During a Pro Circuit tournament match (Winners Semi B), MMA and IdrA clashed like the titans they are. However, the audience was very disappointed with two huge mistakes performed by both StarCraft II Pro Gamers.

The first video shows the last minutes of the match. MMA accidentally destroyed his second expansion Command Center with his tanks in siege mode and a bunch of marines instead of a set of destructible rocks resting between the command center and the minerals. That mistake crippled his economy no doubt, however MMA can be praised nonetheless for his courage. Instead of typing GG, he took his army of tanks and marines into the mouth of one of IdrA’s expansion bases.

MMA’s tanks obliterated IdrA’s zerglings, but his amount of Mutalisks was staggering. IdrA could never know MMA accidentally destroyed his own Command Center, but the fact is IdrA had won this match had he continued to push his Mutalisks on those tanks, or destroyed a single medivac. Instead, IdrA did the unthinkable, leaving both tournament narrators literally speechless. IdrA typed GG and quit.

Apparently, IdrA made also a mistake: somehow his Drones were not harvesting gas to pump out more Mutalisks as he intended during MMA’s invasion. The Drones were lying still doing nothing. IdrA likely thought the Drones had been killed when he saw his low vespene gas count, thus decided to give up and quit.

This is definitely an embarrassing moment for IdrA to know he had the upper hand in this match, and quit.

There are a couple of things to meditate about this Pro Circuit match.

1. MMA killed one of his expansion bases’ Command Center instead of a destructible rock located between his Command Center and the minerals.

In this particular case, I think Blizzard should consider removing destructible rocks next to minerals for tournament maps. Otherwise, something must be done programming-wise to prevent misclicking a Command Center. It is easy to misclick two adjacent objects. Especially for high-click-count per minute tournament players who move all around the map, and in a split second might not notice they have misclicked. See how IdrA also seems to have misclicked resulting in his Drones not harvesting vespene gas.

In this aspect, something must be wrong that needs to be looked up, and fixed by the developers — if it is something within their domain worth investigating.

2. On the other hand, ProGamers are usually sponsored by companies who pay large sums of money to back these players. They become the image of those companies.

Personally, I think Blizzard should disable the Quit option from StarCraft II tournament clients, forcing ProGamers to continue playing the game to the very end. Blizzard owes this to the sponsors, and to the audiences. If these players took an extra few seconds to look at the big picture, they could focus a few seconds into rearranging their strategy. With three expansions, even if the mistake cost IdrA some valuable vespene gas, he might have a chance still. His Mutalisks were definitely going to obliterate his tanks and marines in that expansion invasion. He knew that.

Thus, why quit instead of going forward to the very end? This is not a decision a ProGamer should ever make. The audience is there to see a full all out game. The sponsors are paying to see their player perform professionally to the bitter end.

The TV stations are spending a big deal of money to broadcast these tournaments as well. The Quit option should be removed from StarCraft II tournament clients, and the players must be educated to continue the matches to the best of their skills until the last unit and building is killed. This is no skirmish in Battle.net. It’s a professional tournament, and with that there are expectations that must be met, and currently tournament rules must be modified to meet them.

via VoodooExtreme