People are 'really' overstating the importance of Bo3's in doing well internationally.
Honestly since the change was made North America has only done worse at international events. They have an incredibly hard time simply getting out of groups to showcase what all of this series experience has brought them in a Bo5. The truth of the matter is that North America has done poorly because they aren't that much better or worse than their non Korean opponents from the other major regions.
Let's see here.
Season Three - when we really have a competition built on some kind of foundation. After TSM and Vulcan fail to move on Cloud 9 is the best hope for NA, they go and lose 1-2 against fnatic. Not much better or worse, they did ok, probably would have won this match if they had some time to warm up in the tournament but whatever. The Decent Korean teams are on the other side of the bracket, SKT comes out and smashes Royal in the final.
Season four - North America's best worlds appearance (no best of threes yet) LMQ has a chance to get out of groups. TSM and C9 make it out, C9 beats Najin to advance as the second seed, TSM and C9 both take games off the two best team of the tournament, SSW and SSB. Overall a respectable performance.
Season five - still best of one format - all of North America does awful in week two of the tournament and no teams advance. However both fnatic and Origen of EU make the semi finals - they didn't have best of threes yet either.
Season six - first worlds after transition to best of three format - CLG embarrassingly can't beat Albus Nox Luna in best of ones to advance. TSM can't win enough best of ones to advance and lose out to RNG and SSG. C9 barely advances and then promptly gets smashed by SSG who went 2-3 against SKT in the final.
The overall point of all this? There is no strong corellation between the format and whether or not you do well at international tournaments. The ONLY consistent thing at worlds is that Korea as a region does very, very well. Everything else depends on individual team performance and draws both for groups and elimination brackets.
In season 3 if Cloud 9 hadn't of been automatically seeded into this wonky best of 3 against a team that had actually been playing games could they have potentially made it to the finals? Yeah.
In season 4 if TSM had been put in the bracket with Najin or OMG instead of tournament winners SSW could they have made it to the finals? It's possible.
In season 6 if Cloud 9 had been seeded against H2K could they have made semis? Definitely possible.
I'm not saying this to be "lol NA apologist TSM should have won worlds season 4", that would be stupid, but people try to put way too much emphasis on things like format or league structure that they ignore the obvious. Top Korean teams are better than everyone else basically always. When North America does get out of groups they get seeded against not just Korean teams, but usually the best Korean teams. We have not seen any improvement internationally since the change. If anything they've gotten worse. That last point I feel should be obvious but there has been an unbelievable amount of comments along the lines of "oh no just when we were starting to get close", excuse me? Which tournaments have these people been watching? We're at about the same level as we've always been, a noticeable step below Korea and around even with EU, China, and depending on the season Taiwan.
