E-Sports @ OnRPG: March 9th Report
By Umar Farooq (Kluey), OnRPG Journalist
(Editor’s Note: This article was meant for release on Friday but delayed due to my GDC trip. Sorry for any outdated information or predictions)
IEM World Championships – Starcraft II
IEM Hanover is the IEM Final championship that includes the top players from each IEM event. The tournament boasts an 83,000 dollar prize pool with $35,000 going to the first player. Of course plenty of drama has stirred up to make things more interesting.
IdrA had voiced his concerns far better than anyone else in the tournament. According to Greg “IdrA” Fields, all the players were thrown into a youth hostel. I’ve never been in a youth hostel but the pictures looked awfully disturbing. Your bedroom, washroom and living room was all in the same room. The walls have white tiles and curtains have a bland look to them. Furthermore, IdrA announced that he had an entire jar of nutella for breakfast from IEM. Although I am not sure if he is being sassy, if this is true, that’s disgusting. Not only because nutella isn’t even made to be eaten like that but also because IEM isn’t poor. If a $500 prize pool tournament had done this, that’s acceptable. That tournament literally cannot afford a proper breakfast but IEM, without a doubt, can afford it and why they chose to do this is beyond me. Although they did release an official statement, I saw it as an excuse. When MLG makes a mistake, Sundance apologizes and makes up for it regardless of who’s at fault. I’d like to see IEM do this and become a lot more honest to the fans.
oGsSuperNoVa in his youth hostel provided by IEM.
While we’re on the topic of IdrA, his tournament results were inadequate. He went 1-4 in his group, taking last place. IdrA is known as a top North American player and this isn’t acceptable. I honestly don’t think he showed his full skill. I think that the entire hostel, breakfast and tournament environment screwed him over. If IdrA has one weakness, that’s it.
Alternatively, Feast did awesome. He placed first in his group, over two Koreans with one of them being SuperNova. Feast recently had some mentoring deal with Grubby and it seems to be paying off. He wasn’t nervous; he was professional and played his best.
Feast owning it up at IEM Hanover.
GSL Code S Finals
People don’t realise how epic these games were. Genius made some sick decisions and had some poor mistakes that no one would make. He forgot warp gate for a few minutes on the Antiga Shipyard set and got overlord dropped on the Entombed Valley which was the ultimate hard counter to the stargate play. I don’t usually have criticism for GSL but, they totally screwed over MLG. MLG players had Code A on the day they came back and DRG had minimal time to prepare for the finals. GSL has done this before and it seems like the Korean E-Sports are very business orientated. Most tournaments will do things that are for the better of E-Sports rather than only themselves. GSL seems to put their tournament on the spotlight and every other tournament in the dump. They have given out Code A spots because foreigner competition in the GSL brings in the viewers. GSL took away the Code S seed from Naniwa even though MLG had been told that Naniwa would receive it.
IEM World Championships – League of Legends
To be quite honest, League of Legends hasn’t had an IdrA-upset or Feast-beast mode. All the teams that were expected to go through to the playoffs had made it. I guess Solomid not making it is a disappointment though. They have a gaming house and all the players are really talented. I’m not sure what went wrong this tournament for Solomid.
Phreak and Demon casting some League of Legends.
As for predictions, I think it will be either CLG or M5 vs. Dignitas in the finals. My heart says CLG but brain says M5.
