On the topic of Evo since it's a month away now.
From an outside perspective, the skill gap looks too strong in North America with Romance/Reynalds/Luis Cha/Mr.KOF and the occasional appearance by Xian dominating the NA scene. The North American scene is starting to look stale with overall entrants for KoF on the down turn, though I did hear that UFGT had 70+ entrants, and less stream time in general. I also haven't seen a lot of TC guys attend a lot of the NA tournaments like RealKim, Ricardo, Yoshi, and ChrisKOF so they might have changed things up. Not really sure what's really happening in the USA scene for KOF, tbh, but I remember when TRB use to get 40+ players and now they're struggling to get 20 participants.
This being said, Evo looks to be even more interesting this year with a lot more strong foreign players showing up. I've read that a lot of the strong Mexican players will be participating this year. I think last year, not all of the players had transitioned to XIII at the time but at this point most people have made the switch. Based on the Tijuana tournament last weekend and the tournament/ranbat vids Bala has been posting; the Mexican player base looks incredibly strong. It also looks like Bala is leveling up considerably in Mexico, due to the stronger player base but this is purely speculation on my part. I heard he had some Visa issues so not sure if he's able to attend Evo this year.
Japan will have a stronger presence at Evo this year with several notable players entering including Kaoru, Kyabetsu, and Gosho (Gyosou?). Given the extra year for the Japanese to absorb KoFXIII, I wonder how strong they are now. Kaoru was one of the favorites to make top 8 last year but he ended up losing in top 32 and Kyabetsu was just shy of making top 16 I think. Should be interesting to see their development since Evo. Tokido and Mago haven't been attending as many North American tournaments this year so we haven't seen a lot of KoF play from them in a while. I'm not sure how sharp their skills are at the game now. On top of this, there's a lot more anti-character strategies vs Hwa Jai and Mr.Karate now.
Xiaohai and Dakou went MIA in KoFXIII since last year so not sure where they're at in the game. Last year, it seemed that both players were more focused with SF4. For those who do follow SF4's player base we saw Dakou almost make top 16 (I think?) while Xiaohai made top 8 at Evo and eliminated Daigo from the tournament. Xiaohai also participated in Topanga League's recent tournament with a 4th place finish; however, his words after wards indicated he was going to train even harder at the game. Xiaohai just qualified for Evo in SF4 by winning a Chinese major with Dakou taking 2nd.
Cafe ID said they would be returning to Evo this year but it looks like they've been streaming other fighting games on & off. Poongko has been practicing with Cafe ID this year so I'm sure he's improved since then but he wasn't particularly strong in the game. I'm not sure whether Mad KOF will be able to retain his championship this year but I guess part of this will be the luck of the draw in pools.