Mythical gf favors European League of Legends team Fnatic. By proxy, I’ve become somewhat attuned to their standings, and it doesn’t hurt their favor with me when they field Korean players. Anyway, for the growing demographic of people who follow the competitive League scene, this is the time of the year in which the respective regions begin wrapping things up, and preparing for Worlds.
Regions in North America, Taiwan and to some degree China, have no parity whatsoever, so it’s basically the teams that were expected to make Worlds, pretty much locking things up, and jockeying for seeding, while everyone else is just playing for, well, paychecks. Korea to no surprise, is a nuclear warzone in itself, as there are no real surprises with the teams that will be making Worlds, but like the others, are duking it out for seeding, with the reigning champs, the two-time winning SK Telecom already getting upset and failing to secure the Korean #1 seed (but still going to Worlds).
If there’s any region that has any parity, and no real predictability, it would have to be Europe. Up until this year, it was pretty much a surefire bet that Fnatic would make Worlds, as they’ve made it to Worlds almost every single year of competitive play. However, due to the never-finalized, perpetually work-in-progress, always young-and-changing rules and format of the competitive scene, this is a year in which Fnatic is by no means a lock to even make it into Worlds.
In fact, if not for a questionable policy in the format, Fnatic should mathematically be eliminated from Worlds qualification. But because Rito prints so much money, they don’t seem to care that they could milk more games, which would mean more broadcasts, more ads to spam, and more money to make, but as stated, they make so much money that they would rather have a kind of lame policy, instead of creating some sport drama narrative that other, physical sport leagues would salivate at the idea of.
This is the kind of stuff that will always separate eSports from athletic sports.
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