Tag: esports

It must suck to be kT Rolster

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In Spider-Man comics, Doctor Octopus brought together Kraven the Hunter, Electro, the Vulture, Mysterio and The Sandman, to form the Sinister Six; a group formed with the intention of destroying Spider-Man.  Numerous times, they failed, and everyone’s favorite web-slinger always stood triumphant at the end of every conflict.

That’s pretty much kT Rolster’s League of Legends team, whom made big waves this season, when they dumped four-fifths of their previous year’s roster, and replaced them entirely with all-star caliber free agent individuals, most of whom were returning to Korea after unsuccessful stints in China.  Mata, Pawn and Deft, three former Samsung players with the first two being members of the S4 Worlds champion Samsung White squad and the reigning LCK MVP Smeb joined Score, the lone kT holdover, to form a team that on paper looked unbeatable.

The goal of this League superteam was obviously to win Worlds, but there was no secret about how the organization specifically wanted to dethrone the 90’s Bulls of League of Legends, SK Telecom T1, aka SKT.  Organizationally, kT and SKT are basically the AT&T and Verizon of Korea, two giants of the telecommunications industry, who are in endless competition with one another.  And the players themselves, many of the newly signed guys were players that either had long-standing grudges with their SKT counterparts, were simply tired of their one squad always winning, or both.  Both Pawn and Smeb have something of vendettas against SKT’s Faker, the oft-proclaimed best player in the world, easily stemming from resentment of said title.

Needless to say, prior to the start of Season 7, there was much ballyhooed about the construction of the new kT Rolster and how they’d fare against SKT throughout the year.

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lol Rito, let’s try this again

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The actual reason that the public won’t see: after SK Telecom trampled the competition, Riot Games is kind of tired of Korea owning the League scene, so they come up with alternate international events that mitigate the amount of domination that can be exhibited.

Introducing Rift Rivals: A League of Legends international event where Korea only gets to dominate (collectively) one other region, instead of all of them.

If anyone remembers, Riot tried a No Homers Club before in 2013, when the did the Battle of the Atlantic,* which pitted solely teams from North America versus teams from Europe.  Obviously, this was arranged in a manner in which the two regions could compete against each other, without getting shit on by the superior level of competition from Korea, Taiwan and China but mostly Korea, and ultimately it was a fairly lackluster event, with a convoluted and lazy format that Europe ultimately won because their 3-4-5th place teams defeated NA’s 3-4-5, despite the fact that NA’s 1-2 defeated their 1-2.

*a stupid fucking name if I might add, because despite the fact that the Atlantic Ocean is indeed what separates North America from Europe, games would be held in Los Angeles . . . y’know, along the Pacific Ocean.

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I wonder if SK Telecom T1 hates international fans

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

One of the main reasons why I enjoy professional League of Legends so much is because it’s simply something that Koreans are absolutely, irrefutably the greatest in the world at.  I’ve watched and had my heart crushed enough times at watching Koreans excel but fall short in a variety of international contests such as baseball, soccer and various Olympic sports to know how much I actually want to see South Korea win things, and in professional League, I not only have such, but because I also play the game recreationally, I have the ability to relate and understand how the players are playing and to appreciate just how good they really are.

Needless to say, over the last four years or so of watching professional League, I’ve witnessed Koreans dominate the scene without any legitimate concern that the ride is going to end any time soon; and personally, I love it to no end.

Obviously, a discussion about professional League of Legends dominance cannot be had without mentioning SK Telecom T1, the be-all, end-all when it comes to the entire esport.  Three-time World champions in an arena that’s only six years old, winners of countless tournaments both domestic and international, and after yesterday, two-time winners of the Riot Games Mid-Season Invitational, AKA mini-Worlds.  The bottom line is that SKT wins big and wins often, and their dominance over the scene is pretty overwhelming.

