League of Legends (Old)

[JDodge]

Yeah, Riot BETTER have a LAN client for season 3.

No excuses.

What happened? Not at home.

in 10 minutes, we will have hit the 8 hour mark in this best of 3 matchup

[Hinduragi]

Yeah, Riot BETTER have a LAN client for season 3.

No excuses.

What happened? Not at home.

Some people went to work around Game 1 or 2. Got home to see the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, and maybe 7th matches. Lucky them.

[Bub Bidderskins]

Basically, all hell broke loose.

[Bub Bidderskins]

Deman: "We're eight hours into the broadcast, and, honestly, this hasn't gone that smoothly."

[JDodge]

Deman: "We're eight hours into the broadcast, and, honestly, this hasn't gone that smoothly."

"i'm not even sure if anyone on the internet is even watching anymore"

[Hinduragi]

Matches aren't being played anymore according to Leaguepedia. Awesome.

[Bub Bidderskins]

Ominous announcement coming shortly.

[JDodge]

Matches aren't being played anymore according to Leaguepedia. Awesome.

leaguepedia proved they aren't a trustworthy source with the whole ddos thing

[GreyICE]

Riot farked it up

'nuf said

[Bub Bidderskins]

They should move the whole event to Curse's gaming house.

[Bella]

Deman: "We're eight hours into the broadcast, and, honestly, this hasn't gone that smoothly."

He was pretty smooth when he verbally pimp slapped The RainMan.

[JDodge]

HIT THE DAMN TURRET YELLOWPETE

[Hinduragi]

Matches aren't being played anymore according to Leaguepedia. Awesome.

leaguepedia proved they aren't a trustworthy source with the whole ddos thing

They're behind the scenes and transferring info on the fly as they get it. It was obvious even Riot wasn't sure about the cause and that's why they still aren't saying anything officially. Right now, I want to know what the fuck's going on while the poor commentators have gone on for 8 hours straight and are now still trying to fill time. You can't expect it to be locked in stone because that's dumb but I'd rather hear what's going on/being thought about than have to watch the stream and potentially waste even more of my time.

[JDodge]

Matches aren't being played anymore according to Leaguepedia. Awesome.

leaguepedia proved they aren't a trustworthy source with the whole ddos thing

They're behind the scenes and transferring info on the fly as they get it. It was obvious even Riot wasn't sure about the cause and that's why they still aren't saying anything officially. Right now, I want to know what the fuck's going on while the poor commentators have gone on for 8 hours straight and are now still trying to fill time. You can't expect it to be locked in stone because that's dumb but I'd rather hear what's going on/being thought about than have to watch the stream and potentially waste even more of my time.

They reported a rumor flying around vaguely as fact and were forced to backpedal away from it. That is not good journalism, that's being a fucking tabloid.

I don't doubt that they're probably correct, but I'm not going to rely on their word as proof that things are cancelled today.

[Bub Bidderskins]

The song on now is from

The Movies

(or at least was used in it).

[hitogoroshi]

that would have been so much worse if it had been phreak and riv for 8 hours. can you fuckin imagine.

[Bella]

HIT THE DAMN TURRET YELLOWPETE

While that was happening, all I could hear was Nuwen voice from one of my disasterous forays into AD carrydom yelling "RIGHT-CLICK THE FUCKING TOWER YOU DUMB CUNT".

Now, I right click towers when I'm AD Carry. Learning is fun and painful!

(Mostly painful)

[Hinduragi]

that would have been so much worse if it had been phreak and riv for 8 hours. can you fuckin imagine.

I honestly think that if it was not for Deman, I would have given up. My mind was broken after that 2nd disconnect during the final 60 minute teamfight.

Also, Jatt and DJWheat really had great informative things to say. I don't think Phreak and Rivington would have brought that to the table but I'm glad we had Jatt/Deman up there for this.

[RXK]

That entire series was only 3 hours shorter than Isner/Mahut at Wimbleton, the longest modern tennis match in history.

