Goossens and Joy Hoogeveen in 2000, Team Liquid was initially a news site focusing on the original StarCraft, but switched focus and expanded with the release of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. In 2012, Team Liquid became a multi-gaming organization with the recruitment of a North American Dota 2 team.[2]

History

The website was founded on May 1, 2001 by Victor "Liquid`Nazgul" Goossens and Joy "Liquid`Meat" Hoogeveen under the domain teamliquid.cjb.net. On September 22, 2002 the website was moved to the current address of teamliquid.net with this post signifying the grand opening. A day later the very first poll was posted as a vote for the website's name with the current name winning over other suggestions such as likwit.com.

Although Team Liquid was known as primarily a StarCraft news site, there are many sub sections on the forums dedicated to other games as well. It was announced on August 30, 2012 that Team Liquid would be expanding out of the StarCraft series and also including Dota 2 as one of their main coverage games. On December 8, 2012, Liquid expanded beyond the StarCraft franchise for the first time, with the announcement of the recruitment of a North American Dota 2 team.[2]

Community Site

The Team Liquid website primarily provides StarCraft II and Dota 2 coverage, as well as forums for various strategy games. With the launch of StarCraft II, Team Liquid has grown into the largest StarCraft community on the internet, with over 220,000 active members and over eleven million total posts. The website employs four full-time staff at their New York office to work on the site.[3]

Content

The website has several features in addition to the forums, including –

  • Liquipedia – A Pro-Gaming wiki featuring articles about players, tournaments, strategy and other information for StarCraft: Brood War, StarCraft II and Dota 2.
  • The TLPD – A Player Database that records results from tournaments for players in Brood War and StarCraft II. The Database also calculates an ELO rating for players.
  • TL Power Rank – A subjective ranking of players in the Korean Progaming Scene.
  • Team Liquid Fantasy Starcraft – A Fantasy sport league based around the Korean Progaming Scene.
  • Calendar – A calendar on the right sidebar displaying upcoming and past events in the community, such as shows and tournaments.
  • Live User Streams – A list of current live first-person streams by pro-gamers and standard community members.
  • News - An aggregation of current eSports news[4]

Tournaments and Events

In addition to running a community site and team, Team Liquid also hosts a variety of tournaments and events for the community to enjoy.

Team Liquid Starleague

  • The two iterations of the TeamLiquid Starleague (or TSL for short) have been the biggest "foreign" (non-Korean) StarCraft: Brood War tournaments. The The first TSL sponsored by Razer in 2008 was highly anticipated at the time, sporting all of the world's top Brood War players. It was topped one year later with 2009's TSL 2, which featured a total prize pool of over $20,000 and remains the largest non-Korean Brood War tournament to date.
  • With the release of Starcraft II, Team Liquid announced a third installment, sponsored again by PokerStrategy.com with a prize pool of $34,700.[5] The tournament took place between March and May 2011. On 25 April 2012, a fourth installment was announced (TSL 4).

Team Liquid StarCraft II Open

  • The TL Opens are one-day open single-elimination tournaments alternating between the NA and EU battle.net servers. The eight TL Open events that lead up to the TSL 3 also served as a qualifier for the TSL.

Team Liquid Legacy Starleague

  • Announced on January 1st, 2013, Team Liquid would be hosting a series of online tournaments for "foreign" players of StarCraft: Brood War.[6]

Community Events

  • TL Attack: Modeled after a Korean TV show called "Bnet Attack", a professional player plays games against non-professionals while chatting with the hosts.
  • Liquibition: A King-of-the-Hill that is played in Bo7 mode.
  • TL Arena: A professional player will be matched up with inferior opponents. With each win he gains, another handicap is added that limits his game play options, until he loses or he has defeated a certain number of opponents.

