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The
ASUS Republic of Gamers is an eight-player invitational
StarCraft II tournament held in
Helsinki, Finland over the weekend of Saturday 4th-Sunday 6th November. The event will be cast in English by Apollo & TotalBiscuit. This summer has been amazing for StarCraft fans around the world as for the first time our 'foreign' players have been competing on a level playing field with the Korean players who were previously seen as in a league of their own. Since the inception of the MLG/GSL Exchange Program, we've seen cross continental play on a regular basis at every MLG, IEM and GSL event. It is natural for a spectator audience to be interested in the best level of competition and had it not been for the recent major tournament victories by
HuK at MLG Orlando,
IdrA at IEM Guangzhou and
Stephano at IPL 3, then we might consider that tournaments that excluded Korean entrants would be seen as second tier. Though this is no longer the case - ASUS ROG is not relying on Korean entrants to succeed. The 'foreign' players can be regarded alongside their Eastern players as equals and because of that we can fully appreciate the level of competition seen at such tournaments.