[Includes spoilers of games from Week 1-4 of NASL S4]
Yesterday Reddit exploded when this thread containing a Tweet from Naniwa about NASLs scheduling hit the front page. Pitchforks were out in full force in outrage that NASL were "incompetent " at scheduling games and letting players know about reschedules.
It all began when SelecT took a walk over against Naniwa when Naniwa didn't show up for his game - even though the NASL admin had told him the game had been postponed. The complete story is long and slightly complex so I won't get into it, but it can be found in the Reddit thread. What truly made this drama interesting was that when Xeris replied on behalf of NASL, people didn't suddenly go "Ohh that's why" and drop the matter - no. The response was full of faults and contradictions and didn't turn the spotlight away from NASL - if anything it was confirming the fault of NASL and saying that they were not going to take responsibility.
NASL is a fantastic league - 4 games a night for 5 nights a week with a combination of the best players in the world and the freshest up and comers makes for a great viewing experience and I often find it being my stream of choice as I fall asleep when I'm having a late night in the EU. Walk overs have always been an issue, anticipated matches being cancelled / postponed is never ideal, but in a league which works the way NASL does it is sometimes necessary to talk the hit and award a walk over.
Recently however it seems more and more players are not showing up for games and more postponements are being made than ever. Last night was the first day of week 5 and already there have been 6 walk-overs and 10 games that are yet to be played that should have been played by now (from Liquipedia at time of writing). Thats 20% of all games this season that have been delayed or will not happen. Some of these are due to completely legitimate reasons - players are travelling around the world to attend tournaments after all - but when it is a singular BO3 that needs to be played you would think NASL would get onto trying to keep this number a lot lower than it is.
They can of course not do anything about a player not turning up when the game was scheduled - but even discounting the given Walkovers that is still over 10% of games which have not been played this season due to rescheduling. NASL is a fantastic league - but is it really exciting and thrilling to watch and follow your favourite players if they are frequently not actually playing? I'll leave that question for you guys to decide.
To end on a lighter note however NASL definitely brings us viewing time of some of the greatest new up and coming talent in Starcraft 2 - which also makes for some fantastic upsets. Admittedly cross-server play is never the best to make judgements from, but in Week 2 ROOTs Terran player Masa took out aLive 2-1 - something more or less everybody did not see coming.
Leagues which promote these newer players are always great - a breath of fresh air is always welcomed - and the format of NASL gives any new player who qualifies a lot of viewing time over many weeks - exactly what you want to give your team and yourself when building your SC2 profile.
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