THL's White Whale: Making Ground on The EU Server

By MartyB

THL has had no shortage of ambitious ventures. The league has promoted all kinds of formats and ways to play over the years. Some were hits with the community, while others received more lukewarm receptions. Nearly all of these formats, however, shared one thing in common: they were run on the Americas server. 

Eventually, though, ambition will lead those to explore the furthest reaches. In THL’s case, this meant reaching out to a new server. Hearthstone’s EU server was historically known to be one of the largest and most competitive servers the game offered. In theory, it was a perfect place for THL to thrive. More players meant more competition and more community. The league would also gain more opportunities to explore new ideas and try new formats. For nearly two years, THL became fixated on making a second server work. Little did The Board know at the time, this endeavor would be far more difficult than anyone could have imagined. 

After some time during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Americas server stabilized into a sustainable community. Most of THL’s members had been established in the league for a few seasons, with the Wild Series being the latest successful expansion. At this point, Wild had been around for over a year, and many players were fully integrated into the greater THL community. Now was a better time than ever to look into the next steps for increasing THL’s reach.


Testing EU’s Wild Side

THL’s next opportunity would actually present itself without much effort: Corbett, one of THL’s iconic Wild players, approached the board with a proposal: a Wild Series played entirely on the EU server. Corbett had already sourced most of the players, securing 6 captains for the series. All The Board had to do at this stage was create a structure for the series to be played in.

The first challenge faced was establishing a brand new ruleset to accommodate players from a completely new region. New deadlines would have to be created to account for different time zone., A single language would have to be designated for communication between players as well. The EU server is one of the most fractured playerbases in the game with dozens of languages falling under its jurisdiction. Both players and administrators needed a way to guarantee communications were understood by all parties.

Producing a standard ruleset was only part of the challenge though. New logistical obstacles presented themselves on the new server, such as THL’s own website being blocked by certain countries. Players from these regions were required to use their own VPN to participate, creating an extra layer of difficulty in recruiting new players to THL. The time zones common with these players also meant that new administrators would be needed to facilitate issues faced on the EU server. Corbett and I took over as liaisons to the proposed EU series. We’d serve as the Board’s non-US members to manage issues that would otherwise fall during times when the rest of The Board was asleep. 

The largest issue, however, was one that wouldn’t reveal itself until the season would begin. The players brought into THL were primarily from The Wild Side, a Wild Hearthstone Discord server that splintered off of the official r/WildHearthstone Discord server. The server was originally formed after r/WildHearthstone mods banned several notable members of the community. It became the de facto server for high level players on the Americas and Europe server at the time, but carried a certain toxicity due to the nature of players that the server originally accommodated. There was a belief at the time between Corbett and I that THL’s structure and The Wild Side’s previously established Wild tournaments would minimize the number of issues that arise during the season, but neither of us could predict how much could go wrong once games started getting played.

It didn’t take long for the inaugural Wild EU Series to become embattled with drama. The Wild Side quickly lived up to its infamous reputation thanks to a few players. The most obnoxious of these was BMKing69, or bmk for short. Bmk was a known troll throughout the Wild community, often stirring up dissent for the sake of causing trouble. It took only a week for their antics to create problems in THL. They fished for a DQ win in their first match using out of context screenshots from outside the organization. Later, they would give The Board even more headaches with their scheduling and match difficulties. One week, they gave an opponent headaches throughout the scheduling process, only to leave their match and block said opponent on Discord after falling 0-2. The issues came to a head when bmk harassed a former THL player on another social media platform, spawning outrage. They were forced to give a half-hearted apology and were later banned for continually causing stress among the community.

Incompetence was also as much of a problem throughout the season. Safari Wild, a team made entirely of French Players captained by Killeraccoon, embodied the ineptitude best. Killeraccoon was one of the most enthusiastic members to join, but struggled to grasp the English language. The language barrier led to several lapses in judgement and poor choices throughout the season, such as streaming matches with a teammate in call. The team was embattled with multiple DQ losses over these mishaps, but still boasted a successful season because of opponents also failing to make it to their matches. Safari Wild limped to the semifinals on the merit of showing up to matches alone, relying on multiple DQs to reach that point. Ironically, the week the team was eliminated also saw them receive another DQ loss. Semon, a Russian player, had attempted to stream their match without permission from their opponent. Semon would later be banned from Hearthstone entirely due to cheating on ladder, further showcasing the type of player that The Wild Side had offered to THL for this series. All in all, the Wild EU Series had the highest rate of DQs that The Board had ever seen.
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By the time the season was over, nobody on The Board wanted another season of Wild on the EU server. The series had been a continuous headache throughout the season. Fortunately, there weren’t enough teams to entertain continuing the series, so it was quietly removed the following season. The Wild Side had been separate enough from THL that its toxicity was also removed once the Wild EU Series ended, so there weren’t any long-term ramifications on the greater community either. THL was given a clean slate after that disaster.
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EU Take Two: A Standard Attempt

With Wild EU out of the way, THL would be able to focus on a more cohesive push into the EU server. This time, things would have to be done differently—interest would need to be gauged properly to ensure multiple seasons, players would have to come from more reputable places, and a series would have to be better supported to establish new players in the THL community. If THL was serious about entering the EU server, then it had to do things the right way.

