In some markets paypal has no market share at all - its whole value proposition is something that banks allready have.
Paypal is needed in USA due to archaic systems. In Europe many banks allow instant transactions without the risk of blocking your money for 180 days - what paypal seems to do
In both the EU and US PayPal is very widely used to pay in online shops. To a point that disabling PayPal temporary can show noticeable decrease in sales for most online shops, especially if international orders are involved.
When I sayed "competing with PayPal" I meant for paying online, i.e. alternatives to both PayPal and Credit Cards. Not p2p money sending.
> Also you never replied about paypal not being a real bank,
why should I reply on things which have nothing to do with the discussion?
This never had been about weather PayPal is good or bad or anything, but that it's is very dominant in huge parts of the (western) world _for online shopping_ (not for sending money between people). Something which is a fact weather I like it or not.
> Are you connected to them in any way?
no
through the way you jump from a normal discussion to conspiracy theories is not normal, are you trolling?
Paypal (or its little brother Venmo) haven't been needed in the US in nearly a decade. I've never had a European bank account, but Zelle seems to me to be just as good as what the Europeans have.
Paypal is never needed, not in the EU nor in the US but that misses the point.
Pretty much every single online shop/website ever allows paying with PayPal (and Credit Card). And you pretty much have to use it as not allowing paying with PayPal will reduce your sales noticeable, especially for international orders. This is something people funnily frequently rediscover, again and again.
Also I don't thing many people do use PayPal to send money between each other tbh. when I mean competing I mean for paying online not for p2p money transfer. Like sending other private people money always had been trivial, through slightly annoying, in the EU, even before smartphones where a thing.
I knew a guy who was high level RA player and he said that the high level game mostly revolved around 2 types of units: tanks and dogs - where you would send the dogs to bait out first shot and then your tanks to finish the job.
What Starcraft 1 does very well and what many other games cannot really emulate is the dynamics of units - that the battles can happen across the whole map - because few units are often still significant enough. There is obviously the whole "death ball" concept too - but Starcraft Brood War is full of mechanics that actually go against the death ball - for example siege tanks, or psionic storm that just annihilate clumped units. This never existed in Westwood games, what meant that most games were mostly just sitting in one place and building 50 tanks.
The whole "you can garrison marines in a building" thing in RA2 was nice.. but at the end again it was static defense.
It seems like it worked OK for campaign mode. It still is a perfectly reasonable choice but especially at the time, to prioritize the single player mode over the competitive scene.
Artosis (the person who is the English speaking commentator in the video) is in general quite technical - especially when it comes to the Terran fraction (one of the three fractions in the game; the other is Protoss - that you see in the video, and third is Zerg).
However Korea had a much bigger scene, with lots of players, coaches, teams - so they probably have more institutional knowledge.
So the suspicion, or assumption is that Artois can be the high-school coach level, but there are university coaches and professional coaches, who perhaps are even better. And they are better since in Korea Brood War had much bigger monetary backing - and social backing too.
If everyone in your highschool played the same game, there would be more players. Then if there were around 12 (or more) professional teams, they would find more talent, but also better coaches.
And it's not that Koreans dominated completely, players from other countries could win against them too, but usually they would not, especially as a whole match consisted often of few games (usually: best of 3 (so you need to win two games to proceed), best of 5 for finals).
To rephrase this differently, the two main English speaking comentators nowadays seem to be Artosis, who is technical and the second is "Falcon Paladin" channel, who is entertaining and commentary is often "what he sees on the screen" (with no, or sometimes even bad takes about strategy - or explanations "why we see what we see").
If Korea has 50 such commentators, then probably some will be entertaining and some will be very technical.
On a side note, Starcraft Brood War is not only very well balanced for play and entertaining to play - it is also very entertaining to watch, since units are relatively distinct and it at least partially avoids the "unit blob" problem (where one group of units attacks another group of units) due to existence of various units that make area damage (for example.. tanks). And yes I know that in big battles there are blobs, but at pro level they generally work really hard to spread the units across the battlefield - even if the units are primitive and have bad pathing. I digress, just wanted to say that the game is simply pleasant to watch - because it has a certain clarity.
Paypal is needed in USA due to archaic systems. In Europe many banks allow instant transactions without the risk of blocking your money for 180 days - what paypal seems to do
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