WCS: Looking Back at the Round of 32

The R32 is in the books and rather than delve into ForGG retiring after BlizzCon or the R16 matchups, I'd like to look back on the round that was.  I thought the most entertaining groups were D and E, while there was an abundance of one-sided series' in general.  The biggest upset was Hitman getting through, although taking out Elazer he's hardly knocking off one of the titan's of Europe.  The Chinese players all crashed and burned this season, with Shana and Jim the only 0-4's of the round.  Here's how predictions turned out:
Aligulac: 14-2 (!)
Me: 11-5
TL: 10-6

Both are personal bests this year for me and Aligulac (whose success approaches the ridiculous), while TL dipped ever so slightly.  For whatever reason the R32 has always been hardest for me, while the later rounds get easier--this is the opposite trend for both Aligulac and TL (thus far).

Racial balance
PvZ 5-6
TvP 3-5
ZvT 4-4

Map balance
Coda (22) PvZ 5-6 TvP 2-4 ZvT 3-2
Cactus Valley (15) ZvT 2-4 PvZ 3-2 TvP 1-3
Terraform (12) PvZ 3-3 ZvT 2-2 TvP 2-0
Iron Fortress (9) TvP 2-3 PvZ 1-3
Bridgehead (5) ZvT 3-0 PvZ 1-1

Dash and Terminal (3) PvZ 1-1 ZvT 0-1

Moonlight Madness (3) TvP 1-2

The Koreans make it hard to interpret these numbers, whose only notable is a seeming edge for Zerg in ZvT on Bridgehead.  Coda remains the most popular map, with Terraform replacing Iron Fortress as the third most after Challenger.

Viewership
NA broadcasts
Group A 23k
Group B 18k
Group C 24k
Group D 25k
EU broadcasts
Group E 17k
Group F 18k
Group G 16k
Group H 15k
Average: 20k; NA 23k, EU 17k

This is a drop off from previous seasons (viewership through seasons one and two was pretty similar), with about 3k less viewers overall and a significant drop for the EU streams.  I'm not sure if the drop can be blamed on LOTV coming soon, the inevitable march of the Koreans, or that the days were so short (incidentally, those who'd argue Koreans draw viewers should note the most watched stream, Group D, had no Koreans and only one top-foreigner).  The quality of games was not that great overall, featuring few memorable (or long) matches.  At any rate, statistically it's not the biggest of drops so there's no point in dissecting it too much.

This article is written by Peter Levi (@eyeonthesens)