With the start of the new year, GomTV's Global StarCraft 2 League will enjoy both minor and major changes to its structure. The alteration comes in many forms, including one to the prize pool, the GSL and GSTL formats and the cutting off of other GomTV events.
The translated Thisisgame.com article posted on the TL forums reveals that GSL Code S suffers the greatest changes, beginning with the match format. The Ro32 and Ro16 will no longer be played in a Bo1 format but in a Bo3 instead. As a result only one group per day will be played (compared to two a day as of current). This will increase GSL's duration to eight weeks per season and make it a total of five seasons per year.
Furthermore, the group nomination ceremony will be held before the Ro16 instead before the Ro32. The latter will now see eight players seeded in each of the groups and the remaining twenty four contenders being allocated a group via a random number generator.
The prize money will also be a subject to change and while the Code S rewards stay pretty much the same, the prize pool for Code A is almost double. In addition, said money rewards will be given according to players status and if a Code S player should fall to Code A, he will receive an S-class prize money.
GSTL, GomTV's team league, is not to be unaltered as well, the tournament being turned to a double-elimination three-round format. The finalists of the previous season (in this case MvP and Prime) will be directly seeded into the second round (where the double elimination bracket will come in use) but every other team signed for the GSTL will have to go through an additional first round. The third round are the semi-finals, structured in a cross-match manner, meaning that the winner of Round 2 Group A will play the rinner-up of Round 2 Group B and vice versa. The winners will go to the grand final.
Last but not least, year 2012 will also see the discontinuance of the World Championship and Super Tournament events, unfortunately. Both tournaments had unique format (WC featuring Korean and foreign players in a both an individual tournament and a team one; and ST just bringing together the top 64 players in the GSL ranking) but will not get a second season of their own.
The first GSL for 2012 is scheduled to begin January 9th and the GSTL is bound to kick off at the end of the month, January 27th.
Links
Thisisgame.com - Source (Korean)
TeamLiquid.net - Source (English)
