League of Legends (Old)

[Knight of Cydonia]

$30k when they have a pretty good shot at making it through to the finals is pretty much nothing. Riot buckling under their reliance on the Korean/Chinese scene to make up for the inevitable "foreigners don't win, so why watch" problem that SC2 faces whenever the last westerner drops out of an MLG.

[GreyICE]

Riot's investigated all alleged instances of players cheating by looking at the minimap

Highlight: AzF fined $30,000 for AzF Woong looking up at the minimap during the TSM game. Riot found that:

AzF Woong violated the rules by looking at the stage screens. His actions yielded benefits for AzF in the game. Other members of AzF modified their gameplay based upon the information.

It's good that they took the matter seriously, and made what looks like a very fair judgment. $30,000 is a fair chunk of change.

KoC, you're not seriously telling me that they'd rather have Azubu Frost advance than the very last team in North America advance and thus were biased towards Frost. Frost outplayed TSM. Period. That does not excuse their behavior, and they were fined quite heavily for it. Honestly, did Riot shoot your dog or something?

[hitogoroshi]

KoC, you're not seriously telling me that they'd rather have Azubu Frost advance than the very last team in North America advance and thus were biased towards Frost. Frost outplayed TSM. Period. That does not excuse their behavior, and they were fined quite heavily for it.

Honestly, did Riot shoot your dog or something?

Man, don't say stuff like the bolded. I agree with you about Riot's decision being a pretty good one, but ending on that is like saying "let's make sure this discussion is as angry as possible!"

I think that dqing Azubu would just put a weak and not-prepared TSM into a semifinal they have no chance of being seriously competitive in. But Riot needs to take this seriously and I'm glad they were as thorough as they were (putting in the dude adjusting for screen glare is a good sign.) Ultimately, it's a company full of dudes who love the game, not dudes who are experienced at running a business, and I'm willing to cut them slack because their heart's in the right place. I can easily see why a Starcraft fan would view things differently, because I think there's a lot more professionalism there than in Riot since well, it's much more of a

business

than Riot's "League is cool, let's all watch some".

[Cyberbob]

A remake would be totally unneccessary. TSM got owned even when AF wasn't looking at the map. I feel like the fine could and should have been bigger though considering the amount of money they stand to win even if they lose their next match

[JDodge]

Knowing Korean teams from Starcraft,

someone

is going to be fed through the corporate meat grinder when they get back to Korea.

[Knight of Cydonia]

KoC, you're not seriously telling me that they'd rather have Azubu Frost advance than the very last team in North America advance and thus were biased towards Frost. Frost outplayed TSM. Period. That does not excuse their behavior, and they were fined quite heavily for it.

Average viewer drop when the last westerner drops out of MLG in Starcraft 2 is 8-10k. Let's be REALLY generous and 10x that for Season 2 finals.
Now compare that to the millions of Chinese/Korean viewers we're being assured are watching. Guess who Riot are going to pander to?

Also, if you think $30k is a significant loss to Azubu Frost, given the chance they have to make the finals, you are seriously out of touch.

PEdit: Agree with JD, even if they win Woong will probably take the hit out of his share of whatever prize money they get since he's the one being cited.

[Brandi]

Help! My text in game randomly changed to Japanese and I can't change it back

[pickemgenius]

Fine with the fine, move on play games.

[JDodge]

Also, remember that their screen-looking

only

affected the outcome of this game (which I feel they likely would have won anyways) and thus it makes sense that Riot would only sanction on Azubu's guaranteed winnings ($150k) up to this point. Riot can't sanction based on the likelihood that something

will

happen (anyone who says that Azubu is practically guaranteed the finals didn't watch CLG.EU vs Azubu in the OGN finals), they can only sanction based on what's already happened.

[GreyICE]

KoC, you're not seriously telling me that they'd rather have Azubu Frost advance than the very last team in North America advance and thus were biased towards Frost. Frost outplayed TSM. Period. That does not excuse their behavior, and they were fined quite heavily for it.

Average viewer drop when the last westerner drops out of MLG in Starcraft 2 is 8-10k. Let's be REALLY generous and 10x that for Season 2 finals.
Now compare that to the millions of Chinese/Korean viewers we're being assured are watching. Guess who Riot are going to pander to?

Also, if you think $30k is a significant loss to Azubu Frost, given the chance they have to make the finals, you are seriously out of touch.

PEdit: Agree with JD, even if they win Woong will probably take the hit out of his share of whatever prize money they get since he's the one being cited.

Yeah, but League of Legends is a lot bigger in NA than it is in Korea/China. More to the point, Azubu Frost outplayed TSM clearly and completely.

I think $30,000 is a good compromise between "you clearly ignored the instructions of the judge and cheated" and "but we made it way too easy to do exactly that." As you and several other people have noted, the teams shouldn't have been in the position of having easy possibilities of cheating.

At the end of the day, I've watched enough pro-football that I know that these calls aren't always easy. They do fine players in pro-football, but they don't always suspend them and they almost never kick them off the team (and they have NEVER disqualified a team from playing). Sometimes you have to split culpability. In this case the culpability splits about 40% Riot for making it possible and about 60% cheaters for cheating. Since there's almost no chance it really affected the outcome of the 3 game series (for pete's sake even TSM doesn't think it affected the outcome, even though they're not happy about it) $30,000 and a "that was your first and last strike" is a good position for Riot to take here.

I mean it's not like they took a flash drive with some sort of cheating program that reveals the opponent's minimap to the game, they took advantage of something that was freely available. It's like having an opponent with mirrored sunglasses in an MtG match. You know you shouldn't look, but really...

[Hinduragi]

Yeah, but League of Legends is a lot bigger in NA than it is in Korea/China

League is already the #1 played game in Korea, not sure about China. But it's huge in Korea already.

[Brandi]

Leona Corki, WELP.

[RXK]

karthus got counterpicked in lane

but clg.eu has a fairly good comp with disengages out the ass

they gonna farm til late game as usual

[GreyICE]

Yeah, but League of Legends is a lot bigger in NA than it is in Korea/China

League is already the #1 played game in Korea, not sure about China. But it's huge in Korea already.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johngaudios ... the-world/

For fans of eSports, there’s a shift going on that for the most part has gone under the radar. New data from Xfire shows that Riot Games’ League of Legends is now officially the most played PC game in North America and Europe. When you add in the rise of the game in Korea, where it’s already beating out StarCraft II as the most popular game, it’s clear that League of Legends is here to stay.

It's not exactly a unique distinction for Korea.

[GreyICE]

Karthus.

Farms in lane and fights in teamfights.

All good.

[RXK]

"jayce's damage is balanced"

[Brandi]

hmm, seems they can't really stop nunu.

[RXK]

You're gonna start a fight...

And you're gonna lose.

Welcome to

fight

WE club.

[JDodge]

karthus got counterpicked in lane

lolno

karthus can farm against vlad just fine

[GreyICE]

I honestly don't think there IS a counterpick to a Karthas whose willing to lose the lane in order to farm harder.

[Brandi]

BWAHAHAAHAHAHHHAHHAHAHAAA
FINALLY

[Hinduragi]

Holy shit, CLG was just a different team entirely compared to what we saw Saturday.

[Knight of Cydonia]

They sounded like they were playing against bots from how calm they were. Sheesh.

[hitogoroshi]

I'd rank M5 and TA as the best two teams. So, fully prepared to eat my words if I'm wrong, but I think this game is the real final.

[Flameaxe]

Lets be real:

Any of these teams could make the final, and I would be 100% satisfied with the game.