Tag: tsm

      Fnatic wins the all-Euro Season One Championship Final/Patch Notes

      June 20, 2011 /

      Season One officially drew to a close this evening as Fnatic beat Against All Authority to take the Season One Championship. The game was an all-Euro match, thanks to some excellent play by aAa during the loser’s bracket semifinal round. aAa was able to win the match with a bit of an odd comp, thanks to some creative warding and incredible teleporting. It would be enough against Fnatic, though, who scored the final win in the second of the two game series against aAa.

      I was a little disappointed to see the North American teams drop early. I’m not a TSM fan, but I though Epik had played really well for most of the tourney. The wheels fell off today, though. I honestly thought they might have been throwing the game with that double-AD, no tank comp. They are certainly a much better team than was shown today.

      I haven’t yet had a chance to watch the Fnatic vs. aAa matches as I was in the car when they first aired. I’ve heard they were fantastic, so I’m hoping for some VoD action soon. In the meantime, Phreak and RiotEski put up a patch preview, which I’ve linked above. Lots of changes are on the way – check back tomorrow for a full roundup.

      Current Affairs, league of legends, News, Patches

      Season One Finals down to Europe vs. North America

      June 19, 2011 /

      The Season One Finals at Dreamhack continued today with some truly extraordinary matches. Most of yesterdays matchups seemed to be fairly one-sided, match by match. One team would gain control of the map and exploit that advantage to the end of the game. Some of the matches had exciting moments and there were a few upsets, but the games were pretty short and straightforward.

      Not today. Today the games were utterly insane. There were strange picks, odd bans, and epic, sprawling teamfights that ran from one end of the map to the other. There were Baron kills and counter Barons. It was a really exciting day, and we owed most of the excitement to the European teams, Fnatic (FN) and Against All Authority (aAa). Neither of the top two European teams looked very good yesterday – apparently Fnatic was missing a player and using a sub – but today they looked incredible. Fnatic showed up with amazing lane presence and some very smart bans against CLG, locking HotShotGG and company out of the tournament. Against All Authority dropped the first game in its series against TSM, but went on to steamroll to victory.

      It was interesting that the tournament turned into a Europe vs. North America event, and it looks like it’s going to continue down that path. Tomorrow brings us to the semi-finals and the finals. As you can see from the bracket above, Team SoloMid and Epik Gaming will be fighting for the chance to face the loser of the FN vs. aAa game. That winner will then go on to face the winner of Fn vs. aAa. We could be looking at Europe vs. North America for the finals, but if TSM and Epik are off their game, North America will be out of the race altogether.

      I hope you’ve had some time to check out the Season One Finals. I was really impressed with Riot’s streaming, as were roughly a million other unique visitors to the Season One microsite. I didn’t think I would get so excited, but it was really cool to be able to see the best teams in the world really showing their strength today. Seriously, if Fnatic’s Shushei doesn’t make you want to play Alistar, nothing will.

      Current Affairs, league of legends, News

      Season One Championships are underway

      June 18, 2011 /

      The Season One Championships are well underway at Dreamhack over in Sweden. I’ve been watching for most of the morning, though I did miss the super early games. It’s been interesting to see not only the different comps and bans, but also what Riot has done to livecast the event. At the peak, I saw some 180,000 people watching the games, which is really impressive for the first season of a video game.

      Riot was also pushing its Twitter presence. I think the company is hoping to get “#esports” trending, though I’m not sure what sort of community presence there is on Twitter. Most of the time the #leagueoflegends hashtag is pretty sparse, but I would love to see a more active dialog happening there, even just for link sharing.

      I think the best part of the tournament to this point has been the preview of Spectator Mode. It looks really nice, giving the viewer a ton of data about what’s happening on the battlefield. As we’ve seen from a few of the games, though, data isn’t everything. It’s true that at the end of the game the winning team typically has the gold advantage, but I thought Epik’s Doublelift was totally screwed when he got killed twice in the first couple minutes of the game against Fnatic. Miss Fortune also remained nearly 100 creeps ahead of Doublelift through the end of the game. Still, Epik somehow managed to pull a win (which, come to think of it, was Westrice’s Akali game).

      At any rate, I’m really impressed with Riot’s commitment to making the championship an event for everyone, not just the players in the tournament. Have you guys been watching?

      Current Affairs, league of legends, News

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