Team

The clan Liquid was founded by Victor "Liquid`Nazgul" Goossens around the end of 2000. Approximately three months after leaving his previous clan, [i'm], Goossens made the decision to start his own clan. Liquid started with four members for the first months and grew to eight players over the following year. The members of the Liquid clan are handpicked by Goossens based on both personality and talent.[7] The team is sponsored by The Little App Factory, Razer USA[8] and Twitch.Tv.[9] The team has a dedicated news site separate from the more community oriented site at www.teamliquidpro.com, announced and released on May 10, 2011.[10]

With the arrival of StarCraft II, Team Liquid announced plans to become an active Pro-Gaming Team. Shortly after, sponsorship by The Little App Factory was announced,[11] which qualified them as a sponsored professional team. This gave Team Liquid a budget and allowed them to pay their players a salary and send the team to events around the world. On August 13, three players traveled to Korea in order to live in the OGS training house and compete in GOMTV's Global StarCraft II League (GSL).[12][13][14]

Of the three players entering the preliminaries, only one, Dario "TLO" Wünsch qualified for the first two GSL events. He was knocked out in the Second and First rounds respectively.

The third GSL was the strongest showing of Team Liquid so far. Three players, Hayder "Haypro" Hussein, Jos "Ret" de Kroon and Jonathan "Jinro" Walsh qualified for the main tournament. While Hussein lost first round and de Kroon in 2nd, Walsh made it all the way to the semi-finals, losing 0–4 to the eventual winner Jang "MC" Min-Chul.

In 2012 GSL Season 2, members Song "HerO" Hyeon Deok and Yun "TaeJa" Young Seo made it to the Round of 8 of the Code S tournament, with TaeJa being eliminated while HerO advanced up to the semi-finals of the tournament.

Current roster

StarCraft II

  • South Korea Song "HerO" Hyeon Deok
  • Netherlands Jos "Ret" de Kroon
  • United States Shawn "Sheth" Simon
  • Norway Jens "Snute" Aasgaard
  • South Korea Yun "TaeJa" Young Seo
  • Germany Dario "TLO" Wünsch

Dota 2

  • United States Sam "BuLba" Sosale
  • United States Brian "FLUFF" Lee
  • Germany Max "qojqva" Broecker
  • Canada Tyler "TC" Cook
  • Canada Peter "Waytosexy" Nguyen

Notable alumni

Selected achievements

References

  1. ↑ "About TL.net". Teamliquid.net. Retrieved 2011-02-06. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Horton, Samuel (2012-12-08). "Team Liquid ventures into Dota". SK Gaming. 
  3. ↑ TeamLiquid HQ Announcement
  4. ↑ Cody. "http://www.ign.com/blogs/ign-esports/2011/07/14/teamliquid-net-ign-pro-league-season-two-coverage". IGN. 
  5. ↑ Pokerstrategy.com TSL 3 Announcement
  6. ↑ Team Liquid Legacy Starleague
  7. ↑ "IPL 3 Groups, Stream Info, LoL and much more!". IGN. Retrieved 26 November 2011. 
  8. ↑ Goossens, Victor. "Razer Sponsors Liquid". Teamliquid.net. Retrieved 7 May 2011. 
  9. ↑ TwitchTV Sponsors Liquid
  10. ↑ Team Liquid - Professional StarCraft 2 Team - TeamLiquidPro: Home Sweet Home
  11. ↑ "Presenting TLAF-Liquid`!". Teamliquid.net. Retrieved 2011-02-06. 
  12. ↑ "Homecoming: Liquid` to Korea!". Teamliquid.net. Retrieved 2011-02-06. 
  13. ↑ Gaudioso, John (23 September 2011). "Pro Gamer Shawn "Sheth" Simon Talks MLG, StarCraft II and the Future of eSports". Retrieved 26 November 2011. 
  14. ↑ "oGsLiquid House Tour". Giantbomb. Retrieved 26 November 2011. 
  15. ↑ Ret Sweeps Assembly Gold SK-Gaming.com

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike; additional terms may apply for the media files.