In other sports, this kind of suffocating excellence often prompts discussion over whether their constant winning is a detriment for the sport as a whole, and the League scene is really no exception.  SKT has been on top of the League scene for nearly four full years now, with only hiccups in Season 4 and the first Mid-Season Invitational, where they failed to win, but won just about everything else otherwise.  Suffice to say, it’s not really that big of a surprise that there are large swaths of League fans out there that have simply gotten bored of SKT’s constant winning, and have turned their allegiances against them.

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Oh how different my life could have been

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It begins in Asia: Video games will soon be a medal sport in the 2022 Asian Games

To all you non-Asians, the Asian Games are kind of like a mini-Olympics, but exclusive to, you guessed it, Asia.  There are all sorts of athletic competitions performed at the Asian Games, from baseball, judo, wrestling, weightlifting to gymnastics and ping pong, much like the Olympics.  It’s a very big deal, because it’s not as exclusive as the Olympics can be, so it really gives smaller, lesser-heralded Asian countries opportunities to represent themselves, and it’s where some of the larger countries like Korea and Japan can flex their advancement without competition from the Western world.

But anyway, news comes from the East that by the 2022 Asian Games, eSports might be a category in which countries can participate in.  As in video games; teenagers playing video games featuring characters that are usually athletic to compete against other teenagers playing as athletic characters.  But video games, for actual medals and actual national honors and prestige nonetheless.

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Photos: League of Legends World Championship, Season 6

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

[2020 note]: this is unposted content from 2016, photographs from mythical and I’s trip out to Los Angeles for the 2016 LCK Fall Championship AKA Worlds, the season 6 world championship.

It also dawned on me that this trip capped off a span of two months where I visited Europe, Korea, went to Disney Food & Wine, and then Worlds, so basically an insane amount of leisurely travel in a short amount of time.

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The LCK Fall Split Finals AKA Worlds 2016

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

For the second year in a row, mythical gf and I decided to go see the finals to the League of Legends World Championship.  For the second year in a row, the finalists were both teams out of Korea; hence the renaming of Worlds to League Champions Korea’s Fall Split, since for the fourth year in a row, Korea has run roughshod over the competition and would be champion of the game.

Thankfully, 2016 would be a year in which Worlds was held in the United States, absolving me from making a third international trip within the span of six weeks.  Instead, it was merely a leisurely weekend trip to Los Angeles, which saw a miserable flight out to LA, lots of junk food and Pikachu Game on top of League-related activity.

But for simplicity sake, we’ll stick to the Worlds experience, because honestly, there’s not a whole lot to talk about in regards to playing Pikachu Game on the Santa Monica Pier, and being sat next to a 400 pound blob on a flight.

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The sexy, red-haired, rain making elephant in the room

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Every Worlds, there’s always a not-popular/meta champion pick that emerges from some team, usually from Korea, that takes the tournament by storm, or is effective enough to surprise out some critical victories.  Sometimes they’re picked against lesser opponents so that players can hide their hands and not reveal their A-games to those stronger challengers scouting in the wings, or sometimes they’re busted out at a critical juncture of a series to catch the opponent off guard, and by the time they understand what is happening it’s too late.

Every year, there’s always one or a few picks that are remembered for its breaking of the meta, and outside the box thinking, or sometimes just plain goofy audacity, that sometimes works because nobody is expecting it.  In Season 3, OMG’s LoveLing bust out a jungle Volibear that completely blindsided TSM en route to a 43-13 drubbing.  In the Season 4 Finals, Royal Club’s inSec selected Rammus to jungle, and although his line score didn’t look that impressive, he most definitely contributed to Royal’s only win before ultimately succumbing to Samsung White.  And then there was last season SK Telecom T1’s Faker going all the way to Jupiter to select Olaf to play in mid lane (link above), and then still throttling a completely lost Bangkok Titans squad who inexplicably tried to go bruiser-vs-bruiser against Faker by picking Irelia mid.

It’s a legit strategy when it comes to League of Legends, since there are just so many available champions to pick from.  No matter how infallible or statistically reliable some champions are, out of 150+ available, there’s going to be one that’s an effective counter somewhere.  And the players that hide them in their hands until critical points are legit risk takers, choosing to unleash them when the stakes are high.

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