RTS Esports: From Brood War to StarCraft II and Age of Empires

Real-time strategy is where professional gaming as we know it started. Before MOBAs and tactical shooters filled arenas, StarCraft players in South Korea were signing salaried contracts, playing in televised leagues and training in team houses. Almost every structure modern esports relies on, from broadcast casting to sponsored teams, was tried first in RTS. This article covers how the genre got there, why it lost its place at the top, and where its competitive scene stands today.

See also our articles on FPS, MOBA, battle royale, fighting game and card game esports.

What makes a game an RTS

In a real-time strategy game, players gather resources, build a base, produce an army and try to destroy their opponent, all at the same time and without turns. Two skills decide games. Macro is the economy side: building workers, expanding to new resource sites and spending money efficiently. Micro is the control of individual units in fights. Top players manage both while scouting to work out what their opponent is planning, which is why the genre is so demanding to play and, for people who understand it, so rewarding to watch.

Competitive RTS is mostly one-versus-one. There's no teammate to cover for a mistake, and that makes individual players the stars of the scene rather than organizations.

The roots: Herzog Zwei, Dune II and the 1990s

Strategy games with real-time elements existed through the 1980s. Herzog Zwei on the Sega Mega Drive is often cited as an early influence. The template most people recognize came from Westwood's Dune II (1992): harvest a resource, build structures that unlock units, and fight on a map hidden by fog of war.

Westwood's Command & Conquer and Blizzard's Warcraft series built on that formula through the mid-1990s, and Ensemble Studios released Age of Empires in 1997. Online play over services such as Blizzard's Battle.net made it possible to play strangers at any hour, and that is where competitive RTS really began.

StarCraft: Brood War and the birth of pro gaming in Korea

StarCraft came out in 1998 and its expansion, Brood War, followed the same year. Its three races (Terran, Zerg and Protoss) play very differently yet stayed remarkably balanced, which gave the game enormous competitive depth.

In South Korea, the game took off in PC bangs (internet cafés) at the end of the 1990s. Cable channels such as Ongamenet and MBCGame started broadcasting leagues, and the two individual tournaments they ran, the OSL and the MSL, became the most prestigious titles in the game. The Korea e-Sports Association (KeSPA), founded in 2000, organized a professional team league and player registration. Teams backed by large companies such as SK Telecom and KT ran team houses where players lived and practiced for long hours.

Players like BoxeR, NaDa, iloveoov, and later the "Bonjwa" era of dominant champions including Flash and Jaedong, became genuine celebrities. Brood War finals drew big live crowds, and the scene created habits that later esports adopted almost wholesale: professional casters, weekly broadcast leagues, salaried players and team sponsorship.

The Brood War professional league era wound down in the early 2010s as the industry moved to StarCraft II. The game never disappeared, though. After Blizzard released a free remastered edition in 2017, Brood War kept a Korean scene going through streamer-run leagues such as the ASL (AfreecaTV StarLeague), and many veterans still compete.

Warcraft III: heroes and a global scene

Warcraft III (2002) and its expansion The Frozen Throne (2003) added hero units that level up and carry items, and that shifted the balance towards small armies and careful control. It was a major title at the World Cyber Games and other international events of the 2000s, and players from Korea, China and Europe became well-known names. Moon, Grubby and Sky are three of the era's best known.

Warcraft III's biggest long-term influence came from its map editor rather than its own ladder. The custom map Defense of the Ancients (DotA) grew out of the Warcraft III modding scene and became the blueprint for the entire MOBA genre. Our MOBA esports article covers that story.

StarCraft II: the global era

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty launched in 2010, followed by the Heart of the Swarm (2013) and Legacy of the Void (2015) expansions. It arrived just as live streaming went mainstream. Players could stream practice on Twitch, and international tournaments could be watched for free anywhere, so the scene was global from day one rather than centered on Korean television.

Key competitions of the StarCraft II era:

• GSL (Global StarCraft II League): the Korean premier league, run by GOMtv and later AfreecaTV, and long regarded as the hardest tournament in the game.
• IEM Katowice and other Intel Extreme Masters events: Katowice became one of the scene's most important annual tournaments, with players from every region competing.
• WCS (World Championship Series): Blizzard's circuit, which ran from 2012 to 2019 and culminated in a world final at BlizzCon.
• ESL Pro Tour: from 2020, ESL took over organizing the main circuit after Blizzard stepped back from running it.

Korean players dominated for most of the game's life, but the scene produced famous exceptions. Finland's Serral became the first non-Korean to win the WCS Global Finals, in 2018, and has stayed among the very best players since. Belgium's Reynor and Poland's MaNa are other well-known non-Korean names. Long-running Korean stars include Maru, Rogue and herO.

Blizzard ended new content development for StarCraft II in 2020, but balance patches and the tournament scene have continued. The Esports World Cup in Riyadh has included StarCraft II since its 2024 edition, which gave the game one of its biggest prize pools in years.

Age of Empires II: the unexpected revival

Age of Empires II (1999) never had the Korean broadcast machine behind it, but it has the most remarkable second life of any RTS. A community kept it alive for years after release, then an HD re-release in 2013 and the Definitive Edition in 2019 brought a new generation of players and active developer support.

Tournaments such as Red Bull Wololo, often held in castle venues, and the long-running community-organized series became highlights of the year. Players such as TheViper, Hera and Liereyy are widely known well beyond the AoE community, and the scene stands out for how much of it is built and run by players and casters rather than publishers.

Age of Empires IV (2021) also has an active competitive scene, but as of 2025 Age of Empires II remains the larger and better established of the two.

Why RTS lost its spot at the top

RTS didn't stop being made after the mid-2000s. Company of Heroes, the Total War series, Command & Conquer 3 and others all arrived later. What changed is that the genre lost its place as the biggest esport, for a few reasons:

• The skill barrier. Learning to manage an economy and an army at once is hard and a 1v1 loss is solely on you. MOBAs kept the strategy but split it across five players.
• Spectating. Without knowing build orders and timings, much of an RTS game is hard for a casual viewer to read. Team games with clear fights are easier to follow.
• Publisher investment. Blizzard's attention moved towards other titles in the 2010s, while games like League of Legends were built around their esports from the start.

Developers have since tried to modernise the genre. Stormgate, from a studio founded by former StarCraft II developers, entered early access in 2024 but has so far struggled to build a large player base. It's fair to say no new RTS has yet challenged StarCraft or Age of Empires for competitive attention.

Following RTS esports today

The scene is smaller than in its peak years, but it's stable, dedicated and easy to follow. StarCraft II has the most structured calendar, with regular online cups plus a handful of large offline events each year. Brood War lives on through Korean streamer leagues, and Age of Empires II has a busy calendar of community and sponsored tournaments.

On Esportsresults, StarCraft II is covered across a few pages:

• StarCraft II matches: today's live and upcoming series and recent results, with a date picker for browsing back through the archive day by day.
• StarCraft II power rankings: an Elo rating calculated from finished matches since July 2025. Wins at bigger tournaments count more, and margin of victory matters, so a 3-0 moves a rating more than a 3-2. Only players and teams with recent, regular results are listed.
• StarCraft II transfers: roster moves as we spot them, useful for checking which organization a player currently represents.

Conclusion

Real-time strategy built the foundations of esports. Brood War showed that video games could support professional players, broadcast leagues and big crowds, Warcraft III spawned the MOBA genre, and StarCraft II carried competitive gaming into the streaming era. The genre is no longer the biggest in esports, but StarCraft II and Age of Empires II still produce some of the highest-skill competition in gaming, followed by audiences who know exactly what they're watching.