[xRECKONERx]

Jatt/Deman did great.

This whole event had TERRIBLE planning on Riot's part, really just a shitshow.

[JDodge]

And so we've reached the end of this long, grueling weekend; having watched every single moment I can say that on the whole it's hard not to have been a bit disappointed. This was supposed to be the greatest of the greats facing off on one stage for the rights to call themselves the best in the world - not to mention the $1,000,000 cash prize - yet at the end of the day, instead of being treated to the cream of the crop like we'd been promised, it's hard not to feel that with a few exceptions the games we saw treated us more to shriveled leaves forgotten and wilting in the bottom of refrigerator's crisper drawer. Some teams promised a lot and failed to deliver, some teams proved they were more than capable of competing on the highest level, and some teams got to play/sit around through an eight and a half hour spectacle that ended not with a bang but with the slow squeak of the last air flowing out of a rapidly deflating balloon.

With that said, let's take a quick look at each individual team that's been knocked out so far.

Team Dignitas

Coming into this, Team Dignitas was already making waves. They promised to bring in new strategies and change the face of the game as we know it. Unfortunately, while they did bring in said new strategies, their level of execution of strategies was subpar. Their roaming support tactics failed to have the impact on the game they needed them to have, and beyond that it was hard to not get a sense that their nerves got the better of them. Compare their performances against CLG.EU and Saigon Jokers vs their performance against Najin Sword after they'd already been knocked out of contention and the game effectively meant nothing - their performance in the latter was significantly improved. While it's true that they did play a much more standard strategy in that game, I'm not entirely convinced that their strategy could have worked against Saigon had their execution been a bit more on form. Overall, a disappointing 0-3 performance from one of the teams expected to do incredibly well going in.

Saigon Jokers

Saigon Jokers were a wildcard going in; they drew a group of three normally strong teams in Dignitas, CLG.EU, and Najin Sword after upsetting Singapore Sentinels in the qualifiers to get here. They started out putting in a solid yet ultimately futile performance against the dominant Najin Sword, then proceeded to manage an easy enough victory over Team Dignitas, establishing themselves as a team not to be counted out. Their performance against CLG.EU would determine which team would move on to the quarterfinals, and they put on quite the show. Unfortunately, they were not able to pull it off and after a series of mistakes were knocked out with a 1-2 record. That being said, Saigon Jokers had no expectations on them going in and managed to prove that they are a team to be watched in season 3.

SK Gaming

If Riot is to be believed with their keys to the game, SK's greatest asset is their emotions. Unfortunately, I feel that's probably about the worst assessment possible. SK seemed plenty emotional to me when Ocelote was seen letting out a string of expletives after the completely baffling base race loss to CLG.NA, yet they didn't manage to turn it into anything - just a saddening 0-3 result in their group. At one point, SK stood with Fnatic at the very top of the League of Legends scene; yet now, they stand only as a hollow shell of their former self, with only Ocelote left from their original lineup. They have a lot of work to do to remain relevant for season 3, but if they can put forward enough effort and stop being a revolving door of members, they might just return to being a force to be reckoned with.

Counter Logic Gaming Prime

Counter Logic Gaming Prime holds the distinction coming out as the only North American team to win a game after a completely bizarre base race with SK Gaming; how completely outclassed they looked against both Azubu Frost and Invictus Gaming underscores the fact that they just can't ever seem to seal the deal when there's everything on the line. A comparison was made on Reddit between CLG.NA and CLG.EU in the way they handle losses that I feel is quite applicable here; whereas CLG.EU will lose and then use that to see how they can improve, CLG.NA chose to take their losses and blame the fact that they only prepared strategies for being on one side of the map. While their godly strats on that one side of the map may be lost to history, they need to start taking losses as an indicator they need to improve instead of blaming random chance.

