League of Legends - 2014 World Championship

[baekgom84]

So anyone else watching this? I know most people around here favour Dota as their LOMA of choice and personally I don't really play either these days, but I think this event is worth a peek if you have even a cursory interest in e-sports and the direction it's taking. It's not as significant as The International in terms of prize money, but I think what makes this event really interesting is the fact that LoL is pretty much the dominant competitive game in every major region. A Korean team is most likely going to win again, but I'm really curious to see how the other regions match up; the Western teams have been developing really quickly and I think there could be a couple of upsets to come.

[Gwardinen]

I watched a game this morning. The whole production of the event seems pretty neat, and it's always fun to see people at the top of their game doing stuff I never could.

[osmosisch]

I'm watching. There's some pretty entertaining games but the only high-level one has really been Samsing White vs. EDG. The most fun game to watch was probably SSW vs AHQ. The biggest surprise for me so far has been TPA vs TSM.

NA really seems to have stepped their game up this year, it's fun to watch. I can't wait for the other two groups though, I'm a lot more interested in how Alliance and C9 will compare to the rest of the world than groups A and B.

[Badfinger]

I have watched much less competitive League this past year than previously, mostly because the EU was boring, I can't stand Phreak or Riv, and I have to pay money to listen to    Doa and MC   .

 

I am paying attention though! I think the decision to play in Korean is a horrible one, frankly. Sure, it's the dominant competitive game there, but the loss of viewership from live audiences in NA and EU feels like a huge deal. I know we're a video on demand society, but my desire to watch something I watch in the same way as sports drops precipitously when it's not live. The number of potential eyes is EXPONENTIALLY higher in those regions. I'll grant that maybe Tencent knows something I don't about Chinese and SEA viewership, but from what I know about that region it still doesn't even seem close to balancing out?

[baekgom84]

I'm watching. There's some pretty entertaining games but the only high-level one has really been Samsing White vs. EDG. The most fun game to watch was probably SSW vs AHQ. The biggest surprise for me so far has been TPA vs TSM.

NA really seems to have stepped their game up this year, it's fun to watch. I can't wait for the other two groups though, I'm a lot more interested in how Alliance and C9 will compare to the rest of the world than groups A and B.

 

Yeah, I'm WAY more excited to see the teams in Groups C and D. NA teams in particular seem to have really lifted their game in the past year and have finally started adopting some of the professionalism and infrastructure of the top Korean teams. I hope an NA or EU team makes it to the semi-finals at least.

 

I have watched much less competitive League this past year than previously, mostly because the EU was boring, I can't stand Phreak or Riv, and I have to pay money to listen to    Doa and MC   .

 

I am paying attention though! I think the decision to play in Korean is a horrible one, frankly. Sure, it's the dominant competitive game there, but the loss of viewership from live audiences in NA and EU feels like a huge deal. I know we're a video on demand society, but my desire to watch something I watch in the same way as sports drops precipitously when it's not live. The number of potential eyes is EXPONENTIALLY higher in those regions. I'll grant that maybe Tencent knows something I don't about Chinese and SEA viewership, but from what I know about that region it still doesn't even seem close to balancing out?

 

Is it really that much higher in NA and EU compared to Asia?  I don't actually know myself, but I figured that it was pretty hard to get a handle on Chinese viewership in particular because they don't use traditional streaming platforms like Twitch or Youtube. Personally I thought the decision to hold the finals in Korea and SE Asia was to promote the image of the game as a global e-sport, with a focus on Korea in particular because perhaps they feel that Korea's wholehearted adoption of the game, coupled with their status as a sort of 'mecca of e-sports' lends them a legitimacy that other games don't necessarily have.

[Badfinger]

The point is more that there are a billion and a half people in NA, Brazil, and Europe. Scheduling games at a time where you might catch live casual viewership through word of mouth vs catering to the hardcore 50m population of Korea seems like a no brainer. They don't need to promote the image of a "global" competitive game. It's the biggest game in the entire world. There are 4 regions that have their own professional leagues. International competition has been dominated by Korea for nearly 3 years. I had the same complaint last year where they held the event in LA, but scheduled it to maximize exposure in Korea. 

 

The counterargument to mine is that LoL is actually on TV in Asia whereas it's all streams in the West.

[baekgom84]

Well if you include China, SE Asia and maybe even Japan (where there is talk of starting up new servers) into the viewership, I imagine you would fairly easily match the potential viewership of NA/EU/Brazil, with possibly the added benefit that most of the largest population centres are concentrated within similar time zones. The schedule is relatively EU-friendly as well, especially if you don't have school or work commitments. I feel like Riot's business decisions are generally on the savvy side, so given the information they have access to, which would include much more accurate viewership statistics, potential for growth etc, then I can only assume this decision was a heavily calculated one.