After taking a season off, The Board concocted a plan to create a Pro EU series. It would first begin with measuring interest on the EU server to attract players and establish a presence. Several tournaments took place on Battlefy during the offseason to see if THL was something players were searching for. Although only a few players managed to stick around after the tournaments, the high participation rate suggested that the EU server was viable for THL to enter. The Board would go forward with creating its first ever Pro EU Series on the stipulation that more than 6 teams would join at the start of the series.

Pro EU would begin its first season in the Spring of 2022 with 9 teams. The Board was content with the number of teams and new players, as many captains had been established THL members that were originally from the EU server who brought friends from their original region to THL. The hope was that, unlike Wild EU before it, these accustomed players would encourage a healthy number of teams to participate each season. As long as Pro EU followed in the footsteps of established series before it, then it would see organic growth throughout the year to establish itself as yet another option for THL members to participate in.

It would be misleading to say that Pro EU didn’t have growing pains, but none of these compared to the nightmares from Wild EU. Players would sometimes struggle with language barriers and rule comprehension, but these issues were expected from the start of the season. The series quickly matured from an administrative perspective, meaning The Board had successfully dodged the biggest problems plaguing the Wild EU series that came before.

At first, there were positive signs coming from Pro EU, but cracks began to show as the year went on. Pro EU came at the tail-end of the COVID-19 pandemic, a time when many were beginning to return to school and work. People didn’t have as much free time as they did when Pro and Wild Series were establishing themselves. The new series plateaued over the year, only serving 8 teams in its second and third seasons. There was no stream of new players entering THL this time. Organic growth was nonexistent. The series quickly became unsustainable.

By the end of the first year, Pro EU was struggling to attract enough teams. Pro EU wasn’t an administrative problem in The Board’s eyes, but it didn’t have the players it needed to succeed long term. New players weren’t establishing themselves in THL the way they did in other series, meaning there was no real avenue to guarantee Pro EU would remain healthy for another year. The Board made the difficult decision of shuttering the series, and with it, THL’s access to the EU server.
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Back to The Drawing Board

What went wrong? Unlike Wild EU, Pro EU wasn’t embattled with drama and incompetence. Still, several of the issues seen in the former can be seen in the latter. Language barriers, for instance, seemed too difficult to overcome. Non-English speakers were discouraged from playing in THL, and those that did anyway were alienated from the rest of the English-speaking community. There were also issues with growth and retention. Wild EU’s players weren’t coming from a place that offered room for growth. The series was effectively limited to players in a single Discord server. It wasn’t a sustainable path for a series. Likewise, Pro EU’s focus on tournaments and organic growth wasn’t going to work at the time. The tournaments run had extremely low returns on investment, with some tournaments bringing no new players to the series. Pro EU needed a more established pool of players to pull from, something that every other series in THL has. Pro EU was the only series that couldn’t attract players from another THL series by nature of being played on a completely different server. It needed a stronger foundation and more support, but neither existed at the time.

THL was built on the Americas server for the Americas server, and its community thrived in that environment. The league’s home server was the foundation for much of what made THL successful, from its user base being united by only a few languages, to the similar cultures and timezones shared across the server. THL was no stranger to exploring new ideas, but it was only ever able to do so because of its server home first and foremost. The Americas server provided THL with the safety net it needed to explore and expand into what it is today.

As enticing as other servers may seem, the challenges they present require far too much of a foundation for THL to succeed there the way it has here in the Americas. The league needs a big push, not just from recruitment, but with establishing reliable longtime players that will help keep the format alive. Every team-based constructed format in THL has gotten by with established teams and captains participating every season, and any series on another server would need the same. Challenges like language barriers already make participating hard enough for some players, and asking these types of individuals to spearhead a brand new series with no prior history is a tall task. It proved too much for THL twice already. Would the third time really be the charm?

One day, someone ambitious enough will try to bring THL to another server once more. Whether the league succeeds in doing so, however, is a tricky matter. Once the safety net the Americas server provides is gone, there isn’t anything protecting the series from crashing and burning once more.