At BlizzCon, Finnish Zerg pro, Joona “Serral” Sotala, was crowned this year’s StarCraft II WCS Champion becoming the first non-Korean player to ever win the coveted honor.
Serral was a definite favorite to win it all going into BlizzCon 2018 as he didn’t lose a single map in all of his matches during the group stage. Alongside him was Korean player Cho “Maru” Seong Ju who was favored to make it to the main event as he also didn’t lose a single map in his group. Those odds changed when Maru was swiftly defeated by Kim “sOs” Yoo Jin in the opening day of BlizzCon.
Serral started things off well in his first matchup against Dark where he won all of his maps. He then went head-to-head with 2017’s StarCraft II WCS champion, Lee “Rogue” Byung Ryul, where the Korean player actually managed to take a map from the Finnish star. Despite that, Serral won bringing him to the Grand Finals against Korean Protoss player, Kim”Stats” Dae Yeob.
Serral started strong in the best-of-seven Grand Finals taking three wins in a row. A 4-0 sweep seemed like that was going to be the result but Stats gave him a run for his money taking two maps, potentially going for the reverse sweep. Unfortunately for Stats, that was not the case as Serral claimed the title as champion.
Prior to the StarCraft II 2018 WCS Grand Finals, we spoke with Serral about his feelings going into BlizzCon. While he gave a lot of credit to the players who made it to the group and bracket stages, he was “very confident” in his abilities to win the event.
Serral isn’t the only one making history in Blizzard esports. During the Overwatch World Cup, South Korea won the tournament for the third time in a row completely sweeping the bracket. Support expert Sung-hyeon “JJoNak” Bang was named MVP making him both the most-valued player of both the Overwatch World Cup and Overwatch League within the same year.
Tons of reveals from BlizzCon 2018 have made its way out to the public this week. Make sure to check DualShockers for more info Blizzard’s other series like Diablo and World of Warcraft.