Invictus Gaming

There is no team at the world championships that has impressed me more than IG did; going in, I knew absolutely nothing about their team except that they're the team scarra of Team Dignitas was most afraid would be in their group. While Dignitas may have dodged that bullet in favor of taking 3 completely different ones, IG proved why they should be feared. A close game against Azubu Frost to kick off the tournament in addition to a strong showing against Moscow 5 in the quarterfinals proved they're one of the best teams out there. Unfortunately, their mistakes in both games both small and large were what lead to their inevitable downfall. It'll be interesting to see what Invictus will do in season 3 with a bit more practice.

Team SoloMid

People tend to have a lot to say about TSM; whether you deem them to be a bunch of immature kids or genuinely entertaining players, it's hard to find someone without a strong opinion one way or the other. One thing that everyone can agree on, however, is their sheer dominance on the North American scene over the course of the latter half of season two. Taking home win at event after event and ending up as the last NA team in the tournament, expectations were piled onto them. Unfortunately, they failed to seal the deal vs Azubu Frost's highly aggressive strategies. They leave the world championships with their heads held up high, and with a bright future for season 3.

Important Note:

Reginald's retirement is probably the single most important thing to have happened today; what happens off of that will probably dictate what the NA scene will look like during season 3. I'm personally hoping for something like Xpecial mid and TSM Nhat Nguyen, but we'll see.

Najin Sword

Najin Sword wasn't even expected to be in this tournament, let alone to go 3-0 in their group in such a convincing fashion - MakNooN's aggressive play in top lane in addition to solid play from the rest of their team firmly established them on day 1 as one of the teams to beat. Unfortunately, at that point, Taipei Assassins had not yet made their presence known in the tournament, and proved their name to be quite accurate as they easily dispatched Najin in a convincing and quick 2-0 series. Najin has, alongside Azubu Frost, shown here that the Korean teams are quite possibly the best in the world - we can look forward to the next OGN tournament as a showcase of some of the best players in the world.

And so the first part of the World Championships have ended. To those of you who missed it and read through this massive wall of spoiler text anyways, there are a number of games that are worth your time to look at:

Azubu Frost vs Invictus Gaming
CLG.NA vs SK Gaming
Saigon Jokers vs Team Dignitas
Moscow 5 vs Invictus Gaming (Games 1 & 2)
CLG.EU vs World Elite Game 2

With the end of CLG.EU vs World Elite delayed until a later date as well as the semi-finals, I look forward to those. Whenever those might be.

Because Riot is good at planning.

Need sleep - more thoughts tomorrow

[Hinduragi]

I've had some time to collect myself from being broken and I think I'm fixed now.

I really think the IT guys should just be more assertive. This is the fucking World Championship.

Not all of Riot fucked up. One group did, and you can make an argument that it was 2 very easily but we don't know all of the details.

Assuming you're a Net Op working for Riot and setting up the live event right now, you're telling everyone "hey, bringing the server to this is something we should do". But they don't make that decision, the guys who manage the money do. Now, the guys who manage the money are definitely thinking "we fucked up". I highly doubt it was something any Net Op could've foreseen or done anything about because noone can prevent hardware malfunction which, in this case, involved packet loss. That's internal hardware that might be something as small as a fried microchip(doubtful) to something overheating to RAM being broken. Only Riot can know what happened and, if it involved some hardware, I doubt they knew what it was, otherwise they would've replaced the unit as soon as they found it. It wasn't the tech's fault. It was whoever made the decision to not bring on-site servers to the event. A LAN client could've fixed it, yes, but since they don't have one, on-site servers is the real solution that would've completely averted the problem and any Net Op worth their salt would have, and should have, proposed it. It's what they're trained in school for.

With World motherfucking Championships up and 2 million dollars on the line, I can't see bringing the servers to the event being a bad thing regardless of money. If it means security and backups for things like this, you do it, no questions asked.

[Brandi]

On Regi's retirement, if anyone hasn't seen the video:

[PJ.]

RegiBro is retired.

PEdit: Brandi sarnathed me

[JDodge]

i beat you both