[osmosisch]

From the EU having the games on an Asian timezone is massively more convenient. It's awesome not having to miss sleep. It sucks for the US but hey, now you know how the rest of the world feels the rest of the time

Saying there's more people in the US than east Asia is just weird to me.

[Badfinger]

From the EU having the games on an Asian timezone is massively more convenient. It's awesome not having to miss sleep. It sucks for the US but hey, now you know how the rest of the world feels the rest of the time

Saying there's more people in the US than east Asia is just weird to me.

 

I didn't say there were more people, that would be silly. I am contending there are more potential viewers. I have no clue what the penetration into China is like. If it's not huge the potential live viewership is much higher catering to EU or Americas time zones compared to Korea and Taiwan. If what they're bringing in is the CHINESE market as compared to a Korean market they already have a stranglehold on, that's better business for them.

 

It doesn't make me feel less disenfranchised, though.

[Deadpan]

I've been watching quite a bit of the pre-Worlds stuff this summer. I'm not terribly interested in the event and don't really pay attention to what teams are doing well (or what they are called for that matter), but I enjoy watching League played at a high level. My interest in the game itself died quickly when I learned that I can't do the kind of map-awareness, vision management and team coordination that the game demands besides actual combat, but I've played enough of it to know what's going on in these games, and that makes them kind of fascinating to watch.

 

Besides, I'm generally very interested in learning about how Riot is managing this behemoth, in terms of communicating with players, addressing toxicity, but also making the game watchable as a spectator sport. Quite likely I'm biased towards them because I have some basic knowledge about what's going on in League, as opposed to Dota 2, but it seems to me that theirs is actually the superior spectator environment right now. From what I've seen of the International, streams of Dota games still use the game's standard UI, only with a bit more information layered on top, while League's is geared towards comparing team performance and individual matchup performance at a glance.

 

It's fascinating to think about the planning that must be going into these aspects of it.

[baekgom84]

Yeah, I actually copped a bit of flak online when I dared to suggest that as a spectator sport, LoL was actually easier to follow than Dota for casual players. But I still think it's true; as you say, the interface presents almost all of the key information at a single glance, and things like kills are much easier to track. I only wish that LoL had anywhere near the in-game spectating options that Dota has.

I'm really pumped for groups C and D on Thursday. Hopefully some of the Western teams can put up a fight against the Koreans and keep things interesting (but I still want Shield to win!)

[prawks]

I'll probably try and watch some of it, but ESL One's DotA event is coming up soon, and it's going to be a good one.

[Badfinger]

I cannot believe that TSM threw away their shot at a semifinal berth by being impatient against SK. They clawed all the way back, had the lead, and went for a crazy risky play to throw completely. They had a very legitimate shot to win in the next round against EDG if the could have taken the tiebreaker rubber match from Royal Club. They have no shot against SSG W.

[baekgom84]

Yeah, the ending of that game was just madness. To be honest, I kind of thought something like that would happen; it just seemed natural that TSM would score an impressive victory against a good Chinese team like Royal Club, but then throw it away against SK who they had already beaten convincingly and by that stage had nothing left to play for but pride. I don't really like TSM as a team that much but I do hope they put up a fight against White, just to keep the competition interesting. But White are in monstrous form right now and look to me the team most likely to win the entire competition.

[Winks]

Boy, I sure do like watching competitive League of Legends. LMQ looks surprisingly good. I'm also maybe swaying a bit from my Koreans-won't-lose-a-game-except-to-other-Koreans stance. I think Cloud 9 could conceivably take a game from White Shield.

[baekgom84]

Holy hell, the last group stages more than just lived up to expectations! That was some of the fiercest, most intense competitive League I've ever seen! I'm really stoked to see C9 go through, as I've been a fan of their playstyle since they came into the NA LCS and I'm just really happy that they get rewarded for prioritising intelligent, adaptive play over simply trying to paper over their strategic cracks with mechanics or aggression. I don't think they'll beat Samsung Blue, but I do think they can at least give them a scare and expose a couple of their weaknesses.

 

Now that we're actually into the quarterfinals, I kind of feel like the excitement will drop off a bit. Both Samsung teams should advance fairly comfortably, and then we'll have the excitement of an all-Samsung semi-final, but whoever advances from that will be pretty strongly favoured to take the Championship. The Chinese/Najin side of the bracket has some potential for some exciting games, but it could just as easily descend into safe, turgid siege-fests, or sloppy scraps where neither team can get the ascendancy because they are constantly doing stupid shit and screwing up their own plans. Hopefully, though, all of the teams will step it up and cap off what has the potential to be the greatest League of Legends tournament yet.

[osmosisch]

Amen. Last week has been amazing. I was absolutely flabbergasted when Alliance lost.

[Latrine]

No European team made it out of the group stages, which is surprising since I think Fnatic and Alliance both looked good even in games they lost and they were two of the only three teams that managed to take games off the Korean powerhouse teams.